> Now as a near monopoly of brick & mortar stores, they suck and are far
> from inexpensive. But'ca know what? They make a great showroom to check
> things out before you buy from Amazon or NewEgg! (take THAT f*****s!) I
> don't despise them nearly as much as walmart, but they're getting closer.
Part of the problem is, back in the day you had a few product lines, and
each line had a few models, and they weren't all that different in their
features, and so a mom-and-pop or small local chain could manage to
stock enough variety of product to keep everyone happy.
Then product lines got too big for a small stocking retailer to keep up
with, Joe Blow would come through the door looking for the one with the
orange light or the 170-frammis epithelium, and he'd end up down at the
big-box store where they had twenty different models from ten different
manufacturers on the shelf, and you could pick the one that had the
switch here or the switch there (while the helpful sales rep tried to
sell you the one with two switches instead of one 'cause it paid him more.)
Now of course we have, for whatever reason, vastly too much product out
there for even the big-boxes. And the narrow (in the case of the small
shops) or dubious (in the case of the big-boxes) expertise has been
replaced by the Internet hive-mind.
It's really down to (a) products you have to touch before buying (b)
stuff you have to have NOW (c) stuff too bulky, heavy, dangerous, or
spoilable to ship and (d) retailers who can maintain or develop a
specific product niche.
John.
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