Originally Posted by Psimet2001

The thing you're missing about the relationship part is that yes, business is business, but to give you a deal businesses are sometimes put in the position of putting their access to those goods at risk. If I am selling you Campy gear and I want to give you a price under MAP then I better be damn sure you're going to come back through me if you have an issue. I have to have some trust in you or I could lose my livelihood.

Too many people like to gloss over business transactions because that is what we have come to expect in other industries (commodity industries). Unfortunately the cycling industry is a commodity industry in many ways and is dragging it's feet at accepting it. If there was more customer spend in this industry there would have been larger conglomerates that would have come in and decimated the brick and mortar long ago.

Thankfully though bike weenies don't want to spend their money so mom-and-pops are the only ones left still stupid enough to try to service us. Yay for stupid business owners... wait....ooops.