Relevance of the Scottish Store?

[Barclay]

Out of curiousity, how many people have a Scottish shop that sells Highland wear near by? I have one within 15 minutes, one downtown Vancouver, and a few others locally.

Talk about lucky! My local Scot shop is The Scottish Tartans Museum shop. I think most of us know how knowledgeable and nice the manager of that store is.

While I do but stuff online, I have bought a good deal of my kit from Matt, including 4 kilts (with 2 more to be ordered soon), sporrans, hose, belts, etc. While the prices may be a bit higher, though I've not found them to be prohibitively higher, I find a lot of comfort in knowing that if I have a problem or an issue I can call or show up at Matt's door and ask him to fix it and I know that he will - I'm not so sure that the same is true of online vendors, necessarily. Besides, every single time that I'm in Matt's shop I come away knowing something new about history, a tartan, our shared heritage, etc. That kind of knowledge, not to mention the friendship that's built over time, is
worth the extra dollars. I also like that Matt is extremely focused on quality and offers only high quality goods which will naturally be a bit more expensive.

I'll still buy stuff online - online vendors like Jerry at Stillwater have always provided a great product for a great price. But I'll always buy some stuff locally because I like Matt, I like Matt's products, and I always look forward to spending time in Matt's store. And he offers service that no online vendor can match. My hat is off to Matt, Ronan and Chuck.