We have an anti-free-market asymmetry when manufacturers try to establish price floors, MSRP, which assume they enforce through contractual agreements, but they don't mind if some shops, which would appear to be very small in number, pad prices above MSRP.

The latter can reduce sales, which is not in the manufacturers' interests. I didn't mention, but not everything in my nearest :LBS is padded, some things are sold at MSRP.

The owners are in effect steering customers to lower-priced lines (MSRP-charged), which may be due to they're having lower wholesale prices, so even sold at MSRP, their margins are higher. <aybe they price things according to a set margin, and some manufacturers' MSRPs are more generous relative to their products' wholesale cost than other manufacturers' MSRPSs are relative to their wholesale costs. Or it may be that some lines sell well enough for the LBS to get some volume discounts, which then is set to have the same margin as low-volume products that the dealer gets no discounts for.

This would explain why my special orders are always padded: I'm asking for non-stocked items, they order ONE, not a dozen or a case, so they probably double (or whatever factor) the price they pay to QBP.

Simple and easy. When measured against an online purchase, this is effective for low-value goods whose padded pricing plus sales tax is lower, the same, or ia bit higher than MSRP online plus shipping. Not effective for goods with high value/ low shipping charge ratios.

This doesn't even get into below-MSRP charging, which can include:

1. Gray-market diversion of components originally intended to be installed on manufactured bikes (OEM) which were sold at less than the fancy-packaged ones intended for after-market sale, then got diverted.

2. After-hours production of products, particularly clothing by renegade factory managers. They're not making copy-cat clones, they're making the same products they do in the daytime, only the contracting company is not getting any money from moonlight production.

3. Sales, sales, sales. All manufacturers allow various sales and even encourage them. They make more of some products than the market wants, so they sell stuff cheap and ask dealers to aggressively move them. When dealers have too much of last year's stuff, and the manufacturers want them to order this year's stuff, they greenlight and may even subsidize clearances. After-Christmas, end of fiscal quarter or year sales are allowed.

But of course every shop defines its own fiscal periods. Get enough shops in the market, online, and savvy buyers can find what they want on sale pretty frequently.

Then of course, online sales of almost-new and in-the-box-new stuff on eBay and Craig's list, that competes with LBSs new products, is wide open.

All of which make holding the line on MSRP a lost cause. So why even try? The only people drinking the Kool Aid are the small shops that follow the rules set for them that the rule-makers are letting the global online market ignore.

I had a friend whose family ran a nice profitable drug store for almost a half-century. Longs and Walgreen crushed them in the 70s. The store couldn't get drugs from the wholesale providers as cheaply as the chains were selling them to patients. Later, some of the chains were themselves wracked by lower-priced mail-order and internet drugs.

The family wasn't ruined. The last-generation owners (sons of the founder) had done very well, and enjoyed nice retirements. But they told their own sons, "You have to chart your own courses. We can't save the business for you to inherit."

If you want personal attention and expertise anywhere, it's in drugs, because under the best of circumstances they can injure and kill you, and if you have to take a half-dozen, the drug-interaction complications skyrocket. So if local drugstores can disappear, so can LBSs.

When I ordered a portable Weber charcoal grill at my local Ace Hardware,the owner said, "I've sold some Weber portable gas grills, never seen a charcoal one." He got online, and said, "Is this it?" "Yep, that's the one." I got it for MSRP. The owner didn't have to pay a one-time-order markup to the Weber Co., or anybody else. His coop ordered thousands a year, getting Weber's most-favored-customer prices, and no price-padding was necessary at the retail end for the local owner to make a satisfactory profit.

Small-volume LBSs should do the same. If they don't, they're encouraging increasing numbers of customers to migrate elsewhere. There's no rule that says "Each LBS in America must be completely on its own, and if it only orders some things in small volumes, it must pay big markups relative to what big LBSs, online dealers and chains pay." These LBSs are being screwed by their suppliers. Passing on the screw-job to their customers isn't in their interest, believe me. Getting a handle on costs is in their interests, and that means forming an aggregated-purchasing-coop.