When I bought my first motorcycle gear, I had little idea what to look for, what I need, or how to verify it does the job. Going to a store that specializes in motorcycles and gear was fantastic.
They showed me how to fit a helmet, what to look for in a jacket, gloves, etc. I could try multiple items to find which brands fit my body, what looks good, and how the whole ensemble is gonna work together.
You can’t replace that online.
Now that I know more about gear, shopping online is faster and easier. But I still wouldn’t buy a helmet online, for example. You gotta test that stuff.
My friend is getting into video. He’s spent 3 weeks looking for the right lens and camera, bought a bunch, still not happy. Hours wasted, edge cases uncovered, room specifics discovered.
1 trip to a specialist camera store wouldve solved his problem.
My butt has also learned the rather uncomfortable lesson that you never buy a couch online. Your butt needs to try it.
I've seen modern direct-to-consumer brands use the approach you mention. Their revenue stream is instagram ads and online retail, but they also have physical shops in bougie locations where you can go browse and talk to their [sales] staff. They only rep 1 brand which can be an issue.
Personally I've had good luck with specialist stores. You have to go in with a satisficing instead of maximizing mentality and it works great. The average on offer is about 10x better than the average you find online. (because inventory & space are expensive)
Doesn't matter if it's about size and fit. But I guess that's a problem that is very specific to human powered bikes, where an inexperienced rider can make wildly wrong choices based on just trying a few options (some of the best fits could take a year of regular riding for getting used to). There are lots of online shops in that field that make Amazon pale in both price and inventory depth (e.g. literally hundreds of different bar tapes, probably thousands if you count colors separately), I wonder if there could be an upmark percentage that would be acceptable to both retailers/post-retailers and customers for substituting the package delivery hassle with store pickup. Conventional retail competing with that choice is hopeless in a market consisting of nerd hobbyists. The old guard always thinks that customers only buy online because it's so much cheaper, but choice makes at least as much difference.
I suspect that the seemingly obvious hybrid distribution simply hasn't been done yet at scale because the legalities of customer protection require one party to be on the hook when things don't go so well and the online side of the equally wants to get rid of that so desperately that they wouldn't be interested in any arrangement that wouldn't provide for that and the retailer side is fully aware that they would never get a slice of the pie big enough to make up for those risks.
Why not both? There’s a lot of web-first brick & mortar companies coming up these days. Coolblue is a good example in NL. They offer expert advice at their stores, and an amazingly modern website experience at the same time. Inventory is all managed via warehouses, like Amazon.
HomeDepot or Lowes? Often times if you are even aware the topic exists you’ll be a step ahead of 75-80% of the staff.
If you go to a proper plumbing or electrical supply place, they can often point out that the video you’re watching isn’t doing work compliant to the local electrical code and you need to do extra step Y or you’ll fail inspection, or that the whole operation is not going to work because the length of your run is too long for the size of pipe/gauge of wire you’re using (which the video never even talks about), and you need to upsize or use a different technique.
Local shops without expertise are definitely not going to do well. Someone with experience and expertise who sells what you need and actually has it in stock? Super Super valuable.
Turned out just how I feel instead... the idea that talking to people at local stores helps you find stuff is fine, except that I don't need help because Google is much, much better at finding stuff.
Even if you don't know exactly what you want, searching online gets you in front of a range of perspectives that you can compare, as opposed to going to the store, where you get the perspective of the person who happens to be working.
Now to be clear, I definitely like to support my local small businesses, but that's mostly because I also own a small business and feel kinship/connection/whatever with them. There are also a few that are better than the internet (e.g. I'd always rather get plants from my local nursery). It's pretty much never because they're better at helping me find something, though.
For instance I could spend hours reading reviews about power washers and finding the perfect model and then lamenting it not being available at my local hardware store. Or I could just buy whatever corresponding product they have and be just as happy.
You raise wise and excellent questions!
In short, no. My desires were not readily met with things available locally. My need was not for a particular product or model, but for a product from a reasonably general category of things with a couple of attributes. There are a variety of products available in the broader market that would have done it for me, only some of which I was aware of. Talking to an array of local small business owners got me a circular set of pointers to other shops to try.
In your example, imagine going to local hardware stores and finding that none had anything that would meet your needs. They'll happily sell you a selection of hoses and send you to another hardware store that has a fine selection of wrenches, but nothing helpful in meeting your needs.
And I’m in a major metro area.
When I lived in the sticks? It was more 25% solid, 75% crap.
Still, at least in the USA, I don't find it offline either. The USA or at least SF/LA has almost no variety in clothing. All there are are chain stores. The limited small stores I know of just don't carry enough. Conversely in Tokyo I can find 10x? 20x the variety? At least that's my experience.
I can tell you from experience that SF specifically, and the Bay generally, has a pretty wide variety of clothing available from a series of retailers. I've seen everything from one-person brands to chains and lots of things in between. You sometimes have to go looking for smaller retailers or more unusual styles. The retailers aren't always clustered together like the big chains are around Union Square. It can most definitely be challenging to know where to get started to look, and it took me a while to figure out which ones tend to stock things I like.
LA even has a whole garment production industry. There's a lot of small brands based there for exactly this reason!
Visiting physical stores allows for "happy accidents" that wouldn't have occurred while shopping online. Targeted ads (or "customers who bought A also bought B") can help, but they seem tuned to maximize profits, not for inspiring new ideas.
Instead, I wander the aisles, then pick up my phone and buy the ebook on Amazon.
After that process, I was no closer to the garment I sought than I had been when I woke up. What I had learned from my efforts to shop local and talk to people was that the things I sought weren't carried by anyone nearby.
I went online, and found exactly what I wanted in under ten minutes. It arrived two days later and fit perfectly.
Speaking only and solely for myself, and narrowly about that experience last weekend, I fail to see what I gained. I already knew how to search for what I want. I talked to a few people and mostly learned that none of them could help me.
This raises the question of why I bothered with attempting to buy local when I correctly guessed that it would be fruitless.
I understand that for some people this experience of traipsing from store to store searching for what is not to be found is the most enjoyable part of the whole experience. Sometimes I'm not that person.