To Steve Anthony:
Steve, I noticed you hadn't picked up on my description of the retail situation here in Toronto and my suggestions that a firm like yours, with the amount of retail real estate under your control here, could do something imaginative for the Toronto computer and photography markets. I lump these in one because with digital photography they are so integrated.
I would like to get a little more specific about what I mean by "imaginative", though you could infer it from what I said in that post.
Anecdote: Because none of our major shops here in Toronto had them off the shelf and the price is CAD 340, I went to J&R's website and ordered a Lacie 80GB mobile hard drive for backing-up my photos when photographing extensively on trips. The price at J&R was 170 US = about 200 Canadian. So I ordered that and another larger hard drive, also much cheaper at J&R, shipping was only 20 dollars. I placed the order yesterday morning, and the parcel arrived from NYC to my door in Toronto Ontario at 9:30 AM THIS MORNING. That is less than 24 hours, and I saved over 35%. The point I'm making is that the internet plus UPS has made the kind of choked-up retailing we have here OBSOLETE.
So Toronto needs a retail OVERHAUL in photo/computer stuff. (I lived in the USA for eleven years before returning here, and from that experience, I just see the contrast like night and day.) We could really use several true superstores staffed with savvy people, tech support provided, and stocked with a full choice of all kinds of equipment and supplies from mid range to high-end professional, procured and priced in a manner that makes it a very marginal decision at worst or a no-brainer at best whether to order over the net or buy locally. This city could probably absorb a couple such outlets. It would mean converting several of your largest Future Shop/Best Buy properties into these superstore concepts, where people know they can go, phone or use the net to get almost ANYTHING, and expect good tech support for first-use issues. This is a concept that is just waiting to happen here.