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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pg13" data-source="post: 4341645" data-attributes="member: 71410">That's how it's supposed to work, yes.I agree with you...except, here's where gg finds himself on the losing end of the trend =  gg will have to spend far more money fighting harder for fewer and fewer sales of the impossibly broad range of products that gg would have to have pay to have available at any given moment in order to take advantage of the specialized nature of service that is the main competitive advantage for the FLGS.  The high-volume items will be sold by the low overhead, limitless storage and shelf-life, internet convenient, on-line discounter.  And nothing, other than the temporary shift of convenience, stops someone from coming to the FLGS for the knowledge and the hands-on inspection and then choosing to go home and buy it on-line at the best available price.That's the scary truth of it...and until a new business model is found, the best that the FLGS can hope for is to hold on until the next trend appears...or until it can no longer hold on.Been there, done that.pg--seattlePS--The US music industry belatedly recognized the value of the independent retailers and the struggle they faced against the Big Box discount stores and they self-imposed restrictions known as "Minimum Advertisable Prices."  Basically, it restricted co-op advertising (ads that are partially paid for by the record labels in partnership with a retailer, a major source of advertising budgets) to those retailers who agreed not to advertise certain products for less than pre-arranged minimums.  You could be Best Buy and still sell the new Coldplay for $5 less than most stores could buy it wholesale--but you couldn't use the record labels money to advertise that...  And it helped.  Until Congress struck the practice down as being unfair to consumers (and consumers were convinced by the media coverage of this action that they'd won a great victory against the high cost of cds--but all they did was quicken the demise of their friendly local record store...)There's not going to be anyone stepping in and telling Amazon.com that they can't sell you what you want for the best price they can.  Independent retails can't hold their breath and wait to be rescued--they have to simply do what they can to offer something that people will choose to buy from them...and hope that'll be enough.Use your lucky dice!</blockquote>

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