Just last week my niece begged me to purchase her a new bicycle to ride with her friends the next day. With a local Walmart just blocks away from my house, I agreed to take her there that night to buy one. However, when we got there, we were somewhat surprised to see only about 10 bicycles on the rack, none of which were the right height or preferred color for her, forcing us to leave Walmart empty-handed.

While we were ultimately successful at another store, it took us multiple days to find a bike that my niece liked, and even then, I don’t think we necessarily found the “perfect” bike for her, but rather just one that she was willing to ride. Although retail stores often have a lot of options, one negative thing about them in general is that they often are lacking when it comes to less-frequently purchased products.

Retail stores have to stock a multitude of products and are thus limited by how much space they have to hold their inventories. In particular, less commonly-bought products often have much lower inventories to accommodate products that are more often bought by shoppers (and when the product itself is large, as is the case with bicycles, they stock even less of them). As a result, you may have a hard time finding these sorts of products at your local retail store. And although such products are sometimes technically “in stock”, there often isn’t enough of a selection available for you to ultimately make a purchase, as was the case with my niece’s bicycle.

And that is not even getting into the fact that many retail stores don’t even bother selling entire categories of products altogether. One big example of this is the sex toy industry. Although a lot of women use sex toys regularly, you definitely cannot find them at your local Walmart. You could theoretically go to some sketchy part of town to a sketchy shop to purchase some in-person, but that’s not something most people would want to do.

All things considered, online stores are clearly better when it comes to looking for and purchasing fairly niche-products. Take online sex toy company Blissful Cherry for example. If you want an incredible sex toy, you can go straight to their specialty store online and find just about any toy you are looking for in a just a few short minutes. And with a wide selection of products, you won’t ever have to “walk away” (figuratively speaking) because you can’t find what you want, a feature only possible due to the fact that Blissful Cherry sells their products solely online, thus being able to dedicate most (if not all) of their workspace to an expanded inventory.

Whether you are looking for kinky sex toys, or any sort of specialty product such as exotic shampoos or custom-built furniture, or even just a decent bike designed to your specific liking, your best bet at finding them efficiently is through online channels. While retail stores are great for many things, purchasing niche-products (and less commonly-bought products in general) is not one of them.