Not really about Garmin, at this point
Thanks for the rebuttal, Rob. No personal slight taken or intended.
I know most of the old timers at WM over the years, and have a friend that is an employee at WM, and the change from price match to... not... is recent. I do know this first hand. Now this might just be for 'net pricing only, but that would be illogical. After all they always match the 'net price with all shipping and handling included-- total to my door. That's only fair...
:nerd:
Over the last 5 years all of the older employees in PDX have been "encouraged" to leave, and the last one of those experienced ones just did so.
Staffing levels are visibly low on a day-to-day basis. I have watched the sailing bits portion of the shelf space decline steadily.
Remaining staff are all much newer hires and quite nice to talk to, but many have never owned a boat. What seems to be happening is that the WM corporation is re-making the store in the image of the Boaters World store near by -- where you can hear an echo down the aisles and the sales droids are polite but totally clueless, when you do find one skulking around.
(BTW, flame-wise, why would you compare wholesale and manufacturers like the list named to a bricks-and-morter retailer like West Marine? That seems illogical.)
Don't know about the stock at Defender and Hamilton, but Jamestown is famous for their depth of stock and that is their strength over any physical store. Fisheries has knowledgeable staff every time I call, and are slowly filling the huge knowledge and stock-on-hand gap left by the closure of Doc Freemans in Seattle.
For local sailing gear, we had a much larger (!) stock to choose from in the Portland Cal Marine Discount store, before WM bought them out.
Having said all that, I also must admit that the steady slide in sailboat sales over the last couple decades has not helped matters one bit. What boating growth that there is is all in fishing and ski boats, and that's the remaining market that WM will be fighting over, against other large entrenched retailers, in the next decade. Watch for WM to get into camping supplies and snow skis, next.
I see us local remaining sailboat owners back to internet purchasing (replacing the earlier mail order sourcing we learned to rely on in the mid-70's).
This opinion worth .01, maybe less, with mid-week discount.
Loren
ps: I would love to shop in Rob's store...
pps: I would doubt that a merchant would take back a Bluechart clip once "registered" to a chartplotter. ??