Originally Posted by
urbanknight
I think Paul hit the nail on the head. When I first heard of BD, their prices would be many hundreds to sometimes a grand less than comparable name brand bikes, making it well worth the $100-150 you would pay a shop to assemble it and scoff at you. Now you're just saving a few hundred at most, which barely covers the cost of assembly and leaves you with a bike that is usually a little heavier, a little uglier, a little less hi tech, and has a much lower resale value.
That's interesting. I suspect what may have happened is the drop ship method allowed them to get around Shimano's US pricing structures which, let's face it, are a huge determinant of the price of a complete bicycle. My suspicion, based entirely on my own speculation for whatever that's worth, is that Shimano was able to counter this "loophole" in some way, closing the gap in price between the similar spec bikes. Does that make sense?