Highfigh, where is your store located? Anywhere near Northern Indiana?
What brands do you carry?
I'm in the MKE area, but I know many integrators are in Indiana. If you look on the sponsors banner below, you'll see CEDIA- this link is from their list of members within 200 miles of the 46060 Zip code, which you can narrow if you want.
http://www.cedia.org/find-a-cedia-professional/search
I'm not saying CEDIA members are the only ones who are good enough, but they usually have some kind of knowledge that the "I worked as an installer for a few months and now I know everything to know about this stuff" trunk-slammers.
I don't have a store because I don't want the additional overhead and I get my projects through repeat business and referrals. I looked into buying a store that was owned by someone who wanted to retire and when I looked at the detailed costs, I decided not to because I would have had to generate $146K in profit just to keep it open, without paying myself and without adding a single penny worth of inventory. He had been selling a lot of TVs, which is the worst way to try to make money because those have been relegated to being a commodity. If there's a sale on them, it's because the manufacturer has dropped the price. A dealer shouldn't have to compete with the manufacturers, but that's exactly the position we're in- manufacturer's own e-tail stores sell at prices that are at or below my cost from a distributor. I'm not going to stock large amounts of inventory and find that the market trends have changed, sticking me with those products and no ability to return them to the manufacturer. That happens all the time, too.
For AVRs, I sell Denon but I can buy Pioneer, Marantz, Yamaha, Onkyo and others. I don't want to work with everything- it's not possible to know everything intimately and that leads to problems when it's time to set up the system, programming and after-sale support. For speakers, I sell JBL Control series, Dynaudio, Jamo, Polk, Boston Acoustics and others that fit the client's budget when they don't want to spend a lot. For separates, I sell Parasound and for integrated/power amps I sell Denon/Marantz/Yamaha.
I'm often contacted when someone moves to the area and knows one of my other clients. I'm referred to parents/children, friends and acquaintances of clients, often because another integrator dropped the ball, disappeared or did something to lose a customer.
Are you anywhere near Syracuse? I used to go there for MasterCraft boat technical training.
