There are plenty of such stores selling quality goods, brick-and-mortar is too general. But in terms of big-box retailers it has indeed become a depressing rea

There are plenty of such stores selling quality goods, brick-and-mortar is too general. But in terms of big-box retailers it has indeed become a depressing reality in the USA, ever since Sears closed down. FWIW the last few times I abandoned hope in the kitchenware aisles of Wal-Mart I found something reasonable at Bed Bath & Beyond, a brick-and-mortar store. But it did admittedly require still splurging on basically top-of-the-line variants at BB&B. Such options were nowhere to be found in Wal-Mart though, not even close. My impression is that the big-box retailers just don't go deep on the quality axis, they instead go wide on the quantity axis in terms of kinds of products. Within the ~quality axis they often just have cosmetically different looking dolled-up variants of more or less the same garbage with a higher price tag. But if you go somewhere with a narrower scope like BB&B, you can at least find tangible differences along the quality axis. And they sure demand top-of-the-line prices for quality levels we once took for granted before China turned up the wick on this race to zero :(