I think Calumet has had enough financial problems that they are having a tough time getting supply from manufacturers. That would explain why you generally have to special order everything from them...they can't get any supply until it's a guaranteed sale.
I think management, somewhere along the line, massively screwed something up, and it's ultimately going to cost the company everything. Kind of sad. So many brick and mortar camera stores have gone up in smoke recently. We used to have both Mikes Camera and Wolf Camera here in Colorado. Wolf Camera decided to pick a fight with Canon...obviously, they lost, and they are completely gone now, bankrupt.
Mikes Camera moved into most of the old Wolf Camera stores, but they really don't look all that much healthier these days...they too are trying to push photo classes and training at $100+ a pop, print services, any kind of repeatable service they can think of, because they don't seem to be able to move physical product. (And it's no surprise, they mark up the prices on most things astronomically high, which isn't competitive with online, and because they get so few sales, they feel they can't reduce prices, etc. etc. down the rat hole...)
Maybe we'll see camera manufacturers start to act like smartphone manufacturers. Instead of these general purpose stores that sell all brands, we'll see the Canon Store, and the Nikon Store, and the Sony Store.
