Merchant Archive

I'm just starting an artisan profession and am aiming for DE/Arch and i'm wondering where exactly i'm going to put any sort of components? If i can't store them in my house (due to item limit restrictions) and can't store them in any vendors (due to stupid vendor limits) where am i supposed to put them?

What exactly do merchants do, by the way? all i can see is that they place vendors and then nothing much else to contribute to the game which, in my opinion, makes them rather useless to be frank

Instead of nerfing all other crafting classes, why not just give them all more vendor options and then remove the merchant class and allow all merchants to re-spec in to another artisan class like DE or Arch or even Chef for free (so a 4321 merchant can be a 4321 Arch for example?) That way, we have plenty of options in the game of people to go to to buy stuff from and the prices aren't ridiculous due to competition, or is that too rational?

Lan'Ph Wil'Gi/Okinawa