Loftywinds said..
But online shopping vs local shopping is not the real threat according to some I've spoken to that work in any sports related industry. It's the local guy down the road that buys in bulk online and sells them locally for less, and still make a profit. You might ask yourself, well why don't all shops do that to each other? Contractual sale agreements with vendors, suppliers and manufacturers. That's why the bigger sports stores like Almart, Anaconda, etc can survive due to sheer size and numbers.
Fair shake of the sauce bottle, I think the distributor behaviour is to blame here, not the consumer nor the retailer. And it has nothing to do with kite surfing specifically.
An identical argument could be levelled at region enforcement for software, as in the case of an Australian copy of Photoshop, Videogame sales, as in people circumventing region protection on steam, movies (hell, see all the people paying for Netflix via geododging and killing local tv), automotive spares and wreckers, basically any industry with a retail component -- the list basically goes on forever.
I, personally, am guilty of grey importing motorbike tyres at literally half the local wholesale price. It's not as if the wholesaler was going to give me a new one when I wear it out after two days of track riding anyway.
Counter intuitively, changing wholesaler behaviour actually takes a large enough market force such as Dan Murphys, JB Hifi, etc. to grey import themselves from overseas sources and circumvent the distributor where they can get a better deal, and use their market position to avoid being penalised. It's almost like you want all the kite shops in Australia to unionise so they have more negotiating power and all share the same wholesale costs, product access and honour eachothers warranties, which is unbelievable value for a tourist touring Australia for kiting (there is actually precedent for this, see Skaters Network, or
http://www.cockburnicearena.com.au/pages/shop/shop.html).
Personally, I think kite demos are the greatest value a local store can provide. And if I hadn't bought my quiver used off a local based on nothing more than appearance, that would have been the prime reason driving me to purchase local.
