Frank's Hobby Shop (Calif.) -- What REALLY happened???

[Anonymous]

The "Business Monday" section of the Orange County (CA) Register
(4-3-00) had among the rest of the bankruptcy listings:

FRANK'S HOBBY SHOP INC. (a corporation)
Petition signed by: Frank Santangelo, president
Location: Orange, California
Filing: Chapter 7
Date: March 23, 2000
Assets: Less than $50,000
Liabilities: $100,001-$500,000
Case Number: 12362RA

In this newsgroup, Frank's hobby Shop was noted as going out of
business after having "Lost their lease".

On a visit to Frank's, a few days before close of business
(3-15-2000), Frank himself was on the telephone with someone, saying
that "there had been some major embezzlement inthe store".

Lookslike Frank couldn't tell a straight story -- but that's how he
treaed his customers too. Anyone wonder why he went out of business?

[Clark]

It was a combination of many things that led to the demise of the store.
Franks son Tony had been running the store for the past few years while
Frank has been enjoying his retirement. Its been explained to me that when
Tony took over the store the place was already starting a downward spiral.
Year after year the store sales kept going down, all the while Tony was
trying his best to keep the place afloat. But in reality he really didn't
like running the store (he had no interest in the hobbies). Also he was busy
running a bunch of Frozen Yogurt stores, so he was constantly running around
S.CA to each store to make sure everything is in order. He rarely had any
time for his family. Tony just didn't have his heart in helping the store
survive. So things just didn't get done, like ordering more of the things
that were selling well and sometimes buying items that just didn't sell.
This in turn caused more strain in the bank account, which didn't help them
pay their bills to the suppliers. At the end of 1999 most of the suppliers
cut off their credit lines to them. The last straw was that Tony didn't try
to renew the lease fast enough. Because the shopping center has now changed
hands and they were demanding almost a doubling of the rent. Frank found out
about this in Feb. 2000 and promptly fired Tony. Imagine my suprise when I
walked in the store and not seeing Tony there.

Frank took over the store and realized that he needed to close the store
down and have a closeout sale. Then try to get the landlord to see if they
could let Frank to cut the size of the store in half and keep the rent the
same. The new landlord refused, therefore it became a Going out of Business
Sale. The new Landlords must have something planned for that shopping
center, because the Furniture Store next door has now lost their lease for
similar reasons.

I very much doubt Tony embezzled from the store since there wasn't much
money there to begin with, also Frank came in often to check things out. But
I do think Tony just negligant in running this store. He just didn't really
have the passion to keep this store afloat, unlike the Yogart Shoppes. More
likely Tony just gave up and let the chips fall were they may.

In closing we all lost a great Hobby Store that had survived 33years. But I
have to also think that this has caused a MAJOR rift between Tony and Frank.
Which I don't think will heal itself for a few years. These type of feuds
can divide families forever.

Most of my info has come from employees (and former employees) and friends
of both Frank and Tony. And of course Personal observations. I know I have
forgotten somthing but maybe I'll remember later.

Anonymous <anon...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:38ea9ed4...@nntp.ix.netcom.com...

[Semjase]

>Subject: Re: Frank's Hobby Shop (Calif.) -- What REALLY happened???
>From: "Clark" nos...@spamthis.com
>Date: 4/5/00 12:50 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <sels65s...@corp.supernews.com>

Interesting?

Tony

[cj...@my-deja.com]

In article <38ea9ed4...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
anon...@mindspring.com wrote:

> On a visit to Frank's, a few days before close of business
> (3-15-2000), Frank himself was on the telephone with someone, saying
> that "there had been some major embezzlement inthe store".
>
> Lookslike Frank couldn't tell a straight story -- but that's how he
> treaed his customers too. Anyone wonder why he went out of business?

From my experience, it was Tony that couldn't tell a straight story. For
a warning that was dismissed by this newsgroup, search DejaNews for
"Frank's Hobby Shop" for the date 11/25/1998.

I was the other person that bought some of the same brass engines by
phone order. After numerous calls to Tony where he made excuses for not
shipping the models and promising to either ship or later credit my
credit card, I found out that a friend had bought the same models and
was having the same problems. Both of us eventually got our credit card
companies to reverse the transactions.

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[dozzerz]

I had worked there part time when I was young. It was a fun place, however, Tony was there a lot of the time and he sometimes had me doing personal errands for him that were not really related to the shop etc. when Frank wasn't around like wash his car etc. In the shop, A lot of customers would buy radio controlled cars he would tell them he could have them built for a fee. Tony had me and some of the other young guys build these cars for the customers, he collected the money personally, outside of the store's knowledge giving us a part of for the building. Frank apparently had a policy against this (I didn't really know it was a rogue operation at first but Tony warned us to not tell anybody, especially Frank about the building of the cars) So he had me building cars on the side, it was great for someone who likes to do that, but he owed me money for the building of them that didn't get paid, and warned me not to mention any of it to Frank, which I didn't... During that time I wanted to buy an engine for a model airplane and he convinced me that there was a rare type, aside from the major brands and higher priced that was much faster and better etc. I wanted to try it and of course they didn't stock it so I paid for it ahead of time, on layaway. He apparently never put the order in because it never came ... he kept giving me different reasons about the suppliers etc. and I was waiting and waiting for the delivery that was never to come. It seems he just pocketed the money for it. Aside from that, at one point, he bet on a Superbowl against me it wasn't a huge but by some standards but it was maybe as big as my part time paycheck, however, he bet not only with me, I believe he may have bet a very significant amount of money on that particular game he took a LOT of bets ... you could hear him on the phone at work time booking them every day for a while. He ended up losing and once he lost all his bets he quickly made up some story to Frank and fired me, still owing me all the money, then he left town and he disappeared somewhere and nobody could seem to track him down. The money he owed me was probably a very small part of the total he owed others and I think he skipped out on everyone. I don't know how long it was before he came back but it was long after I had moved on. So apparently he came back at some point after that and ran the store into the ground because I believe the shop existed for maybe 10 years or more after my story.... Maybe Frank never saw some of the things he was doing, but it should have been a big red flag.

[Trenbidia]

On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 09:59:40 -0800, dozzerz wrote:

> I had worked there part time when I was young

I'd take that tirade with at least a couple of grains of salt. It was
posted from an email account in Singapore and went thru a Singapore
server.

--
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!