UKC

I live in a country that manages to mix poor selection with high prices, so I buy a lot online. Aside from Amazon it seems to be from small US companies predominately:

http://www.cilogear.com :
- Nice packs
- Crap customer service (how can you operate online and not respond to emails?)

http://www.hyperlitemountaingear.com :
- Almost exclusively cuben fibre (packs, shelters, stuff sacks), not very expensive by cuben fibre standards
- Excellent customer service

http://www.mountainlaureldesigns.com :
- Had a light weight synthetic quilt!
- Great customer service

http://www.featheredfriends.com :
- Sleeping bags, competitive on price/quality, will do custom things
- Haven't dealt with customer service much - but didn't have any problems so that makes them great in my eyes

http://www.amazon.com :
- Can find most things by most major brands, downside is those outside the US have to use remailing services for a lot of brands (Petzl for example)
- Faceless nameless entity, but they refunded me without issue the one time a package never didn't arrive


Hyperlite mountain gear is probably my favorite gear company so far, though naturally time will tell if any of it fails me.

In reply to needvert:

Shipping costs biggest problem, particularly where the retailer insists on using Couriers.

In reply to m0unt41n:

True, a cost to be factored in.

To some degree you may be able to work around it by using a remailer in the same country as the company, thus you'll pay for a domestic courier to the remailer, then your choice of method from the remailer to you (possibly packing multiple orders from different companies into the one package for you).

It's a sad thing that I can buy a stack of WC Heliums, pay for an international courier to fly it over 15000km, getting it to me 3 days later, and *still* save money vs shopping locally.
And that's if I can even get the item wanted locally.