[Shawn 507]

I was once told the best way to make a small fortune in the hobby shop business, was to start with a large one. I wish you the best of luck. Keep us informed, I'll buy something for the cause.

[Phantom Phan1200]

As Kingpin said don't quit your day job, Epapazian also made alot of great points too.

I'm not going to tell you not to follow your passion but be for warned its not a easy road.
In this day & age of Ebay & web retail shops, being the only guy with a brick & mortor in town doesn't mean much.

In Central Florida I have the only shop I know of that sells diecast aviation models from Corgi, Hobby Master, Century wings, Dragon, Franklin Mint & more.
I also stock aviation books & related collectibles.
Though I'm the only guy in my area it's still very hard to compete with web shops & Ebay for local customers.
I sell my products at the normal prices found on most web sites, but I have a lot more overhead than if I were running a web store out of my home.

A lot of people have the impression dealers get these models for $5 then turn around & sell them for $50.
Nothing could be further from the truth, you will almost never see 100% markup on a product in this biz, the norm is less than 45% on most things.
Factor in your shipping from the distributor, operation costs, taxes & theres very little left.
What is left also needs to be reinvested into more product.

You almost have to have a web store to stay alive these days, this is such a niche market & has little mass market appeal.
I'm getting to the point where if I'm going to keep my business going I have to move to the web.

[Cavtanker]

If you could get a local IPMS chapter at your brick and mortar store, that might generate business from the constant customers being in the club.

One of my two local hobby shops specializes in R/C cars. They built a miniature moto-cross racetrack in the open space next to the store for the R/C cars to race in scheduled weekend competitions. I took the picture from the store's website to give you an idea on the track: