What products are we missing?

[Canadian]

This is just my position on an LFS selling plumbing supplies:

I would NEVER pay LFS prices for plumbing fittings and supplies. Home Depot's prices are already ridiculous compared to wholesale prices from a plumbing wholesaler so I don't see it being worth while for an LFS (plus HD has a pathetic selection - don't shop there for fittings either). For example, last week I made a rack in my tank to support my SPS frags while I cooked my LR. I grabbed 10' of sch40 1/2" PVC, 8 x 1/2" sch40 PVC 90's, 8 x 1/2" sch40 PVC T's, and a 1-1/4" sch80 PVC 90 (for the output of my MCE600 so it would be gray in color) and it cost me all of $7. No LFS can afford to purchase wholesale plumbing supplies, display them and sell them at anywhere near those prices at a mark-up that justified the space they'd take up in the store in a bunch of bins sorted by size. That shopping list would have cost me around $30 or more at a LFS. If I walked into an LFS and saw them selling those fittings at that price I'd be a bit angry - not intentionally but just miffed that anyone would try to sell me something at 500% more than I should be paying for it.

Maybe some people can appreciate the convenience of getting those things at an LFS at a premium mark-up but I compare it to going to Safeway and buying a blender - they're not an appliance store and they should stick to what they do best.

An LFS is a great place to buy specialty plumbing supplies like Locline fittings but not your basic PVC fittings.

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

1. Euro-reef nano-skimmer

2. Plumbing supplies: John guest fittings, also some of the harder to find pvc plumbing parts, whatever the pieces are you would need to hook up a calcium reactor to a return pump output, the parts for making a durso, parts for gate modding a skimmer, ball valves, unions etc. I have spent hours looking at home depot and plumbing stores for various parts, if you had a big bin of the commonly needed plumbing parts that would bring people into your store and they would buy something else while they were there.

3. Plug-in GFI's

[trilinearmipmap]

Originally Posted by Canadian

This is just my position on an LFS selling plumbing supplies:

I would NEVER pay LFS prices for plumbing fittings and supplies.

Agreed if you are buying lots of plumbing ie. the initial plumbing set-up for a whole tank.

However typically I am looking for just one piece. The same piece that 200 other guys probably want for their reef tank, and that the hardware store has never heard of.

I have wasted enough gas and hours driving around trying to find parts.

As an example I found a John Guest fitting I wanted at OA. They aren't going to make any profit selling me one John Guest fitting, but by having a few containers full of these fittings they are doing their customers a huge service and thereby earning lots of goodwill.