U know I ordered some stuff online last week, when it made it to my door I noticed I ordered the wrong size. There is value in putting eyes on stuff before purchasing.

While I won't overpay, I will pay a small amount more to a retail store. What happens if we all just use the store as an inspection point and then go buy it at some online retailer? Eventually the stores close and you no longer have a place to actually see merchandise before buying.

Not gonna happen. There will always be people who are overwhelmed with the size of the store and the decor and who are willing to pay too much for substandard store brand stuff. The name brand products can always be purchased cheaper on-line.

I went to basspro the other day in okc.i was shocked at the prices. Thank goodness for academy and gander mountain!

I bought a t-shirt and a package of hooks at BPS IN 2012, haven't been back since.
Their prices are stupid expensive and living in Plano, too far to drive.
It was a fun experience going to BPS when they initially opened, but the thrill is long gone!

I love the fish tanks at Cabelas..

I get irritated when folks have questions about where to find things and the first response is boats.com,or west marine... give your local guys a chance to get the stuff for ya, they appreciate the business alot more than the minimum wage kid at cabelas, and you have the piece of mind in knowing that you could be helping put a neighbors kid through college, not another benz in a driveway somewhere else.

This is absolutely where things are headed. It's plainly obvious when you see people openly admitting to going to the story only to look and then buying somewhere else. Gonna ruin it for all of us. If you believe otherwise, you're just lying to yourself to justify not paying for the services that local stores offer for free in hopes of getting your business.

The way our sales world has transformed, the first casualties will be mom & pop shops, and we've already seen many of them go belly up. Next will be the big box stores that drove mom & pop out of business because they can't compete with online if customers aren't willing to pay for the services they provide.

I will always pay a small premium to a retail store because it costs them money to have inventory available for me to see first-hand and I want to see that service maintained 5, 10, 20 years from now. But if folks keep looking there and buying online, it doesn't take a world-class economist to figure out what's going to happen.

Many of the online retailers are actually brick & mortar stores who chose to sell online at a reasonable price and not simply websites that have merchandise drop shipped from manufacturers. They aren't giving their stuff away, they are making their profit on volume and they are making a profit even selling at reduced costs. The big box retailers could do the same thing. They sell at MSRP and sometimes more, simply because they know there are people who will come in and buy their overpriced, and in the case of many store brands, poor quality merchandise. If you look closely at prices, you'll see examples where they are showing MSRP to be even greater than on the manufacturers website. They do this so when they do advertise it as "on sale" for a few bucks off, they are still getting full list price for it. In some cases, they will mark an item down to where they actually lose money on it just to get people in the store to shop. For those of you unfamiliar with retail marketing, it's called a loss leader and it's a pretty effective selling tool, especially to an unwary buying public. And the sad part is that usually the loss leader item isn't a very good product to begin with and how many times have you walked in to find that the last one has just been sold, but we have this one instead which is better? It's called bait & switch and it happens all the time.
I work to support myself, not the retail stores and if they want my money, they need to put greed on the back burner and get with some competitive. I shop and will continue to shop where I can get the most return for the $$$ I spend.

That's all fine. But if you like going to look at retail stores, you should spend some money there or the ability to compare products in person will be completely gone eventually.

Believe me, I'm as cheap as anyone and I have a limit to how much more I pay to support brick & mortar stores. But it's simple economics that if you're not willing to pay extra for the service that you value and use, then the company that provides that service is going to go out of business.

Nobody ever shops at BPS and yet they had $4.3 billion in revenue and are ranked #98 on the Forbes Largest Private Company list.....funny how that works.

I just really like Olsens in fort worth because you can smoke in there, and that means my wife and kids have to stay in the truck

Stop posting facts.

Kinda scary giving out your zip code huh?


The zip code info is used in regards to deciding where to open new locations.

Who said nobody shops at BPS?