St Petersburg, RU
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The demise of the locally owned small businesses is a subject I've written about many times. It is a self induced loss by consumers who only think of acquisition cost and not the cost of ownership or use.Maybe with a more realistic national sales tax system that distributes the funds, locally owned shops can have a fighting chance. For every small town that has had big box stores opened, the quality of life suffers a great deal. The average income drops, tax revenue drops, it is harder to attract new businesses, and costs of supporting the poverty wage workers who must use emergency rooms, food stamps etc that the mega stores force on a community.
A major loss is the loss of local expertise and services, in all fields, not just cameras, when the consumers avoid the few remaining local stores to shop on-line. Most of the questions that have to be answered on this forum were traditionally handled by the neighborhood camera expert in the mom and pop store.
Several decades ago it became illegal for manufacturers to set a price for products. Before that time, there was a very level playing field since stores charged the same, big or small. Many think that is a bad thing but overall, it is what made communities livable and was a major reason the middle class was so healthy and growing. Local shops had a livable profit margin and instead of competing solely on price, they competed on service. It was very common for shops, all types, to have service department, free lessons, training, free loaners when something was being repaired, and great customer service that encouraged tire kicking and coming in for questions or advice. In the long run, it was cheaper to pay a bit more and get what you really needed. Notice how many people buy a camera and it is clear that it is the wrong camera for them, quite often much more costly. But the current habit of buying an items or several competing items just to try and send everything back is a direct result of buying on-line and forcing local stores out of business. No one who avoids taxes by not buying in local stores has any right to complain about the poor customer service that is the natural result of not having anything but minimum wage order takers and packers on the other end of a telephone or email. By sending your money outside your community, but still demanding local services that are paid for by local stores such as fire and police services, support for the libraries, parks, roads etc, you are helping the downward slide of quality of life in your own community.
Just how much would be saved if people bought equipment that was well suited to their application the first time and did not have to buy and sell a series of units or systems before discovering what they really needed? That savings alone, available from having local expertise is worth far more than any sales tax savings buying on-line.
During the middle class growth period of the US, and competitive local stores, wages were higher due to the higher margins on sales so there was a reason for employees to stay, and not be a drain on community services. That meant that the person you talked with over the counter knew what they were talking about and could help with problems or correct misunderstandings, the type that we read everyday on the forum. When was the last time you got informed answers from big box mega-stores or on-line? Leaving volunteers on forums to answer questions has a major limitation, everyone is guessing. No one sees the unit or set up doing what is being asked about. I have read a lot of wrong answers here from people who were quite knowledgeable, but they are not mind readers or practitioners of remote-vision. Accurate to the point diagnosis requires reliable data which is missing from a posted question, but would have been a slam dunk if the camera, user's operation, and setup that the old mom and pop stores could by just trying it themselves.
Overall, I see this trend of mail order for everything as being false economies. Everyone loses if a longer time frame is considered.
A side note about direct distribution from manufacturers. Shipping charges and waste would increase dramatically if shipping each sale individually. A national distributor has very little landed costs per unit because tons are shipped in at a time using very efficient maritime shipping, instead of aircraft. I ship things all the time back and forth from the US and air is very expensive. If it was 10,000 lbs, it would be very reasonable per pallet by ship. I has a small number of boxes of test equipment to send from California, about 120lbs. It was $1200 for air, $490 by ship. If I had 1200 lbs, 10 times as much, air would have been $12k and by ship $610. Most of the shipping costs were fixed port fees and handling once it arrive, not the cost of transportation per unit it weight. That is one reason national distributors result in less overhead and cheaper prices.
Stan
St Petersburg Russia Visit my Nikonians gallery.
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I also like to trial run my lenses with an onsite test before I buy it so I value lenses in the hand. I recognize not everyone sees it that way (back to the pure efficiency of volume selling and eliminating levels in the distribution/sales chain).
