Originally Posted by
surreal
I ditched the bike shop i used to work at when the owner reduced our employee discount to levels that couldn't compete with online shopping.
I ditched all the other bike shops long before that, because 99% of bike shops will sell you a cassette that sells for $65 all day online for $99. Even when you go in, explain that you'd like to support the local merchant/local economy, and ask them to match the price b/c, hey, they can get $15 in profit for the thing, or they can get zero, but they aren't going to get $50 from me just to order the thing. $15 seems like a good deal for the 30 seconds it takes to add a cassette to the next qbp order, but NO, these guys cling to the msrp, which is why they're suffering so. Even if you *do* bite the bullet and pay too much for your cassette, you'd better hope the thing's in stock. Otherwise, you'll need to wait 2 weeks for a thing that'd come in the post in 5 days, had you ordered it online for $35 less.
I know THAT's gonna get some ppl angry, but it really is simple math.
-rob
You apparently have never run a business. Although I cannot see the rationale behind not giving employees lower prices than online (we actually paid wholesale + 10%) there are plenty of reasons a shop cannot afford to match online prices. The online businesses can order hundreds of cassettes on any one size at a time at a significant discount, and can hire mostly unskilled employees (possibly offshore) to take orders from mostly knowledgeable cyclists or an automated system processes web orders and produces pick lists for a warehouse, again staffed with less skilled employees. The LBS can order a few of each cassette size and has to employ at least somewhat skilled employees, manually order items, charge sales tax, etc, etc. So you left out some of the math!
I would say that I do find it hard to believe that a shop would, as you seem to imply, charge $99 for a cassette that they purchased for $50. That would be an unusually high markup at that price point, in my experience.
And we always called them cable end caps. Any of the common terms above should work with a fairly knowledgeable employee. I'm not sure I believe that anyone would actually look up "mouse condoms" in a catalog!