Bart, those are some great quotes....  
Back on topic....Recently I was at a local GC just looking around. This middle aged, overweight guy comes up to me and asks if he could help me. He was carrying a pair of sticks and tried to assure me he was a drummer. I asked him the price of a Drum Dial and he said, "Drum what?" Then he assured me that the bottom line Pacific set was one of the best around. I told him I had Mapex Orion and Deep Forest sets. He said, "Is that an off brand? Never heard of them." I laughed and asked how old he was. He said 32 years old. I replied, "I had already been playing drums for 12 years before you were born." I then said, "I'll bet you've never heard of Slingerland or Craviotto either." One of the other workers looked at me and smiled. I winked at the other guy and walked away.... The other worker was listening and got a big charge out of it. He was about 20 yrs old and knew exactly what drums I have. I walked up to the younger guy and he sold me a Drum Dial that was in stock. He even matched the Musicians Friend sale price.     Put some sticks in a guys hand and he's a drum salesman.      

I haven't had such bad experiences with the guys at the local stores. Most of them are pro or aspiring musicians who simply need a part/full-time day job to pay their bills.

The bad thing around here is the few brand options and the slow movement of inventory. PR is quite small (100x35 sq./miles approx.) and we only have too big distributors for most of the small shops. This warehouses only order new merchandise when they run out of inventory and some times it takes weeks for the new shipment to arrive - it all depends of the manufacturer's waiting list (as Bart well explained in a prior thread).

As I said in another thread, the comparsa I play with had a gig during the Christmas season in one of this big stores. Since the first weekend (Thanksgivings) thru the last one (New Years) I asked every Saturday for some common Remo heads - 14" & 13" coated PowerStroke3 and Ambassador snare sides in the same sizes. The answer was always the same: "Don't have 'em, but those are already ordered. It will take like a month."

I havent seen a store with Acuarian or Attack heads; only Remos, Evanss and Ludwigs. Sometimes the poor guys dont even know about the existence of certain new products because their so outdated inventory.

Music stores should do some kind of concessionaire agreement with the manufacturers (like supermarkets do) so if the inventory do not move as supposed they will take it back and replace it for the more in demand items. It seems like win-win deal for both involved parts. That way the manufactures can keep better track of the consumer trends, diminish production costs, inventory costs, shipping and/or returning costs. (Sorry, Im an accounting graduated and this was a hard to resist opportunity )