Originally Posted by
ALLSPEED
I hear you but your speaking about the U.S. Yes 80-90 percent of the hobby stores love their rtr's. Believe it or not the U.S. is a small part of the world wide rc community. To my surprise I found tamiya to be bigger than traxxas in several different countries. Racing in other countries trump what we do here. Especially on road. That's why on a larger scale the kits aer where the money is. Think about this. The average racer has to spend around $1,000 minimum just to get started and that's cheap. The average rtr is half that.
What you spend means nothing to a hobby store. It's where the profit is. And lots of stuff in the racing department doesn't come close to RTR in terms of profit margin. A store makes more on a Revo package then a complete high end truggy package. Or atleast thats the way it is in my area. I am not denying that in other parts of the world kit's are popular. I guess I should of said racing vehicles compared to none racing vehicles. And other countries other then the US and Canada (which is where I am from) have many popular vehicles other then buggy and truggy (which is not as popular as here in North America). All I am trying to say is, non racing platforms that the average public person buys is a bigger margin of the hobby then the racing margin.
I should mention though that I don't know much about the On-road market so I can't comment on that. What I a talking about is the off road and street basher market.