Originally Posted by
Dave Mayer
Shimano's actions here make perfect business sense and have been predictable.
Shimano sells low-margin groupsets to bike manufacturers in order to create market share among the bike buying public. It highly encourages (!) the bike brands to adhere to this all-Shimano solution. As an aside, it also uses patent lawsuits and proprietary standards to assist with this strategy. So the overall objective here is to as lock up the OEM market.
Aftermarket bike components are priced much higher simply because they can be. Once a rider is locked into the Shimano system, and they break a derailleur, then they are motivated to pay a lot more, as the alternative is a new bike.
The problem for Shimano is that mail-order houses have been buying up large lots of OEM parts, targeted for whole bike builds, and then selling them at a discount to Shimano's aftermarket parts pricing.
Bottom line is that the mail-order houses have have been putting a stick in the spokes of Shimano's corporate strategy.
So Shimano needs to shut this end-run down.
The ultimate goal is monopoly control of the supply chain, including the OEM market. If this is possible, then the price of new bike groupsets could jump substantially, as there would be no practical alternative.
Sounds like the inkjet printer market... I recall buying an higher end Epson a number of years back that of course comes with a set of ink. A replacement set of ink costs almost as much as the fancy printer with a set of ink.
Your explanation only goes part way though, as it doesn't address why the UK shops are the only ones in the world (?) who were able to work this system. Why weren't Nashbar or Trek or Waterford, etc etc.. or whoever else who has their own line of bikes doing this end-run (if that's what it is)? For that matter and a bit OT but perhaps related if we know the answer, why aren't there more US stores that have branded their own bike lines like Ribble, Merlin, PlanetX, etc?