cascade168

I'm pretty sure that any Business 101 course will teach you that too much inventory is not good business.
A good shop will stock inventory that will get sold at, or near, retail price. Sensible inventory for a bike shop is things like consumables (chains, cassettes, tires, tubes, cables & housing, and a few other components), soft goods, and accessories. Selling parts and inventory that is not moving will almost always be at a loss. A hallmark of a great business is having just enough inventory to get the job done in a reasonable period. In the bike world, that period is about a week. And, in a week, there are not many parts you can't get from a big distributor like QBP. A good business lets the distributors bear the cost of warehousing large inventories.

I agree that there is no excuse for poor service. Part of good service is giving the customer a realistic estimate of how long it will take to get parts and then make sure and order them promptly. People don't like to hear that repairs are two weeks out, but if you want to really annoy them then tell them at the end of that two weeks that their parts are not in yet. Good service includes letting the customer know that there is a delay in getting the repair parts (i.e. it did not show up within a week, or whatever the expected delivery was).

As someone pointed out, there are many, many different derailleur hangers. For a shop to stock them all would be silly, from a business viewpoint.


While I agree with a lot of what you say, DieselDan, I have to totally disagree with your statement that shops can "stock all the parts they want to". It just does not work that way.