Why is the legendary Stihl brand of chainsaws and trimmers not sold in the Home Depot or Canadian Tire stores?
The large bold print on the cover of Stihl’s summer newspaper flyer hooked me. Okay, I thought, I’ll bite. Why not?
The why not is because across Canada there are more than 900 independent dealers, dealers who sell and service all Stihl products.
I own a Stihl saw and grass trimmer, and they are true to their company promise. They walked me through the entire owners manual from mixing the gas to routine maintenance, with an earnest concern for my personal safety—which no doubt was ramped up by my flip flops and Hawaiian shirt.
Chainsaws and kayaks have more in common than you might think. C&J Lemke in Eganville, Ontario, is my local Stihl dealer. It’s a small shop quite similar to my local paddling shop. Both shops offer incredible pre- and post-sale service for their products, both owners are passionate about what they are selling and, lately, both are feeling the pinch of big box stores. When I buy a chainsaw or a kayak I don’t want some pasty-skinned sales associate to greet me at the door with a shopping cart. I want to buy from someone with sawdust on his hat or sporting a lifejacket suntan. When I wander into a kayak shop I want to chew the fat with someone who shares my excitement and passion for paddling and can shoot me straight about boats and gear. You’re not likely to cut your leg off sea kayaking, but we do require safety equipment and we do need to paddle safely or we’ll get hurt. These are things that Lorna from the garden centre or Billy in sporting goods at the big box store have no idea about.
Just for fun I called three box stores from my cell phone while in their sporting goods departments. I watched as two of the store staff tried to find someone to answer my questions, before telling me that they were sold out of the kayaks—the kayaks I was standing right beside.
The third store told me that “Blue” was the most popular model of kayak.
Big box stores will never really care about paddling. Why? Because kayaks are just another SKU number, one that will be deleted as soon as the market is flooded with poorly designed, potentially unsafe boats at a sales profit margin that cannot sustain all the things kayak shops do best—like on-water demos, events and instruction.
People buy these boats because they don’t know any better. Who is there to tell them? Few are ever exposed to real kayaks or the paddling culture so they get bored and quit. Been there, done that.
In the photos found in our annual photo feature lies the soul of kayak touring—adventure, travel, and exploration and a feeling of friendship and trust among paddlers. Not one boat in these photos was run through the cash register at a box store. Not one.
You can’t buy the soul of paddling in a box, but box stores are selling it. Box stores are selling sea kayaking’s soul right out from underneath us, and tossing in a case of antifreeze, just in case hell freezes over.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
