Originally Posted by carleton
No to single you out, dolface. But, a la carte is a great idea, but one would lose any economies of scale that mass produced bikes currently posess. It's understandably cheaper to produce one bike in seven different sizes than it is to have an a la carte system like Apple.com. Apple, to continue using my example, can pull off such customizations because of the volume at which customers buy such items warrants building a facility and infrastructure to support such. I don't think that there is market enough to justify any bike company building such a custom order fulfillment system.
The bottom line is, IF (a big if) they decided to do it then it would probably cost big money and take a long time to ship. Both of which (money and time) will be passed to the customer. We are probably better off just supporting our local bike shops the way we've been doing.
Just my 2 cents.
well, he didn't say they had to be PRACTICAL ideas
i don't buy pre-built bikes because i really enjoy the process of collecting all the parts and putting the whole thing together, but i know that's not for everyone, so a la carte (from a list options) seems like a good middle ground i terms of buyers getting exactly what they want.