B&H is so good that I don't care when their online store is closed, I just come back later. That they are still in business (and flourishing, from what I can see) is proof that their service is so good that people are loyal.
Chick-fil-A is famously closed every Sunday, yet is one of the most successful restaurants.
Suppose B&H or Chick-Fil-A suddenly changed their policy to be open, which is easy to verify (just see if you can buy something on that day). What do you think the reaction of their customers would be to this greater convenience and no loss of quality? Would they celebrate? I think the reaction would be highly negative - everyone would panic that they had sold out and the beancounters were now in charge and the quality was going to go downhill while the prices go up.
Precisely because the policy is so economically foolish and is not a marketing stunt (notice no one is clamoring to imitate them even though it's trivial: just close on some day) and would be one of the first things to go under new (ie. normal) management, it proves that they don't care that much about maximizing their profits but other things.
I honestly don’t know much about B&H as a business but I’m a frequent customer. I have bought several expensive camera bodies and lenses from them, countless camera accessories, and it’s often the first place I look for all electronics. NAS, hard drives, cables, that sort of thing. I like buying from B&H because I trust them, they have fast shipping, and I’ve never had a bad experience.
It’s a high quality store. I value high quality and I like that they value high quality over maximizing profit. That makes me a loyal customer, and unless something changes about the quality of B&H, I probably will be for a long time. I don’t care that their online store is occasionally closed; it’s never been an inconvenience to me. And if it ever is, the quality of the store more than makes up for the minor convenience of waiting a couple days to buy something. When it comes to my gear and equipment, I’m rarely in such a rush that I’m willing to compromise quality for speed. I imagine a lot of other B&H customers feel the same way.
And it's not like websites naturally inherit their hours from the stores of the company running them.
But I think that if you are familiar with B&H this wouldn't really be a surprise and it's pretty rare that you find yourself unexpectedly needing a new SLR on saturday morning in my experience
Not only does B&H close their webshop on Saturdays, they also observe many holidays and close both their physical stores and webstore for them. This month they are open for only 18 days due to Passover.
However, we can just put business hours on support, and would expect that the websites would generally work, unmonitored, while the SREs maintained a normal 40.