#ASHTECH GNSS SOLUTIONS SOFTWARE FREE#
Next online web suppliers started putting price pressure on your local suppliers offering significant discounts with free shipping and delivery within a week. Home Depot starting stocking lath, stakes and paint further eroding the specialty supply shop’s market. Initially local suppliers picked up ink cartridge sales, but then lost that segment to online discounting. The entire pre-printed title block market disappeared. High volume reproduction houses dropped large format copying down to 4 cents a square. Every store in the USA had the same price on the same poles.Ī few decades ago, your local supplier lost the blue-line reproduction business.
There was no internet with online supplies. In the old days if you needed a pole for your theodolite, most of the country could drive across town and pick one up locally from a repro-graphics engineering-surveying supply store. This is the place where I need to disclose that I own a survey equipment store: we primarily sell big ticket, high-tech devices that are support and service bound (think GNSS receivers and robotic total stations.) We do offer non-disposable supplies, however we sell them as accessories to equipment sales and they are a very, very, very small part of our overall business. However your local small store that makes a significant portion of their profits selling supplies is toast. But don’t worry, their demise won’t make it more difficult for you to obtain the supplies that you need, in fact it will be much easier, faster and less expensive than before. Stop in for a visit now, because they are going to disappear soon. Every regional center has a local survey supply store.