Dear all,

I'm planning to put together a brevet bike which will be an unholy concoction of road bike parts with dynamo lighting, fenders, front and rear racks, etc. So it will definitely have to be a a custom build.

I am very used to ordering all the parts I need online and wrenching myself. That's how I slowly arrived at the bike I'm riding today. When comparing online prices to my LBS I often found that items are sometimes so much more expensive that they'd be out of reach for me if I bought there. E.g. a crankset or a pair of integrated shifters could often be $100-200 more expensive than online.

Now, the point of this post is not to start a debate about supporting your LBS vs the evils of online shopping, but I'm trying to figure out whether I should go through a shop for a complete build or order my parts online from disparate sources and build myself. Mainly, I'm wondering whether if I buy a complete bike, the shop will charge me the same markup on the parts as they would if I bought individual parts at retail prices. Obviously complete builds are usually much cheaper than if you sourced the same parts at retail prices, but I'm wondering if that advantage will also apply for a custom build.

Basically, I am certainly willing to pay a certain extra for the service, professional build, and possibly a bike fit from the LBS, but it depends on whether their markup on parts will be so high that it puts the build out of reach for me.