Independent Shooting Stores

[Dean2]

I am sorry to see WS going out of business, I bought a lot of stuff there over the years. That said, I have also tried very hard to support the small independent stores over the years, even being willing to pay higher prices to shop there.

WE have some GREAT independent retailers in Alberta, Prophet River and Clay REALLY show how it should be done, and he is not so small any more because of it. There is also Pud and his staff at Bashaw Sports, Phil and his staff at P&D, Fly's in High River, Bartons in GP and then a bunch out of province like Ellwood Epps, X-Reload, and Raynershine.

All that is great, but a word of advice to some of the smaller stores still struggling to survive. In a lot of cases your service SUCKS. I have been in one store three times in the last few months. The older lady at the till usually says good morning can I help you. The guy that is usually there says nothing and is very hard to engage in conversation. I can usually talk to just about anyone so to not be able to get much out of him, even about hunting, fishing or his new lab, makes it seem like he just isn't much interested in talking to clients. I have never seen him talk to any other client in the place either, though in the times I have been there I have only ever sen two people in the place.

When I was in there yesterday I asked for three relatively high dollar, high margin items. Not one of them was in stock and neither of these people showed any interest or made any offer to order in what I was looking for. This is a pretty small store so they are going to be limited in stock, everyone understands this, but if they are only going to sell what they actually have they are severely limiting their market. While I am all for supporting the little guy, some of them need to be doing far more to earn that support.

So the point of this thread, I made my thoughts known in the form of a couple of questions about ordering things in etc and a suggestion. I was very polite. They didn't disagree or offer even an alternate point of view. They just shook their shoulders, I got the clear sense they could have cared less. Amazing how many people get into retail that have no experience and don't even like customers. Makes you wonder what they are thinking.

Long and short, I am going to make sure I concentrate my support where it stands the most likelihood of helping an independent survive.