My local retailer here in Norway is a shop called JapanPhoto. They are probably the biggest chain in Norway for photography. A bit like Jessops in the UK. The one I go to have very well informed staff, though regretably, just like other places, they have very little knowledge concerning Pentax and Olympus gear. They know a bit about Sony though as they are an official Sony pro retailer, so the staff has all been on training courses. This lack of knowledge though doesn't translate into a lack of equipment. They have a rather large cabinet which contains just Pentax and Olympus equipment. They even have Zeiss lenses for Pentax. So if I ever need anything, I can be pretty sure I'll be able to get it from them. It's just a shame they don't have someone with a bit more knowledge about the Pentax and Olympus systems. If you ask them though they always go over to their computers to look up the products on their internal database for a full list of features, pros, cons, etc, instead of redirecting you to Canon and Nikon products.
I was browsing once when I overheard them helping a customer chose a dSLR. He was showing him the Nikon D60, but after showing him it, he showed him the Pentax K200D and explained how, for more or less the same price, he could get more features such as weather sealing, bracketing, etc. I was quite surprised by this. I rarely see a camera salesman take a customer away from a Nikon to show him a Pentax. He then went on to explain how Pentax have better prime lenses than Nikon if that was of interest to him and how he could easily get hold of some cheap manual lenses which the customer seemed to like as he'd used manual cameras for a while.
I think it's a shame that salesmen don't know more about Pentax and Olympus. I really like Olympus, especially the E-420 when combined with the 25mm pancake lens. I would rather have a Pentax K20D or an Olympus E-3 than their Nikon and Canon equivelent as I believe they both have very interesting features. The K20D is weather sealed, TAv mode and excellent lens compatibility. I like the look of the E-3 becouse its affordable, 2x crop factor which is great for telephoto lenses, etc. To me Canon and Nikon seem a bit booring. Maybe I just like to be different
I think popular magazines should take some of the blame though. A recent issue of a Norwegian photography magazine was comparing FF cameras as they are becoming more popular among amateurs. I was surprised to see that they recently had a comparison with Canon 5D vs Sony a900 vs Nikon D700 vs Olympus E-3! The Olympus E-3 wasn't a FF camera like the others and also cost less than half the price of the other cameras according to the prices they provided. Despite this they gave the E-3 a bad review becouse the image quality wasn't as good as the others, without taking the price into account. I was also surprised that, seeing as they chose to include the E-3 in a FF comparison, they didn't include the K20D.