Hunting for a specific product (for example a washing line) might involve walking into 3 different shops and guessing which shop might sell what you need. When you arrive in the shop, they always arrange aisles differently so unless you have 20 minutes to hunt you might not find it either.

Whereas online it's a simple search and click "buy now". It's probably cheaper too.

Bricks and mortar shops need to do a lot of work on the shopping experience before they're competitive. The only time bricks and mortar shops win are when I need something right now or groceries.

Somehow in the process I goofed and ordered batteries with the wrong connector (xt60 v xt30). I spent this morning trying to find other batteries or an adapter in the local metro area.

- There are ~8 hobby stores within 50 miles

- None of them have any stock info online

- I called every one of them and nobody stocked the battery I need, nor an adapter.

- I can go on Amazon, GetFPV, HobbyKing, ReadyMadeRC, etc and find the exact parts I need.

In the same vein I've noticed is that many of the traditional sporting goods stores have basically become clothing stores with an online store for everything else.

Too bad I haven't figured out how to trust random extensions or I would consider using something like this.

All of this said I used to work at a local computer store back in the 90's and can imagine just how difficult it is to run a local store that competes with Internet-based stores.

As someone with direct experience in this whole class of hardware (hobbyist grade UAS stuff), you're going to want to have a soldering setup and low cost consumables (heat shrink tubing, etc, extra connectors that cost a few dollars each) to have your own capability to do things like change out DC power connectors. It's totally normal to get a battery with a connector that you might not want.

If you stay in the hobby for the long run it will cost you a lot less money to have the capability to buy discrete parts and repair things yourself (example: buying a new $40 4-in-1 ESC) than buying bind and fly stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/YIHUA-Soldering-Conversion-Temperatur...

Do they probably work most of the time? Sure. But I want the temperature display to mean 500C when it reads 500C and not 450C, and for my iron to be up to temperature just as quick as my FX-888D does without being a fire hazard or potentially let out the magic smoke because some cheap component died.

That said, if anybody is looking for a hot air station don’t buy from Hakko - they’re current models are overpriced and take forever to heat up. Atten (a Chinese brand) sells fantastic stations in the $250 price point that heat faster and have a saner interfaces. Point I’m trying to make here is don’t spend money for a well known brand if you don’t have to, but make sure whatever you buy is equipment you can trust instead and that means having reviews from trusted sources outside of Amazon customers.

This is a problem that should have been solved years ago. You should be able to measure yourself very accurately and thoroughly, keep it on some sort of file that you can share what you need, and then use tools on the online sites to learn exactly how their products will fit.

True Fit partners with several stores. You go on a store's web site (for example, macys.com), and you tell True Fit about some clothing you already have that fits well (brand, size, style). Based on that, it refers to its database to recommend the best size of the product you're considering now, and it tells you whether it thinks it will be "snug", "true to you", or "loose".

Basically it just formalizes the kind of knowledge that shoppers use about how brand A tends to run small, brand B runs large, brand C is aimed at young people so its shirts are more tailored, brand D is aimed at older people and their shirts are more "generous" in the waist, etc.

Their web site calls it the "Fashion Genome™", which is a "comprehensive, normalized fashion graph".

I worked at Levi’s Corp for 3 years and was surprised to learn that clothes have large tolerances in sizes to keep costs down.

True fit says you should select a size based on the size you wear in another brand. That won’t work because no brands have consistent sizing. Even if a brand used extremely tight size tolerances, brands actively size up and down their clothes based on the whims of merchants.

The solution is to just buy 3 sizes of each item you want and select the best fit and return the rest.

Yeah, that's the main problem with this. If you're buying higher-end stuff with tighter tolerances, just providing a set of measurements can work. There's a whole industry of tailors in India and Hong Kong who sell made-to-measure dress shirts to Westerners over the internet.

There's not a directory or anything it seems like.

I tried visiting several sites and got these results:

Works for me: Macy's, J.Crew, JCPenney

Doesn't work: Kohl's, Dockers, Lands' End, Ralph Lauren

In all cases, I picked a random (except for avoiding store brands) men's casual shirt and looked on the details page near where you select a size.

The worst offender is "Old Navy" where a 36" is actually a whopping 41 inches. It seems like men won't buy pants that are labeled over 39 inches, so as sizes go up from 30 inches, the "vanity" excess goes up exponentially.

See: https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a8386/pants-size-...

they used to be, but these days a "size 38" designation doesn't carry any more actual meaning than women's clothing sizes like "size 0"

i noticed that a certain jean i buy fit consistently only within a given dye and wash. darker pair or different wash fit differently.

I'm talking about the exact same dye btw. Like the same color, number, everything. Only difference is sizes. I've gotten smaller sizes an inch larger than the "larger" sizes for the exact same jeans. It's ridiculous.

of course they can! those jeans cost double.

it’s not a matter of incompetence or don’t care. it’s a matter of production efficiency.

as for otherwise identical jeans being different sizes, that’s also a matter of consistency of the raw material. if you want high consistency it costs more. consumers aren’t willing to bear that cost.

With shoes there is at least consistency because it seems like it became a penis enlargement thing there. On some brands my size grew from 43 to 47 in the recent years.

There was a 5 cm (2 inch) difference.

Pair that with covid not letting you try things on and it just plain sucks. Sometimes I have to try shotgunning it so I'm not making 3 trips to the store just to try a new number.

Stuff like electronics is different. Then I don't care about seeing and feeling the product beforehand. Instead I value that stuff is easy to findz search, price and availability. Though I still but stuff locally because I don't want to wait for shipping

With a free UPS pickup because it was included with the purchase? Me.

i order 2-3 sizes and send back the ones that don’t fit.

convenience of online with just the added small bump of a trip to the post office or UPS.

Won't happen until enough brick and mortar stores close that the remaining ones can get away with it, though.

My understanding is that this is because the denim is stacked and then die cut in the factory. Since denim is highly deformable, the cut outs from the top of the stack are not the same size as the cut out from the bottom of the stack. And this can lead to considerable size variance within the "same" pairs of pants.

That's why it's a good idea to try on two pairs of the exact "same" pants if the fit is close, but not quite right. YMMV.

If I buy two of the same pair, the match each other throughout their lifespan.

Unfortunately that was a while ago and I don’t have the apps installed to know which it was.

“Going shopping” is an asinine use of my time.

It sucks, because I want to support businesses other than Amazon and the like, ones that pay corporation tax and don't abuse their market position, but the other stores really have to raise their game. For better or worse, Amazon has definitely been a game-changer in retail and it's not enough to trade like it's the year 2000 any more. You have to be innovative and see software as a way to improve your offering.

This needs two efforts - people have to be Ok with an inferior shopping experience to a certain extent. Can’t have cake and eat it.

Second, Software powered world needs a different kind of monopoly control - we shouldn’t talking about “breaking up Amazon” - that just creates busy work from yet another set of programmers to work on duplicating everything Amazon has. That is a waste of resources.

Instead regulation should force Amazon to share its “retail infra” and may be allow local business to relicense/partner with some of it.

I'm not sure that's a true statement. I've completely ceased buying computing equipment from Amazon because their search is so goddamned useless. Newegg's power search actually works and lets me find what I'm looking for.

Yes, I know that those will definitely be referral links, but I'm fine with that.

I think it's a unique combination of logistics and tech which few companies manage to successfully pursue. Things like hooking up the cash register system to the website so the website doesn't say "in stock" when someone has bought the last one. It's pretty easy for someone techy to do that, but there is rarely a sufficiently techy person on staff in a typical small business.

Amazon uses that money it saves from not paying tax to improve its website and service. That's why others aren't able to compete.

I've always tried to support local, but lately I've given up on local bike stores near me house. Went in looking for simple things, spokes, tube patches, quick links for chains. Only to be stared at blankly with confusion or told they don't have said items in stock. I went home an ordered off Amazon in 2 minutes, arrived next day.

Similar experiences with all types of things.

One thing I'm not sure about is if small businesses really care about surviving or competing with "the internet" I've not really seen much evidence to support this idea.

I make an effort to route everything through my local bike shop; as the two who operate it are both skilled mechanics and actually ride, so are a body of knowledge. I dont find that with other chain based stores, who keep sales and mechanics separate. Its at the latter I get blank looks, usually from sales people, and I dislike it intensely

A small business isn't going to hold something in inventory that only one person every 5 years wants

Do you... try that regularly?

Stores are so understaffed, you're lucky to get them to pick up the phone at all, and if they do you often won't get accurate information. They'll never walk to an aisle to see if something is physically there, they'll tell you if it's "in the system", but frequently "the system" will show 3 in stock while the reality is zero on the shelf. Or 48 in stock but they're all on a pallet in the back they can't get to.

And good luck finding a sales associate in the store itself. Quite frequently there simply aren't any -- only cashiers, a security guard, and people restocking who don't have the knowledge to help you at all.

So I guess my anecdote cancels yours out?

Even when you do go to a shop you are often redirected online. That item isn't in stock on the computer. No attempt to upsell you or suggest an alternative which they might have in stock. It's no wonder high street stores are dying out.

To be fair, small specialist stores are usually much better. I even got a call back from a company the last time I was trying to buy a specific BBQ. Sadly they didn't have it in stock and a day or two later I found it online.

It may even be influenced by who is working that week or that month or who runs the place this year.

Ecommerce is imperfect in many ways, but it is far more consistent in its imperfection than local retail.

W.C. Winks Hardware Inc. in Portland, Oregon has been around since 1909 and is amazing.

You can go in there with some odd piece of hardware and someone will personally wait on you, assess your request and find the exact item or closest likeness.

The staff is patient and friendly, in my experience it is ideal local retail. But Winks doesn’t do ecommerce at all, so I often must relegate it to unusual hard to figure HW needs, because not every project needs this level of service.

I’m in agreement that retail has some pretty serious work to do to stay in the running. It might not be fair or “right” but it has to happen nonetheless.

There are no good options. I went through this recently where I had to call different stores on 3 separate days, waiting till 10am, 11am, or 12pm. And you still don't know the product you are asking about is really the one you are after. There are so many versions of products and specific use cases nowadays.

Show me where Amazon or whatever online shop can emulate that.

The best help is when someone asks you what you are trying to accomplish instead of what isle something is in. It's why you go back to that store and learn when certain employees are working. To the young workers, i totally get that your underpaid and not your career path or one at all. Perhaps for some of the older/retired gen is it more supplimental income and they enjoy being a knowledge base for people like me who sometimes know enough to be dangerous..

If I call, it’s often 5 to 10 minutes for the call to determine stock availability (often the clerk needs to go wander around to find it, or go to the far back of their lot to see how much they have). That’s assuming anyone knows what I’m talking about/I can adequately describe what I’m looking for without them getting confused, which isn’t always the case.

This adds up. For some things it’s worth it, or even essential. For other things, it is not. I’ve given up on in-person for computer/networking/IT equipment for instance. Too difficult to get a clear answer, local markups and stocking are too unpredictable, it’s so much faster doing a search and purchasing online.

This is still worse than going to amazon and doing a quick search, seeing a ton of different products that satisfy your needs, and reading reviews from people that bought them. Then when you purchase it arrives in a day. Fake reviews aside, this is vastly superior.

I'd even argue that brick-and-mortar is more prone to counterfeits because control buying by the original producers is far harder.

You're not wrong that those are options, but those options are the exact reason brick and mortar stores are struggling to stay afloat. They offer an inferior service.

Ended up buying some cheap shit off ebay that got the job done.

Other then niche products like brewers items, furniture and other home goods it’s difficult to find things I need.

It’s not like I live in the woods either.

I've tried to approach some local businesses to create an online catalog and they claim their competition would use it against them...

I think bookstores are one of the best examples. Amazon has literally everything, but if you're not exactly sure what to read next, if you walk through the highly curated aisles of a local used bookstore, or talk to the (highly knowledgeable) person behind the front desk, you'll probably walk out of the door with something awesome.

“On Nearby, they shop across multiple local stores, in one basket, with one checkout, and no fuss. After a customer checks out, we place orders with you and the other stores, and do the work of putting the order together.”

https://nearbyhq.com/

Bigger chains usually has a website you can browse instead.

The value-add is that I can see the washing line before I buy it. Pictures just doesn't make it - they lie. And then I would have to live with a crappy washing line because what are the chances I would bother replacing it with another cheap random internet washing line.

Of course there will be, because demand will still exist.

There will just be less shops, with higher prices, and focused only on the types of things people tend to need immediately.

But that's exactly what people would want -- buy most of your stuff cheaply online with a delay, but have shops specializing in need-it-now categories of things for a premium price.

It's an entirely viable model.

Shops seem reluctant to do this, possibly because they don't like being price matched or view their inventory as a trade secret.

Amazon is winning by serving the customers. Local shops will continue to have a hard time if the primary value prop is “we’re more expensive and not as good, but we’re your neighbor, so you owe us!”

I try every so often to use a local shop. Maybe I need a common appliance, lawn mower, or small engine part. If they have it on-hand, I’ll pay 5x the online price to get the job done today. I can only recall one time where that worked. “We can get it for you” only to find out that means a week and 4x the online price. “No thanks; I don’t want to be a bother...” <tap, tap, wait 2-3 days, done>

Our dishwasher door broke last Thursday; I fixed it in 30 minutes that Saturday afternoon with a $30 part I ordered on Thursday. Don’t even know how long it would take to setup a $150-200 repair appointment.

I could go downtown to buy a pair of shoes during that store's business hours, get to choose between 3-4 different styles, talk to a salesperson who knows less than the online product listing, then find out that my size isn't in stock and won't be restocked this year. Or I can order online at my convenience, see all the relevant information up front, compare prices across all the selection that exists and across multiple retailers, have the product arrive in a couple days, and pay less money. If local retailers want to exist, they need to find something to compete on.

> I’d like to keep money in my community, but ...

It sounds to me like Amazon is not better at every aspect, you've identified one aspect right there. They are competing on, "Would you rather live in a cookie cutter franchise strip mall or a mom and pop commercial area?"

I'm willing to accept some inefficiencies and some frustrations if it means I've got a nice neighborhood of mom and pop stores.

i don't want to live in what's essentially a theme park full of fake stores that only exist because it makes the neighbourhood seem nicer, or where the shopkeepers are basically paid entertainers present for their aesthetic value. if that's the sort of city we're building, let's skip the inefficiency of paying local retailers to provide the service of existing and go right to universal income.

paying people to work in shops that are worse in every way than the alternative except for being local is not productive. no real value is being created. it's a make-work scheme, and paying those workers to not work would be more efficient.

The ruthless pursuit of efficiency as it's own goal is a trap. Squeezing out every societal optimization is a very engineering centric mindset. There are many, many times where the most efficient solution to a problem isn't the "best" one, and we need to collectively get better at recognizing when that's the case.

They're never going to win on pricing or selection. The Amazons and Walmarts of the world are backed by huge logistics networks and software, with ruthless efficiency.

What they could absolutely thrash the big guys on is service and experience... yet they don't even bother. Disinterested jobsworth sales droids (usually teenagers) who know nothing about what they're selling or where they're selling it don't make for a compelling experience. The times I've had to flag someone down who was either playing on their phone or chitchatting with coworkers who then proceeded to look at me like I'm the one being an asshole in this interaction for interrupting before being absolutely no help at all has placed quite a few local businesses on my "do not shop here" list.

This.

I actively avoid local businesses because with few exceptions they always try to screw you, whether that's prices, low quality service, or something else.

Even something as simple as canceling an order that hasn't yet been paid or shipped I get senseless push back from local businesses.

When it's easier and less stress free for me to return a 1200€ drone to Amazon 3 times, than it is for me to cancel a 80€ chestnut order that hasn't been paid or shipped from a local business, the problem isn't Amazon and the solution is obvious.

They don’t have the volume of an Amazon or the logistics.

And as such they can’t normalize prices or take a loss on a higher volume item to draw in bigger items etc.

Even Amazon leverages USPS and pays below market for shipping. A SMB simply can’t, even if drop shipping.

So I’m lenient on price, but the other things generally need to be above average. Especially service.

One of the best things I like about my local small businesses is that I don’t need to worry about choices. I just show up with a problem and they will always solve it for me costing me way less than I had budgeted.

That’s why some of those have been operating for almost 100 years.

That’s how we end up with monopolistic companies. Instead of actually making an effort to look for great small business in your city, you’ve just going to spend all your money on Amazon and when you get called on it your answer is they “always try to screw me”. I don’t know if you believe it or you just want the moral high ground for your bad consumer behaviours.

In fact, letting bad business practices slide when it comes to small businesses is a great way of ensuring those businesses will never improve their practices and will continuously fall behind.

Show me the incentives and I will show you the results.

This tool is kind of like that effect, or an easing into it from someone who may have just bought the first-worst thing on Amazon.

That's really an issue: if you aren't the hard-boiled, super unemphatic negotiator type you'll likely buy the very first thing a salesperson has invested face-minutes in, if it just gets the easy 80% of requirements/desires right. "Thanks for your time, but I'll go see if there's another offer that is maybe 3% better or 2% cheaper" isn't something that feels good to all people. The asynchronous experience of online shopping (and before that: mailorder) is a huge enabler to people who aren't the haggler type. And because the haggling mindset is a learned skill, I'm afraid that it will only get worse the less people grow up shopping face to face. To future generations, every shopping experience that isn't online or at least highly formulaic self-service like in a supermarket will feel like the haggle scene from Life Of Brian (and just as alien as the one after that).

But obviously a total amazonisation of all buying would be terrible nonetheless. What I'd love to see: a site like those price comparison directories but not so much focused on cheapest but on local availability. Current stock, proximity, opening hours and price, they are all important.

Actually I should have gotten my ass up and looked for funding years ago, or at least part-timing it on the side (I'm not the haggle type, right?). It would all hinge of course on integration interfaces with whatever systems local dealers already use for managing stock, because those claims world need to be reliable or else it would all be futile.

Not necessarily because they're meek. For me, going to a brick and mortar store, interacting briefly with a human, and taking the first thing that meets my basic needs is a life hack.

The paradox of choice is real. Seeing the bounty of options available on sites like Amazon does allow me to try to carefully optimize what I get for every desire I could have, but, ironically, the process of doing so makes me less happy with whatever I end up with. Because seeing so many options means I've now got all sorts of opportunities to second-guess my choice. And because reading reviews to try and narrow down my choices invariably injects the reviewer's tastes into my thinking, and potentially guides me away from my own. And because pretty soon just seeing how many bells and whistles are available gets me wanting things I don't need and didn't even know I could have when I first decided I wanted whatever I'm shopping for, and therefore creates all sorts of trade-offs to have to weigh.

It's not worth it. "3% better" is a will-o-the-wisp beckoning me off into a quagmire, and "2% cheaper" is invariably a 2% discount on something that turned out to be 30% more expensive than what I originally planned on buying.

Anyways, I find your point about 30% often apply more to local shops. Price is often a bit higher, but biggest problem is not having a comparable model at the price point I wanted. And with a seller in front of you doing their thing, it's easy to walk out with more than intended.

Now recommendations by a store expert are a different thing, but local businesses are again limited by recommending only what they have in stock, not what's actually best for you. I've rarely found anyone who would actually tell me to go somewhere else to get what I need.

Geizhals already does all that and I love it for that, e.g.:

https://geizhals.eu/dell-p2719h-210-apxf-a1849338.html?t=a&h...

It's mainly useful AT/DE though...

In general the more knowledgeable the dealership/salespeople, the more likely negotiation is possible, especially if you present as a knowledgeable customer so that neither of you are wasting each others' time.

As far as I understood, it wasn’t in the interest of the big retailers to spend time haggling with individuals.

For most people, this has already happened. It's just not as visible as haggle/no haggle (even to the people doing/not doing themselves)

If I walk into a car dealership it's because I need specific information not available online, even if it's just to see the car in person.

What I don't need is a whole sales pitch. That's wasting my time and the salesman's.

I'll go to 3 stores, and just ask for the price and say "Thank you! I'll come back when I'm decided."

That way, there is minimal haggling, and I know I'm not getting completely ripped off. Still, it's more work than just checking online. But depending on the price of the item, it may be worth it.

This seems like an extremely positive aspect of going to a local store, not a downside.

Unless it's a really big ticket item, going to another store to get it 2% cheaper would almost certainly be a net loss (due to the time involved) vs. just buying the first thing you see at a slightly inflated price.

Why add the "gasp" bit? A lot of people don't want to have to talk to people unnecessarily and they certainly don't need to justify themselves. And let's be real: When you talk to someone at a local store you're usually talking to some completely unmotivated teenager who knows positively nothing about the domain and makes everything take much, much longer.

Buying local versus online is playing out identically to the buy downtown rather than at the mall transition: Instead of offering concrete benefits, there is an attempt to control behavior by shaming. It is completely ineffective. "Why efficiently find exactly what you're looking for at a competitive price when you can instead waste your time talking to a lot of different people, doing what you very much don't want to do, to eventually buy something not quite right for more?"

As one meme put it: I am a part time seasonal employee half way through my 2-week notice. Do you think I care?

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.

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.

In Tokyo I have at least 3 daily grocery stores within a 10 minute walk, plus dozens of other small shops selling all kinds of things I might need. For specialty ingredients I've made an effort to hunt for specialty shops importing Indian, Thai, and Chinese ingredients. My favorite place to go is probably Kappabashi, a street lined with dozens of restaurant supply stores.

I've learned which places I should go for which items, and I love the variety it adds to my routine.

Tokyo is not Niigata, or Sendai, or Saitama.

The tokyo bubble is not the same as the rest of japan

Actually this is a deal breaker. I'm a very personable person and people usually find me the life of the party. But when I'm looking for a specific thing, I'm optimizing for search latency. Spending hours performing the search is not enjoyable to me. When I'm just browsing, I can enjoy that, but most of my purchases are task-oriented.

You can bemoan how "people these days" do things if you want, but it won't get you any closer to understanding why they behave that way.

In person you just walk or drive over to the store, select the item, pay, and go home with the correct product.

Online I have to turn on my computer or open an app. Type in a bunch of stuff, Search around, click cookie consent buttons, avoid newsletters, log in, enter your address, put in your credit card, etc. you finally place the order, now you have to wait 2 days to get your damn product?! It ships, now you need to sync up with your mailman otherwise they can’t drop it off (I live in a city.) I miss the delivery, now I need to go to the post office and pick it up myself. So I go there, it’s after 5 so they’re closed. I take off work early the next day and wait in line. Talk to some pissed off USPS package and carry my package home. Open it up. It’s the wrong product or a Chinese knockoff. You get the picture

I’m of millennial age. The internet isn’t hard for me to use. It just adds extra complexity for me.

I suppose if you need a very specific thing online is better. But that’s rare for me.

I think you mean get the kids ready and put them in the car, drive for 20 minutes to Target, spend another 5 trying to park, schlep from the back of the parking lot to the store in 90 degree heat, wander endlessly around the store because they moved one of your usual purchases into and end-cap. Inevitably there’s some part of my bi-weekly purchase that is sold out and I must now figure out a substitute or make my next shopping trip sooner and off-schedule. Finally I stand around for 10 minutes in line behind someone who does not seem to understand credit cards despite them having existed for 60 years. Finally I load everything into the car, wrestle the children in and drive 20 minutes home. My children are now hungry.

No, I do not consider this more convenient :)

Second, I think that this shopping experience you describe is a uniquely suburban experience. Going to Target is indeed awful. But, where I live in the city, it's a reasonably pleasant 10 minute walk to the neighborhood hardware store, which has had the same layout for probably 30 years, and you can be in and out in a few minutes. Grocery store is an even more pleasant 5 minute bike ride, and it's also a human-friendly size and easy to get through fairly quickly. Shopping for clothing is still awful, but shopping for clothing is inherently awful but thankfully infrequent.

At my partner's folks' out in a small town, I guess some people do drive an hour round trip to the nearest big box store, but I've always liked that it's a short hop into town, and all the stores are reasonably sized and within a block of each other. With the town's park just a couple blocks away, so we can take turns hanging out with the kids in the playground while the other goes into the store. I guess we don't have as many options, but I'm genuinely happy to choose convenience and happiness over a selection of 73 different kinds of breakfast cereal.

Similar when we're visiting my mom, also in a small town, except that the playground is unfortunately on the complete other side of town from the commercial district.

Then, at my dad's house in a suburban community, it's nothing but big box stores and misery.

It's funny how the human ecosystem works. Bad design decisions over many years lead to opportunity for polluting megacorp.

On the plus side you can shop online when your kids are sleeping.

This is the reason why so many stick with Amazon. You gave them your data already and the only thing remaining are the dark patterns which wants to sell you prime but you probably have that already too so you don't have to wait 2 days.

Also: their computer/phone/tablet is on already.

I honestly buy a lot online because it is convenient. I let it send to my workplace and I don't have to go to the city wasting the few hours that I have left of my day.

There are things though I need to go out to shop. Cloths and food and I can't remember a single trip I enjoyed. I need to look in several shops before I find proper and fitting cloths (I'm tall). If sices would be a true standard I could rely on, this would be the next thing I'd do online. Groceries means shopping in supermarkets which are always too full and I need a parking spot since I got to take a car there because I'm doing it once a week only. I tried doing it through Amazon and it failed spectacularly. It never arrived but they only they told me at 9PM...it was Saturday and there are not many shops open at that time here in Germany.

Here is the source code by the way. https://github.com/Bullmeza/BuyNearby

By the way I love the idea behind this extension! It's just that I would prefer not sending all my ecommerce searches to Google.

[1] note that Chrome extensions are not just used by Chrome browser, they are also used by other browsers not made by Google. So it's not impossible that some of the potential users of this extension may want to avoid using Google products where possible.

Edit - I just emailed the dev and offered to help, hopefully we will get in touch.

One caveat to the local alternatives is the friction involved if it's an e-commerce store where users have to register their details. Most will happily register, but some will find the friction unbearable.

That’s not the world I’ve been living in in the US. People would rather go to national stores like Target, Home Depot, etc. Also, order online and pickup in store is even better than Amazon for me.

I buy a lot more from tiny businesses if they operate on top of Amazon's platform.

It's fine if your prefer what you prefer, I'm just saying that the experience of buying from random, smaller online shops got a lot better lately and is coming closer to Amazon.

No, the law does not mandate a specific returns policy. It just sets minimum standards. I can return almost anything to Amazon for free if I don't like it. I don't do that very often, but knowing that I can is one of the biggest incentives for me to buy from Amazon.

>Shipping fees are clearly stated at checkout and honestly so damn cheap that I don't care.

I have often gone through a lengthy ordering process before finding out at the very last step that my £20 order would incur a £5 delivery fee. And it's fine. It often doesn't make economic sense to make free deliveries to the doorstep. But that's yet another reason in favour of small stores sharing a logistics platform such as Amazon.

>Delivery windows? It's the same delivery companies that Amazon uses or used to use. In Germany mostly DHL, who I never had a problem with.

Here in London Amazon makes most deliveries directly. I can track deliveries in real-time and I know what they do if I'm not home. I had lots of issues with other logistics companies. They often lie about having made a delivery attempt and drop off parcels at some distant shop or depot.

> No, the law does not mandate a specific returns policy. It just sets minimum standards.

If you're satisfied by that legal-minimum standard it comes to the same.

Whether the net outcome for humanity as a whole is better or worse with Amazon is highly debatable. By writing

> like helping a little boy buy his team jersey or a little girl get dance lessons for example

you appeal to feelings and divert the discussion in the direction of "But evil billionaires rob children to buy a new yacht!" which is simply not true.

Businesses used to pay taxes so the public could do all that.

Nowadays Amazon competes with local stores, while not paying taxes, which that local stores can't avoid.

So these billionaires, evil or not, are concentrating wealth on themselves and shape the world to their liking. And their linking isn't the best for society as a whole.

That doesn't mean that SpaceX isn't cool, or that I didn'tove when Amazon shipped science fiction books to my home, which was far away from any bookstore. But it is very clear that some companies have large negative externalities and their tax invasion and policy influence is really, really, really bad for our society.

See, how can you judge whether it’s going to end up bad if we’re in the middle of it?

Do you think extreme concentration of power and wealth is good? Do you want to be free? Do you want to elect your leaders?

Again, this is not about SpaceX and Amazon and other companies. These companies do cool and good stuff! The topic is the concentration of power and wealth and the negative externalities of that.

> Do you think extreme concentration of power and wealth is good?

I mean, it might move the humanity into the positive direction.

> Do you want to be free?

That's such an abstract concept, I don't even know what it means.

> Do you want to elect your leaders?

Whenever I go, people complain about the government, east and west alike. Maybe I don't want to.

I think your reasoning is ideologically charged, without any argumentation. I'm just pointing out that it's hard to judge how the things will turn out now.

Have a nice day.

They do it not for humanity but to earn more money. Its always money, power, and fame at the end.

I think that depends on how you see the world. I believe there’re people who aren’t driven only by desire to have more money.

To answer your question, he can certainly buy a yacht or multiple homes at any moment. However, if he wants to cash out 100 billion dollars in stock this year, he's not going to get full value, and he'd have to slowly pull it out over a matter of years or decades to do so.

Seems more likely to be passed on to shareholders of the large-scale business. And compared to being put into circulation (with a much higher multiplier) in the local small-scale economy, funneling some more moolah into the already overflowing coffers of the Waltons or Bezoses does pretty much diddly-squat for the economy as a whole.

I can't even remember the last time being a customer of "local businesses" other than restaurants, and don't see a reason to do so, morally or financially.

Maybe they'd make a bit more directly rather than after eBay's cut I guess so there's that argument.

We ended up spending I think around two years building out the functionality. Most of that time was spent arranging agreements with brick and mortar businesses to share their inventory data with us, so that we could make it function on a per-product basis. You could shop normally on Amazon, and it would drop down a banner when your product was available from a local business at or below the Amazon price. We also had it working as extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. This article had a good screenshot showing how it actually worked [1].

That was definitely one of the favorite startups I've helped build to date. It was also cool to see it featured on The Today Show [2]. I'm super bummed it didn't end up working out. Good luck to you!

[0] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pricelocal

[1] https://www.today.com/video/new-app-promises-to-find-amazon-...

[2] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/find-local-stores-that-will-matc...

EDIT: By the way, nice name! I can't believe we didn't think of that.

What do you think of this idea

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090010

to crowd-source local inventory logging via virtual stores?

Without the sales those two sites drive to my small businesses, I don't know how I'd survive.

I've basically switched to buying almost everything online, after getting a hard time from my ex (mother of my daughter) for risking picking up COVID with my regular trips to the grocery store, which is a short walk from my home. (Bizarrely enough, I ended up catching it later when I bought a used car, because I needed to take public transportation to bring my old car home. And yes, my daughter and my ex ended up catching it as well, and they weren't happy).

Until the pandemic is over, I don't see how this sort of thing is a positive. I'm not convinced it is even then, it seems a bit like reminding people of print publications every time they browse the web. The world is changing, tilting at windmills isn't going to change it back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27091054