No offense to your friend, but how was it in Stihl's best interest to work with someone who has less traffic and fewer sales to the exclusion of a more profitable shop?
I get that a smaller, more specialized business might offer better service, have more knowledge to share and so forth, but from Stihl's perspective they were working with someone who lacked the location, customer base and resources to serve the market even after 25 years of holding exclusive dealership privileges.
Long ago and far away, Stihl and Husky would
only sell through businesses that maintained a shop and QUALIFIED service persons.
Then about twenty something years ago they started selling through hardware stores, etc. I think they required that the store have a 2x2 foot workbench and someone who could mount a bar and chain, plus a few parts bins.
Gradually the professional saw shop owners/mechanics either gave up or retired, after working on saws that somebody else had sold. That plus all the environazi devastation of the logging industry and the shift to mechanized harvesting which has mostly made the chainsaw an occasional tool.
These days anybody who runs saws for a living needs to be their own mechanic because even the average saw hand knows way more about chainsaws than the so called "service technicians" at Ace, etc.
Which reminds me that one of these days I need to make a big order of spare parts from Bailey's, since my stash has just about been used up. Just trying to get a new rim drive sprocket from a Stihl store was a semi-major deal since I had always used Oregon parts (been a long time since I bought anything but a powerhead). The guy apparently didn't know what he was even looking at, but Ladypine finally got him to go back through the bins and find the same thing with a Stihl brand name on it.
