Mission Impossible: Buying a suit in the winter

Two weeks ago, I was home for a 4 day weekend from college and forgot to bring my suit. A couple of my suits were pretty shot as it was so I thought, why not get a replacement. More importantly, I didn't want to miss out on what in actuality would be 5-6 days of missed swimming. All I wanted was an size 32 speedo endurance+ brief. How hard could that be? I went to a privately owned sports shop where they had a couple options, but nothing I really wanted to buy. Most of their stock had been picked clean already and what remained in my size and desired material wasn't what I was looking for. I went to another privately owned shop where they only had goggles and swim caps. I went to two different Dicks Sporting Goods and one Sports Authority (same owner). Naturally because it's winter, all the swim stuff was gone. Apparently they're not informed that the competitive swim season in the northeast is in the winter. They either had virtually nothing- or really small suits and really big suits. Nothing in my size and a very limited selection. I went back home and by some miracle a found an old Aquablade jammer in a drawer. Not a particularly choice for regular workouts because of its poor durability, but I'm not competing anytime soon and it was a suit nonetheless so I used it. I got back to Boston and decided I should probably buy a new suit because I'm down to two or three and I like to switch it up. I searched endlessly at sports shops trying to find a suit but no one sells them! (I prefer buying things in person, in stores). Finally I went to City Sports. A guy asked me if I needed help so I asked "do you have any Speedo Endurance suits". He said "what's that" and I explained. He took me to the swim section and showed what looked to be a fairly large selection of suits. Unfortunately they only had the Xtra-Life Lycra suits (which last about a month for me). He said "This is the material you want to buy if you're working out, it lasts 8-10x than regular suits" (or whatever the label says). I replied "Yes, but endurance suits last 20 times longer than Lycra suits". The guy huffed that I was wrong and Xtra-Life was "the best money can buy". To that I said "Right. Have you ever swam before" to which he said "No, but I've worked here for 4 years". I didn't end up buying anything but I had a lovely conversation with a 26 year old woman who was also looking for a durable practice suit. She too had searched far and wide with no luck. I ended up buying a suit on Amazon and got free two-day shipping with my free student prime account. I never thought buying a suit would be so hard and I've never had such a problem doing so before, even late in/at the end of the season.