I don't know about selling items
to stores, as I haven't been able to try this yet, but I do know that there are good stores out there who do pay attention to their customers. I went to Best Buy in EA-Land yesterday in a search for a basic tip jar. It just happened to be the first store I landed in, so no particular reason for having chosen this store. Anyways, when I landed, I was promptly greeted, and asked if there was anything I needed. I returned the greeting and told him that I was just looking around. I looked around the place for about 5-10 minutes, saw lots of neat stuff, but no tip jars. So I asked if he had any avaiable. He was very nice, very courteous, and I had a small assortment of tip jars at my feet within seconds!
Okay, anyways, so much for keeping this post short...
But the point is, finding a store manned by a real live human is not hard, and most of these stores will bend over backward to get you what you need if you ask nicely.