Paul G said:
I've seen online sales almost completely wipe out certain types of brick and mortar stores, camera stores comes to mind. When buying a $1k+ product, the tax evasion saves more than the shipping and plenty of folks will rather pocket the cash and cheat the taxes. Free shipping sweetened the pot even more. People add insult to injury by showrooming at the local store and then buying online.
Conversely it is often great to see something in person at the brick and mortar before buying. But a Nikon lens is the same lens in Sacramento or New York and many folks went for the 7%+ tax cheat and left the local store to wither.
So as you can get from my post above, I'm all for this. But in the end, many brick and mortars failed on their own and or were dead in the water even if Sales tax systems were firmly in place from day 1 of internet commerce. Camera stores were very much one of the types of stores that were doomed as they had set themselves up to be easy pickings with few people who would shed a tear.
Most places would be lucky if they even had one camera store, thus most places someone had a basic monopoly pre-internet. The prices they charged were thru the roof and until the internet people just had no idea how overcharged they were. I want to support local business and have no issue paying a bit more to keep a local shop going and understand they have overhead, but you can only go so far. I would visit some camera stores, but just that act was hard. You want to sell me stuff, but you are open 9-5 M-F, so when am I suppose to go to your store? Take time off work to go shopping? A few might have a small Saturday window of time, again how is this going to work. Not a lot of people are eager to get up early on a Saturday morning to hit a place up before they close at noon. These stores had the ability to run these hours in pre-internet days, pre big chain store days. Many just refuse to adjust, and thus no one was coming thru the door. This aspect isn't unique to Camera stores, lots of mom and pop retail outfits have the same issue, there are tool stores near me with this issue, for me to buy something from them I have to race the clock on a Saturday morning, just to get there and find they don't have what I want in store, and once you don't carry it in store, there really is no point for me to buy from you.
Then even when you get in the camera store, they often have limited subset of stuff, especially if say you run a camera that isn't F or EOS mount. Most lens in stores will be kit lenses, which again not many people have a need for. So there isn't even much for me to look at. And then if there was something more of interest it becomes really hard to want to do business if the store is trying to sell an 800 dollar lens for 1400. End of the day something like camera gear doesn't involve a lot of hands on. Once you are in a system, know the companies stuff, you don't tend to need to hold it to know what you are buying.
Far too many camera shops were living like museums. Tiny selections of stuff, lots of old gear that's been sitting on the shelf forever, tons and tons of generic junk. In the end, it's not hard to see why people would just buy from BH Photo. Everything you can want, great service and I'm totally fine with buying from a computer that strictly obeys the Shabbat, thus I have to wait till Sunday to place an order, it's still way more convenient than trying to run across town during lunch.
Yes, "show rooming" can be an issue. But a lot of that just comes down to adjusting business models. This is where you see companies going to direct sales. Apple, Microsoft, New Balance, etc. Just open up stores, sell for the same price as online and if someone comes in to just look at stuff, if they buy your product, they bought it someplace. This was something nice with Sony Style stores (no longer exist far as I know), it fixed the show rooming issue since the company provided the show rooms for people to go hands on with something, then order it anyplace else. Places like Best Buy could adjust and make deals with manufactures to be showrooms, instead of complaining that people look but don't buy, make deals with manufactures to charge the manufactures to display their goods and provide info to folks. In the end it won't change the matter that if you are a retailer who sells stuff that you do not make, you very well may not have a business model in time. Grocery stores, and lumber yards are fine. No one is going to open up stores just to sell eggs (I say this but you never know), or just 2x4s. But if you sell things like computers, electronics, cameras, sneakers, etc. You need to be looking forward to a time when those brands just have their own stores/show rooms and sell stuff direct.
Consumers prefer to cut out the middle people. Apple stores boomed because people could walk in and play with stuff, maybe buy it there, or maybe go home and order a custom configuration. Sometimes the reason business go out of business is because their business model is dead. Stores like sears are facing this reality head on. They sell stuff people buy. But no one likes it when they are just walking thru a store and staff pounces on them. You glance at a refrigerator and someone comes up and starts talking to you. People don't want staff to ever approach them, they want to look and if they have a question there be someone to talk too, but to never be approached without asking to be approached. End of the day, a lot of the stuff in a sears I could buy without ever having a need to see it in person. A set of socket wrenches isn't like a pair of pants, I don't need to try the sockets on. Some of this is generational, but in the end, if I go into a store and staff starts approaching me, asking me questions, offering help, etc, I leave, plain and simple.
Business models change. People don't buy from the sears catalog anymore. People don't buy from door to door salesman. If you make your living selling someone else's stuff, you have to be mindful that you probably will find yourself out of business. No different than service industry, if you sell a service, and people decide they don't need the service it's over. People decide they can cook food at home by converting raw goods into finish product, you can't complain very much about why your salad or cupcake business went under.
Far too many businesses used the sales tax as a scapegoat for their problems which were still there even without the sales tax situation.
