I agree that the "robot" guitars are retarded. It's so dumb. Self tuning? Please. I'm not crazy about the less tech wild tricks they do either. Boost buttons? Straight-to-jack pull pots? Come on. Coil splitting is about as much as I'm willing to tolerate.
I don't know about the "small stores" thing. Here in Houston several small stores stock Gibsons. Maybe a "small store" in Houston is bigger than other city's small stores, I don't know. But around these parts, the small stores that don't stock Gibsons are the ones that go out of business. There was one by my mom's house called "Smack Guitars". He wouldn't stock Gibsons on principles. He was very vocal about refusing to cave to their demands as a retailer. Okay that's fine. He had a bunch of Ibanez and some Fenders and bunch of Schecters and other stuff like that. He went out of business in about a year. I don't know what role Gibson directly played in that, but I do know that people went in there looking for Gibsons and he didn't stock any. Down the road the people went.
Edit - I take that back, they didn't go out of business. The rumors were false. They moved. Apparently smack guitars is doing okay.