Yes, there are definitely many people in your situation, and you will probably be better off visiting their local stores. They can import in bulk and can provide a good selection, it clearly is superior to sending random things from abroad individually.

Many places do not have such stores though, for example as far as I know in Finland there is just one such store in the whole country. I believe there are still customers left for this service as well.

If this turns out to be an unnecessary service, I would be open to accept that result too. I still feel I would be better off having started this experiment, I am learning much about how to approach bloggers, how to interface with PayPal and my new label printer and so on. Nice learning experience in any case.