wrote in message
ups.com...

Richard J Kinch wrote:
I was at the West Marine store looking around and musing over different
projects in prospect, and wound up wanting to actually buy only a baggie
with $4 worth of loose stainless hardware out of the bulk bins. This was
about closing time on a weekend, and the boss waved me out of the store,
saying "that's all you have today, then we'll get you next time".

Now I don't mind getting something for free, but I sure felt like, man,
you
must get scalped at the chandler's every day if they can do that for guys
that look like they're they're three times a week. This was a store in
the
next town that I hadn't actually visited before.

Yes, of course we all get scalped at the chandler's. It's a nautical
tradition that goes back to the days when Columbus had to pawn the
crown jewels of the Spanish court just to outfit
some leaky old wooden tubs in dubious condition (one sank during the
voyage) prior to a few weeks of slow-poke charter sailing.

I think the manager was probably pretty shrewd. He could have made
maybe $1-2 profit off that baggie of stainless fittings, or risked the
minimal loss of inventory and potential profit against building up a
relationship of trust with a customer. But do try to be picking out a
new outboard motor, (or at least an anchor windlass), when he decides
to demonstrate how much he trusts his customers-(and so implicity the
reverse must be true)- in the future.

We will all get screwed at the marine supply store- so it's nice if
just once in a while we can get kissed a bit in the process. :-)

I just left a West Marine store as the proud owner of a Shimano Tiagra Ti30A
reel for $258. Retail on it is $509.99. My brother bought the 50WA for
$289 (retail $629). These are reels that get full retail price, even on the
online discount fishing sites. They simply do not discount them. One of
the benefits of going to a West Marine-type boating stores for your fishing
tackle is that most people buying high-end fishing tackle don't shop at West
Marine for that tackle...and every once in awhile you can catch them
clearing out an item for less than they paid for it.

The reason that I believe they were blowing it out of their store on this
coast is that most guys don't use that heavy of tackle over here (unless
they're running down to the Keys for trips). If the same reel was sitting
on a West Marine shelf in Islamorada or Ft. Lauderdale, it wouldn't have
been discounted. The factory must ship a standard inventory to each store
in Florida without customizing it for each reason. In other words, the guys
working in marketing don't actually fish.