I've often discussed the problems of suppliers with my friend Nigel Stanley. We have both had careers in the service industries. Nigel relatively recently swapped and became an electric mouse supplier (www.nigelstanley.com). We think that part of the problem is that many suppliers are principally modellers and second to that business people. Lack of experience in the service industries and with pricing, delivery and customer service issues we think causes many people to have difficulties. It is hard to learn on your own if you come to it from a completely different background with a hobby that just grew. Having said that it would be pretty pointless to have general retailers trying to muscle in on the business: not only would they find it difficult to know what goods would satisfy the market but also it is famously difficult to seperate the traditional model engineer from his money (Morning Terry! Or our late friend Dick Clements who spent so long saving money making nice tooling that he died before he got far with the loco he was building using the nice tooling). I haven't decided if it is Thatcherism or New Labour thinking but we are inclined to the thought that they don't make traditional model engineers any more (I doubt anyone under 40 was taught how to use a lathe at school: I lived in the metalworkshop at school. Until I discovered sailing and girls I lived there. Break time, lunch, after school you name it.) We think the target to aim for is the younger person with perhaps more disposable income and a lack of skills (like my driving on Sunday Andy?) and confidence to face the somewhat forbidding side to model engineering. It seems to us therefore if you are prepared to do what you say in terms of delivery, have some decent presentation and be generally reliable and accessible it ought to be possible to fairly seperate people from their money and indeed to charge a premium. Maxitrak have been doing it and good luck to them. It is a shame that Winson drove many of the potential market away. MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.