In my area, pretty much everyone goes to our local shop. VERY little comes from outside sources and it's so obvious. Whatever they need to move, they kind of push people into. For instance EVERYONE has type r's right now. Before that it was JL products. They really only push rockford, jl, and alpine.
A guy I know is a smd *** and thought if he bought a couple btl 18's he'd be near steve mead in spl. (So stupid he bought the SPL version and used it for daily. They made a strange noise, I'm wondering if it was coil rub.) He took those subs to them so they could build a box and they told him they had never heard of the junk and it was swap meet trash. They built him a wall for them that did do 148.1 on my term-lab but it looked and sounded horrible. They did it with no T/S.
It was a classic case of the blind leading the blind. Of course I didn't try to help anyone because the kid is a tard and the shop is worthless. If you do a search for car audio and my hometown listed you'll see which one it is.
I don't have much of a choice, no one around here carries what I want and on the rare occassion they do they have to special order it. I can order stuff just like they can .. and get it cheaper.