Most stores decide what to sell, then go buy it.
Marden's does the opposite.
It goes and finds whatever is available at an absurd price, buys it, and then figures out where to put it.
A warehouse flooded. A chain went bankrupt. A manufacturer printed the wrong label on forty thousand units. A shipment got rejected at a port.
Somebody has a very bad day. Marden's has a very good one.
Which means the store has no permanent inventory. What was there last month is gone. What is there today might never appear again.
That should be a terrible way to run a retailer.
It has worked in Maine for generations, and the reason it works has almost nothing to do with price.
It has to do with something much more powerful.