Comment by oliwarner

McMaster is the golden example of only trying to sell people what they need.

No upselling, no "popularity" filtering, no cheap imports that under-perform. You don't reviews to select between items because if you know what you need, you just buy that.

Of course this requires some expertise. You need to know what you need. And that's where the value of a physical trade shop comes in, where you can go, talk, even show the problem to somebody who might have seen your problem before.