A year or two back I took a piece of ceiling panel to our local Lowe's
trying to find a match for it, but nobody could identify it. They said,
"One of the reps. is here now. We can ask him." He looked at it and made
a suggestion about the manufacturer (which I no longer recall, but I did
not find it when I looked at that manufacturer's Web site).

I decided to put up with the few beat-up panels I had intended to replace.

Time passed, then I took down a panel and found a sticker on the back
indicating that it was Armstrong #420. Armstrong's Web site showed that
it is still manufactured and that it should be available at HD, Lowe's
and Menard's (this last a Midwest chain). I knew from experience that
Menard's Web site does not have an on-line catalog: all it does is show
store locations and current ads and allows one to track special orders,
so I checked out the HD and Lowe's Web sites, but no matter what I
searched for I couldn't find this item, so I concluded that, no matter
what Armstrong told me, HD and Lowe's did *not* sell this product.

Menard's was happy to do a special order for me and had it in a couple
of weeks.

Yesterday at Lowe's I happened to walk down the aisle with the ceiling
panels and saw a stack of packages of Armstrong #420 panels, so I went
to the appropriate desk and told the guy what had happened. He told me
that they had always stocked this item, so I asked how come I had not
been able to find it on the Web site. He then looked at the Web site
himself and said, "There's a whole bunch of stuff that we stock that
doesn't show up on the Web site!" I suggested that he report the
deficiency back up the line, but I wonder whether he will.

Maybe I'll find that HD actually has it on the shelf too.

I wonder how many sales these companies (and perhaps many others too)
lose because people cannot discover that they actually sell particular
items.

Perce