Bonzo Banana

This isn't just the USA but in Europe and the UK, retail is changing but I think it will stabilise rather than eliminate local bike shops. It isn't rocket science and most practical people can maintain their bikes no problem but others have well paid jobs or simply don't have mechanical skills and they are better served by a local bike shop. I mean if you have limited spare time and a high hourly rate it clearly makes sense to get someone else to sort your bike rather than use your own time unless you find repairing and servicing your bike therapeutic. Cycling is something that allows for all budgets, you can buy a simple secondhand bike for peanuts and maintain it using very budget parts or you can spend serious money on the latest performance bike and get it maintained by your LBS those are 2 extremes of spending. I could buy and run a bike for probably a £5 if I had to per year. I bought a bike recently for 99p off ebay and it really doesn't need much attention apart from a bit of oil and pumping up the tyres. If I had to that bike could last me 10 years. 99p is infinitely more expensive than many bikes I've seen on freecycle. I'm just making the point cycling can cost as little or as much as you want and in that spectrum of spending habits LBS's exist. While I was in a LBS on Monday woman was considering the purchase of 2 e-bikes each costing about £3,000. She was getting a lot of advice and trying out various models as I looked around at the models I was interested in, whether she bought them there or just took the advice and looked for the cheapest price online later is another matter. Seemed an ideal situation for a LBS, a much more complicated bicycle requiring more careful selling to make sure the product suited the customer. She clearly wasn't technical and would likely rely on that shop a lot after the initial purchase.