The days of local shops that carry high quality goods are probably coming to an end. Its too hard to have a brick and mortar store and compete with an entity like amazon or similar major retailer. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I think the future is going to be only major distributors like Amazon, and manufacturers of high end, specialty goods selling direct to customers.
The unfortunate truth is that most ultra high quality goods do not demand enough of a market to support independent retailers. Go to a shoe store and try to find a pair of made in America goodyear welted boots....hint hint, you won't be able to find any. The quality of the good is too high for the demand to be met. Most guys that are ready to drop 300+on a pair of boots have already done the research and know exactly what they want. And if you hop online, you can get basically anything you want direct from excellent manufacturers like Truman, Whites, Nicks, and Oak street. And some historically excellent companies like Allen Edmonds or Red Wing have stores in malls, but their products are being watered down. Red wing makes most of their boots except the heritage line outside of the USA now days and Allen Edmonds is moving more and more of their manufacturing to the Dominican Republic.
While I think its very important to support local retailers, I'm worried there's no place for them in the future. The business models and corporate structures of major distribution companies allow them to take on huge amounts of debt and out compete smaller distributors by selling goods at a loss or with a much lower profit margin while still staying in business. Why buy from someone else when you can get the lowest price + fastest delivery from amazon? To the average consumer, the only reason not buy from Amazon is because Amazon doesn't have what you want. And that's where manufacturers selling direct come in. Thanks to the internet, we probably have a wider variety of ultra high end, niche goods than ever, but we always hit a bottle neck with production capacity. Want to buy a solid knife? Hop on amazon and pick up a spyderco, or benchmade, get the lowest price and have it delivered the next day.
But want the very best knife out there, with a special steel, HT, or handle material? You will never find what you are looking for on amazon. You will only find it from specialty, niche manufacturers that you probably had to join a forum to even know about. If you want a Carothers, or a Busse, you are going to with limited exceptions, have to buy straight from them. And thats where I think the future is.
I'd love to sell 5,000 machetes a year and have my products available on amazon, I'd be rich and could spend my days chilling out on the ski slope instead of covered in steel dust in the shop. But the reality is that (1) most people will not pay $200+ for a machete when they can buy an offshore product for $25 and (2) I probably can't make that many without drastically reducing my QC and manufacturing methods.
So there's the future of goods. Lower to high end , readily available goods controlled by Amazon or similar, and high end, niche goods available in limited quantities direct from manufacturers. The only outlier is the consumer. Maybe people don't want to buy from amazon. Maybe people want to go to the brick and mortar shop and shoot the sh** with the guys and pick up a sprint run Spyderco and a killer one off Fiddleback bushfinger that only that shop has. I really hope thats the future, but I'm not sure how long all of the small guys can keep competing against the giants.
