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Cheapest Place To Buy Gear?

2K views 12 replies 9 participants last post by  anab0lix 
#1 ·
Hey guys,
Heading to BC sometime this december for a few months with a mate and will probably spending a shed load of coin on new gear for this season.
Coming from Australia we'll be travelling for week or 2 before arriving in Vancouver, is it worth stopping in to say Seattle or anywhere else to buy all our gear or should we just wait and hit up all the shops on 4th Ave in Vancouver?
 
#3 · (Edited)
evo, snowcon and rei are in Seattle,

Hidden Wave in Mount Vernon

Bellingham has some good shops, Sportsman's chalet, backcountry essentials, wws boardshop, rei

If you don't mind used Seattle, Bellingham and Vancouver craigslist can have some good stuff but it usually goes fast

and check timmytard's craiglist here on the forum

Canada money is on par but the taxes get you verses US

If you really know what you want from last year's stock...call up local us shops in Bham or Seattle, see what they have on sale now, buy it now, have them hold it and pick it up when you come through or have it shipped to a friend in US...Or if you find something in Bham, Mt Vernon or up in Glacier, buy it and I'll pick it up and hold it for when you come through.
 
#8 ·
look on line, if you dont care about having last years gear, there's plenty of it online at REI, The HOUSE, EVO, and smaller local shops. I bought my buddy a 2 year old new Malolo for 45% off, I just bought myself a new Barracuda for 40% off and I seen on some website 40-50% off of goretex gear, boots, googles (Smithoptics.com has some nice googles at $73 reg $120.

Look around
 
#11 · (Edited)
Hey man, I live in Vancouver as well. I think there's quite a few ways to get gear.

The cheapest way to get new gear in Vancouver is to shop online on US websites and have them ship to Point Roberts. Point Roberts is a half island that belongs to the US but is only connected to Canada. There are many warehouses in Point Roberts that allow you to register an account (e.g. TSB Shipping, P2P Parcel, the Letter Carrier) so that if you buy things from American websites you can ship there and then go pick up for $3.50 per package.

The reason why this is interesting is because 1. goods on US websites are cheaper 2. shipping over $50 on US websites are usually free 3. Point Roberts has no border lineups during weekdays, and is about 20 minutes away from Richmond, or 40 minutes away from Downtown Vancouver. 4. BC taxes are about 12% but US websites usually charge little to no taxes and 5. the border at Point Roberts usually will not collect any tariffs/duties/taxes from you even if you report around $300-$350 value in goods.

Websites to check include dogfunk.com (has a sale right now); evo.com, rei.com, tactics.com, the-house.com, trusnow.com. Also check out whiskeymilitia.com which belongs to dogfunk but they put up one item at a discount every 15 minutes. You won't see ski/snowboard gear all the time but I've bought some pretty cheap items on there. E.g. Park Pickle for around $250, 20k waterproof denim pants for $70, or Electric EG 2 for $60.

Another option is to routinely check Craigslist. While most deals are crap on the site, sometimes a good deal pops up. For example I helped a buddy get a set of almost new (not even a single scratch) Lib Tech TRS Snowboard + Burton Cartel Bindings for $250 from a pro-boarder-turned-pro-surfer-moving-to-hawaii o_O

There's also Sport Junkies on Broadway where people consign their used gear. Sometimes really good stuff are up there for very cheap. The way that shop works is the seller goes into the store and sets a price that they want to sell at. The store then puts up the item, and reduces the price on that item every month or so when the good is not sold. So over time you can sometimes find really good deals.

Of course the last option is to check out the shops on 4th avenue. They carry quality gear and the staff are very helpful. If I had more money, I'd buy everything from them. They've helped me fix my gear free of charge on so many occasions (e.g. went in to fix a broken binding ratchet, they don't have spare parts to fix it, called up neighbor stores, ran next door and got me the part I needed, told me it was free)

Oh yeah... avoid sportchek/sportmart and large sports equipment shops... they overprice their goods then "discount" them. They also carry shitty equipment for the most part.
 
#12 ·
Far out that is some awesome info!
We'll be travelling up from LA so we should be able to organise shipping to us in the US and then take it over the border ourselves if needed. I figure we'll probably get the bulk of our gear in Seattle/online and then if there's anything left we'll hit up 4th street.
 
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