Originally Posted by
jefnvk
That is the majority of my LBS issue. If I am walking in for parts, I need something NOW. If I have to wait a couple days for you to order it in, I'm simply going to order it myself to my home, and have a far wider selection of options and prices than the shop can offer. As to the rest, I am quite capable of doing my own research, even when walking in I generally already have an idea of what I want.
OTOH, if you have what I need on hand, I'm quite happy to pay you a premium to walk out the door with it NOW.
The "issue" with a bike shop is that they cannot carry everything in the world in stock. It is a bike shop, not Amazon. We cannot stock 14 different sizes of Thomson seatposts and collars. It sure would be nice but it is not a reality. Most shops carry what they sell the most of, like we carry a lot of 6,7,8 speed chains because our shop sees a myriad of BSO's from Wal-Mart because we are across the street from a major university. For every high end seatpost we order in and sell, we probably sell about 500 of those chains.