Originally Posted by
Sy Reene
Have the LBS shops ever tried to establish a independent purchasing consortium entity, that would aggregate all orders to negotiate with the manufacturers? ie. kinda like collective bargaining. This is/was how in the past some smaller appliance stores (AC units, microwaves etc) could survive against the BestBuys, at least from standpoint of keeping the products at a comparable retail price to consumers.
I think they have. They're called "Middle-Men", and end up creating higher markups.
I'm surprised that a company like Nashbar/Performance wasn't able to leverage their buying potential to undercut the competition.
I have to wonder if we've had a long slow slide to get to where we are, starting with the early mail order companies with printed catalogs, bike-ecology, Nashbar, etc.
The bike stores, rather than trying to figure out how to re-capture the lost catalog sales, just ignored them. Then slowly lost one sale after another. Then the internet came along. Not too much of a ripple in the 90's. But, then a bigger splash in the early 2000's. Followed by a Tsunami in the 2010's. Sink or swim, and so many stores never learned to swim.
I have to think the bike shops do ok with things like tire sales, but even those are likely suffering, especially if they can't stock the selection their customer base demands.
The shops likely install a few groupsets in shop, but are rapidly loosing 99% of the groupset sales to walk-in customers.
And, what a tangled web we get as companies like Shimano and Campagnolo try to push forward with "Progress", while customers just want to maintain their aging bicycles with the parts they came with.
If Shimano sells 10 different groupsets:
Dura Ace, Ultegra, 105, Tiagra, Claris, Sora, M9000, M8000, M7000, Alivio... I'm sure I missed a few.
Is Shimano still selling 6800 & R8000?
Anyway, for a small shop to buy say 10 of each (to get bulk discounts), one suddenly has 100+ groupsets on the shelf. They have to move a lot of them out the door to even make that feasible.
Personally, I've always liked to do "window shopping". For bike stuff, it seems like a shop only is selling what they have in the display cases. It takes a lot of space to properly display all those parts and groupsets.
Oh, and everything has moved to pre-packaged bikes. Don't blame the bike shops for TREK, Cannondale, & Etc selling all their bikes pre-assembled, one-size-fits-all.
In fact, the local bike shops likely move a lot more groupsets than one gives them credit for, just they all came into and left the shop attached to bicycles.