Originally Posted by
grayloon
Over my 59 years, I've dealt with the small shops and large box stores. Frankly, I've never understood the nostalgia some have for those small stores. Many had crappy employee relations, paid poorly, and treated employees as slaves. My experience often was that they were way over priced and some owners were down right rude. Most went out of business because they over charged and did not serve the needs of customers. As for local bike shops, a few are quite good, others need to be dissolved. Many are nothing but part of a chain of stores that provide poor service and no better putting together of bikes than the big box.
I shop where I can get the best deal and/or what I need. Sometimes, that may be Walmart or other big box stores, other times its small locally owned shops. But, in the end, its my pocketbook that matters. Life's too short to worry about big box stores raping the earth. After all, we were ***** by mom and pops for much longer. Frankly, that 15% I save on groceries at the Nieghborhood Market grocery (a Wal-Mart grocery only store) makes a nice jingle in my pocket and is a great help.
About being paid poorly and treating employees as slaves, the big box stores are no better. There is no "nostalgia" because small service and product based stores still exist in almost every consumer sector. I agree that some small stores still treat customers like crap and mark up their products a ridiculous amount. That's why I mentioned the need for patience. Sometimes it takes a while to find the best bike store. Sometimes you will have to travel farther than you wanted to. In some cases it will be impractical to shop at that small store and your time will have been wasted. But sometimes, you find that small store that treats you humanly and has fair prices. The kind of store that when you walk in, they know your name, what bikes you ride and might even offer you a beer. That's my LBS.