A problem with connecting customers and sellers

I am probably not the only person that has had this problem, though I've thought about it at some length while most others just accept it as part of life. There have been several times that I really want to find a particular product and have had absolutely no luck. Example 1) I've lived in San Francisco. At least out here, fedoras are an acceptable fashion statement. I love the way they look on certain guys(and girls!). I have been to several stores, and even went to a couple of high-end boutique places. In the 2 instances I've found exactly the style I want, they don't have it in my size. Can you order it, I ask. No, sorry we can't. You can buy them online, but this is a very personal kind of purchase and I need to be very sure of what I'm ordering. Example 2) I lived in Ft. Lauderdale for several years. A Haitian friend gave me a bottle of a Haitian coffee liqueur called Toussaint. The other night, I was remembering what an excellent drink this was and spent the next 3 hours trying to order it. First stop, eBay and Amazon.com, nada. Called the local stores, no dice. Did various combinations of Google searches and eventually found there were no U.S. retailers selling this. Apparently its becoming quite popular in the U.K. and parts of Europe, and the only distributor is in Britain. Final word came down from the distributor after an email exchange was there are no U.S. distributors. None of the U.K. distributors ship overseas. Sigh. So the problem I am encountering is that despite the endless amounts of advertising I am pummeled with every day anytime my eyelids open, I cannot find the things I actually am willing to spend good money on. I would like to think that there are many other people like me. We have money we're willing to spend on the quality products that we really want, but its often very very hard to connect us with the people who might be selling them. Sellers spend billions of dollars a year trying to connect with customers, relatively successfully at least. However I as a customer have very few options to tell sellers what I'm actually looking for, and its getting damned annoying. So, what are your thoughts on this? Is there some superb web service that I have completely missed that will solve my problems? Have any other people experienced this? Why can't there be a service that will let me post an ad for $5 for the stuff I want that sellers will look for. Maybe there needs to be an ad network for customers, where my desires are communicated to lots of businesses that might be able to fulfill my needs. Thoughts?