deepakvrao

Those rims.

Actually almost everything. Cycling is rather in its infancy in India. LBSs carry very little, and that too at very high prices. Anything beyond the very basic has to be imported. Things like wheels, rims etc have very high shipping to India, if at all they ship to India. More than half the online stores don't even ship to India.

Oh, I forgot to add, the icing on the cake, is the 50% [yes, you read right] duty that is added on invoice cost + shipping cost when the items land in India. Not to mention, if the idiot at customs feels like harassing you, he just does not release the items. Enough loopholes there. The biggest loophole is that he is entitled to charge duty on MSRP plus shipping, and can totally ignore what you actually paid.

Things like Gorilla tape - not even seen one in India.

So, small items, we order and bite the bullet with the duties. Most of the stuff, I pick up when I travel, and I like to reserve that for bigger items. Airlines have their own issues with baggage, so it's not easy to get in a bunch of wheels either, especially as we almost always travel with our bikes in the first place.

These Velocity a23s I got locally. They are the only road rims available easily locally, so not like I had a choice. Simple things like the tape and sealant, I had to ask a friend to get as I forgot to add them to my order when I was last in Europe and got a load of groupsets and parts to upgrade our bikes.

A few years ago there was nothing available locally, but duty was 16-20%. Now things are becoming available, but much more expensive with the current rate of duties.

Just as an example the Schwalbe Pro Ones are now available in India at 98 dollars each. I paid 35 at bike24.com

End of rant.



Oh and Chaadster, one of the reasons I started with Kapton, was that it was available locally, and like I said, I had forgotten to add tape and sealant to my order when I had placed my last order. Got Stans tape only now when a friend brought it for me from London.