What Morris says above is what I mean by "skipping the middle-man". I get why it's attractive to publishers, but it unfortunately makes it MUCH harder for stores (in particular stores in other counties). With a distributor, the MSRP gets spread across more businesses, but so does the expenses. (In this case, the shipping/duty is the big problem, as THAT becomes the replacement middle-man, but the onus is on us FLGS, rather than the publisher).
There's no easy solution, other than when you are in the same vicinity, and can skip both distributor and shipper.