Most of UK GA is scraping out the bottom of the barrel and has been for many years, and is getting worse.
There is too little business generally, and most of the pilots that do fly are stingy as hell.
Most of the merchandise that pilot shops sell is never changing old junk which goes mainly to a) ATPL students and b) posers who spend £300 on WW2-style leather jackets etc.
There is next to no innovation, so 99% of today's merchandise is identical to when I started flying 7 years ago. This makes it hard for shops to sell stuff, because everybody else is selling the same stuff. I suppose LED torches on key rings is the major innovation in recent years...
I can't blame a pilot shop trying to scratch out some kind of existence, in such a thin market. They should remove the price tag of the website they bought it from though
