Aaron posing next to the newly built invenotry racking in his basement

In December of 2015, Aaron and Forrest started Crash'n Bash Hobbies with a website and a basement. It had been a long-discussed idea - to build an online business for radio control hobby products and gain access to wholesale dealers for their own interest in the hobby. At the time, the only hobby shop in Cedar Rapids was winding down after years of being in business, and selection was limited. Moreover, the landscape for brick-and-mortar hobby shops had become dismal with online giants such as Tower Hobbies, and market places like Amazon and eBay. The industry was moving online, and that was the future.

Forrest took to building out a website - something he had never done before, but had the time to learn while working at home operating his eBay business. Together, they built racks in the basement of Aaron's house to store the inventory they would be selling online. It was slow going at first, and they quickly discovered that the major brands in the hobby required resellers to have a physical storefront in order to purchase product at a profitable margin.

In the summer of 2017, Crash'n Bash Hobbies went from online only to an omni-channel model with their first brick and mortar location in Marion, Iowa. Previously used as an office and storage space for a plumbing services company, the building afforded a mere 500 sq ft of possible retail space, but that was enough to satisfy the minimum requirements of Hobbico and others to have a physical storefront. The boys did the best they could with a limited budget to turn the space into a semi inviting showroom, and build out the rest with inventory storage and ecommerce in mind.

Grand Opening day was Small Business Saturday in November, and not a single customer came through the door, which was to be expected with zero advertisement. The two continued to expand Crash'n Bash Hobbies online, often spending their days in front of a computer and shipping orders, only at times interrupted by an instore customer coming to check out the store. As time went on, however, more and more instore customers discovered them by word of mouth; pricing was competitive with online, they put out a customer centric vibe, and slowly developed a local following.

Once the Covid-19 pandemic came along in 2020, the store was fairly well established with an ever-widening selection, and a growing base of regular customers. Uncertainty abounded in the country as to how to deal with the virus, but one thing was for sure - people gravitated towards their hobbies during this time of adversity. For Crash’n Bash Hobbies, sales exploded; online orders shot through the roof, and instore traffic surged. Within a year, the building was bursting at it’s seems. The tiny little showroom would get so packed that people would wait outside for people to leave. Suddenly, a larger building became the obvious next step.

Forrest & Aaron taking a selfie in Crash'n Bash Hobbies' first storefront in Marion, IA

Crash'n Bash Hobbies showroom, warehouse, and carpet track in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

In April of 2022, Forrest and Aaron took their gains from the Covid era and moved into a building seven times the size of the original location. This time around, there would be a spacious showroom, a dedicated warehouse, and a carpet track that the community had been calling for since day one.

Crash'n Bash Hobbies became a destination for remote control hobby enthusiast across Iowa and surrounding states. A place that catered to the crawlers, the bashers, and now the racers. Diversifying from exclusively ground based RC to planes and boats attracted even more customers groups.

With a knowledgeable and dedicated staff on hand and the largest selection in the state, Crash'n Bash Hobbies has gone from humble beginnings to an established pillar of the RC community in the Eastern Iowa Corridor.