Another one bites the dust

The 77Hobby in Poland is going out of the business, and the shop is closing down. The shop was focusing on RC helicopters and components, especially XLPower/MSH products and OMP models.

Closing down of the shop was announced in the XLPOWER Facebook group yesterday by Michał A. Kowalski the owner of the company running 77Hobby. It is bad, when an RC heli business is closing down, even worse when this is happening in East-Europe where the coverage of the hobby is already weak. Whilst there are still businesses in Western Europe, almost no stores serving Eastern European customers. And it is true the hobby is declining almost everywhere, this is happening much faster there. 

Since the VAT rules changed in the EU in 2021, almost no shops are delivering from Western EU countries to East, being an East European RC heli pilots is difficult, each closing down is a serious loss, a significant impact over there. It is true, if the number of RC heli fans is low in general, the situation is even worse there. And this is a self generating problem: fewer options lead to more difficult shopping, more difficult shopping keeps possible new joiners away from the hobby, finally it is not profitable to run businesses without new joiners, and a business with no profit is pointless. The hobby in East-Europe is in critical condition.

Closing down of 77Hobbies is a very bad news, because this shop was one of the stores which was delivering to another East European countries as well. The situation is the worst in Hungary, there is no RC heli shop in the country, and only a very few shops remained available for Hungarian RC pilots in the EU; like the helicoach.de in Germany or Modell Hubschrauber in Vienna. The situation in Poland slightly better, there are still few companies are in the business.

Better known, bigger companies are not delivering into these countries anymore due to the current EU VAT regulations.