Shopping in Cyprus

Shopping for Ex-pats.
In this day and age shopping for everyday necessities has been made simple by the development of the supermarket. There is rarely any need to speak unless it's to make a complaint.
Today we are bombarded on all sides with advertisements for things we don't want or need or can't afford.
But; problems arise when we need something that doesn't get advertised.
The rubber tip on my walking stick is nearly worn out and has to be replaced. Where do I go? and more importantly, what do I ask for?
When I was a newbie ex-pat living in Spain I tiled my kitchen and bathroom and then needed grout to fill the gaps arond the tiles. A dictionary gave me the Spanish word for grout which I wrote on a paper and off I went to the tile shop.
I showed my paper to the lady behind the counter and looking puzzled she disappeared through a door to enquire. While she was away I looked around the shop and found the word on my paper on each of the boxes filling the shelf behind the counter. When she returned still looking puzzled she conveyed to me that no-one knew what I wanted so I pointed to the boxes on the shelf. No, no, no, es (pronounced "is" in Spanish) ???? - twenty years on I don't remember the word she used but the point is that locally they had their own word for what I was looking for.
Come forward twenty years. I have a little job which requires the application of a few panel pins. For more than seventy years I have been hammering them into bits of wood. Here, when I ask in DIY shops with staff who understand English they simply look puzzled, "What is Panel Pins"? they probably have what I want but call it something else.
I Want is the slogan, I hope that some bright young Cypriot person out there will read this and think "This could be a nice little earner, put buyer and seller together for a fee" and run with the idea!