A.C. Moore’s “Grand Opening” and
The Model Make It Take It
Report

Sunday, March 29, 2009

By Tony Wootson

Two Sundays ago on March 15, four other club members and I conducted a Make It Take It (MITI) at the A.C. Moore Store located in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. The other participants were Nick Sandone, Jeff Nase, Mike Napoleon and our newest member Don Moelter.

A. C. Moore was celebrating their Grand Opening on this date, (even though the store had actually previously relocated down from their original location into a larger locale). In addition to the MITI, there were other activities scheduled, including Woodland Scenics, silk screen creating, matte board cutting and painting demonstrations – (along with free popcorn and pretzels) – all of which promised to make for a very festive day.

There were two model kits to be used for the build: a Revell Snap-Tite 1:25 scale Chevy Camaro Concept car, along with what appeared to be a 1:144 scale SR-71 Blackbird Snap-Tite aircraft model, also produced by Revell. Nick agreed to build the Camaro, and Don built the Blackbird.

John Goschke graciously agreed to run off 50 copies of flyers to be distributed at the event. On the front was information about our club and on the back was a copy of an article titled “The A-B-C-D’s of Modeling” that I had written. In addition, I was able to locate 50 or 60 of the Testor’s WW II fighter aircraft that we had previously used at an East Coast Hobby Show MITI, to give away.

On the day of the event I arrived at the store at around 11:30 in the morning. Nick and Jeff were already there, with Mike and Don arriving shortly afterwards.

Mike brought with him two of his most excellent dioramas that he had built using some of the Woodland Scenics products, (to be displayed at their demo area).

A short time later, we were met by Lisa Zeigler and her son Michael, along with Stu Visnov and his son Danny.

Lisa and Stu are distributors for the store. Robin Beam, the Director of Education for A.C. Moore showed up shortly afterwards. All three were responsible for coming up with the MITI idea.

With all of the additional events taking place, space was tight. We got set up towards the back of the store with 2 tables and 6 chairs, and then the fun began.

Nick informed me that the Camaro actually was not a great choice for the MITI, due to the time it took to be built. (It had taken Nick 45 minutes to complete his). Because of this, I started trying to gear the participants towards the SR-71 Blackbird. Naturally, though, pretty much everyone chose the Camaro.

The time really flew by with models being built left and right. We got so busy that some were forced to wait for a seat to become available.

Sometime during the day I was able to talk in detail with Stu. Some interesting items he mentioned to me were that this was the first A.C. Moore store that has had its hobby section expanded. However, there are plans to do this at additional stores located in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area. His idea behind the expansion of the hobby section was to give fathers and sons something to browse at (and products to purchase) while the mothers and daughters, who have been their traditional shoppers, were shopping. Stu added that he was looking for input from our modeling club in terms of suggestions for items that we would like to be able to purchase at the store. (He even offered to take us on a tour to a model supply warehouse, in order to select items that we would like to see at the store).

In checking out the hobby area I was very impressed with how it had grown. Where in the past the store had allocated no more than half an aisle-shelf for these items, now their hobby section had expanded to encompass four aisles and seven sets of shelves! Included were products from Woodland Scenics, airbrushes and air compressors, a variety of model tools and supplies, along with over 75 different types of car, aircraft, sci-fi and armor model kits – (including a Tamiya line).

While in the hobby area I was able to check out the Woodland Scenics demonstrations that were taking place.

A bit later, I was able to talk with Robin. She notified me that if interest is high, they would like to start holding regular model building classes there. In addition, sometime in the future they would probably like to have us return, conducting demonstrations on different types of advanced modeling techniques.

Before I knew it 3:00 had arrived. Ironically, there were still kids on hand to build models. So, we ended up doing so until around 4:00, (and I think I didn’t leave until around 4:30).

All told 23 people built models.

Considering that we spent just over 4 hours for the activity and that most chose the Camaro to build (which took over half an hour to complete), I think that this was a pretty successful event.

There were many faces filled with smiles at our tables throughout the day. All in all, I really had a great time, (and think all who participated had a great time as well)!

I am hoping that this will not turn out to be an isolated event, but the beginning of an on-going model building program at A.C. Moore. With all of the positive vibes surrounding the event, I’m pretty sure that it will.




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