Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

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On the other end of the spectrum you have items where expert help is necessary.

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.

Unfortunately, things can get quite messy when expert advice gets conflated with inventory management. And most shops struggling to survive against online doesn't make that better at at all. We really need to find some middle ground where foot-on-the-ground shop continue to exist, but not as an antithesis to online but as an extension. For bikes (of the pedal-pushing variety), there's now a market for what is effectively billed by the hour costumer-consulting regarding size fitting. I could easily imagine that getting transformed into foot-on-the-ground presence of online distributors, with neither income stream able to pay three full bill alone but working out in combination.

You're right, the inventory management part gets tricky. On the other hand they claim to only have inventory they trust and promote. So it becomes a question of "Do I trust this influencer's opinion?"

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)

> On the other hand they claim to only have inventory they trust and promote.

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.

> 1 trip to a specialist camera store wouldve solved his problem.

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.

I prefer to buy at brick and mortar but I question this reason for it. The guy in the plumbing section of the hardware store probably knows where things are on the shelf there, but probably has not done plumbing themselves and probably can't answer my DIY question about what product to use. For that, I end up needing YouTube.

Last Saturday I decided to fix the leaky kitchen faucet installed in the 80's. YouTube had me replacing cartridges @ $22 for pair. They had a former plumber working who down sold me the real fix, a pair of rubber seals w/springs $3.25 This guy told me the cartridges rarely are the problem . . he was right! he also instructed me on how to make the repair.

That entirely depends on the store.

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.

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