How one man took his lifelong hobby and turned it into a business
Steve Nelson never saw what started out as only a hobby evolving into a career as one of the top 5 model train layout dealers in the United States. His passion for trains started when he worked in a toy and hobby shop during high school. Back then he couldn’t afford model trains, so he started collecting model airplane kits.
All aboard the business
Fast forward to today and Steve is now a college professor in Atlanta, Indiana and has moved from model airplanes to his own O Gauge model train layout and O Gauge model train collection. The growth of his company happened unexpectedly. Starting in his basement, he moved to a 1,800 square foot space to build his model train layout and later moved to an even larger space of 5,000 square feet to build more. With the expansion of his model trains, the question came about on how they were going to pay for all of it. With encouragement from friends and family, Steve and his wife realized that they could turn this love for trains into a business to promote the hobby through sharing their layout and model trains with the public.
“We figured we become the dealer, and people will buy from us.”
That business became Mr. Muffin’s Trains, a model train business with layouts open for hundreds of interested guests to see each month. Steve and his family have grown their model trains out of their basement, and now operate several buildings across Indiana dedicated to the stores retail, manufacturing, and train layouts. Some of the most popular purchases from Mr. Muffin’s Trains come from items in their pre-order catalogs, showcasing hundreds of different model trains. When starting the pre-order feature in their online store, Steve needed an e-commerce platform that could support the service.
A rocky start
Some of the biggest concerns Steve had with his pre-orders was keeping his inventory in sync online and in-store, and being able to apply changes to an order while keeping the order history organized. He started off operating his store through PrestaShop, but found this platform had limitations that couldn’t solve his concerns. About two years ago he then moved his store to Shopify and found this new platform was perfect for keeping his inventory in sync, and used it as a Point of Service system for both in-store and online.
Still, Steve saw that the Shopify platform didn’t cater well to a store with pre-orders.
“It could be up to 9 months until it comes in, and customers would want to change that preorder or add more. Before we used Order Editor we’d have to go in a make a whole new order and there would be a whole new ticket number.”
Using solely the features through Shopify, if Steve wanted to make changes to a pre-order he couldn’t just go into the existing order and edit it there. This was a hassle for Steve, and he wanted to find a way that would easily let him edit an order without having to create a separate order and confuse his order history. After being unable to find a solution through Shopify, Steve was worried he would have to move Mr.Muffin’s Trains onto a different e-commerce software.
“We tried calling Shopify to find a solution, but they said we might have to go to a whole new platform.”
Luckily after searching the Shopify app store, Cleverific Order Editor was able to fix his concerns.
“My daughter found it and just said, this is what we got to do.”
Just the caboose-t they needed
Now using Order Editor, Nelson no longer has to cancel an order that needs to be changed and re-enter it into a new order. Order Editor saves him time by allowing him to make edits in the existing pre-order.
“When Order Editor came along, the recent enhancements made a huge difference. Specifically how when creating the edited order, it would show up in the history with the same order number and an added letter, I could easily see the order and how it has changed from the original.”
Order Editor keeps the order history together, so you can tell what each customer has changed from their pre-existing order. Steve has found that it had allowed him to do a better job at servicing customers.
“We get compliments all the time with what we are doing and how we are doing it, and the Order Editor app is definitely helping out with that.”
Chugging past the competition
The popularity of Mr. Muffins Trains is growing more and more each day, moving into bigger locations to support their train layouts, and even planning to open a restaurant next to their retail store soon. Steve has just rolled out a new layout this month, making it his 3rd one open to the public. Steve’s impressive train collections, coupled with his quality customer service, make him a strong competitor against other model train stores. Order Editor has given him a simpler solution for order changes that his customers appreciate. With the growth of Steve’s business, Cleverific Order Editor hopes to continue supporting his customer service and pre-order process so he can focus on sharing his love for trains to families and individuals across the country!
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