There are a couple of problems shared by all specialist retaillers.

Firstly (in the UK for sure) rents and rates are out of all proportion to what a small retailler can hope to make (in a large shopping centre the space the till takes up, just the till not the counter, can easily cost over £100 per year). As a result specialists end up in either shops that are too small to hold the amount of stock they need or in secondary or worse positions which means there is little passing trade.

The second problem is the internet. Overheads are less and so they can charge less and in some cases they don't actually hold stock but buy it with your money after you've paid them.

The flipside is that it means that the internet is fine if you know what you want but if you don't know it's out there how do you find it? Or as an artist how do you let people know it's there?

Steve