Originally Posted by Rev.Chuck

I often see complaints that there are no industry people on this forum. There were. But guys like this made most of them decide the site was not worth the time and they left. Big pats on the back all around.

Originally Posted by KrisPistofferson

You guys should have thicker skin, then. No offense, but this is the internet, and people will always say things you don't agree with until the day when you decide to ban all of these tools, which, to your credit, you haven't done. Seriously, LBS mechs should toughen up if this is the consensus, because customers of all stripes, whether in a resteraunt, auto shop or LBS will always raise hell because they are clueless/obnoxious/anonymous on the 'net. It's just reality. Chill out.

Originally Posted by KrisPistofferson

You guys should have thicker skin, then. No offense, but this is the internet, and people will always say things you don't agree with until the day when you decide to ban all of these tools, which, to your credit, you haven't done. Seriously, LBS mechs should toughen up if this is the consensus, because customers of all stripes, whether in a resteraunt, auto shop or LBS will always raise hell because they are clueless/obnoxious/anonymous on the 'net. It's just reality. Chill out.

Originally Posted by Bob Dopolina

I managed a shop in Victoria for many years, several years ago. I know MANY of the shops you are referring to. Let me relate a few of my experiences that may offer you a glimpse into what you are experiencing from the other side.

First: STOCKING EVERY %$@# WIDGET AND BOLT THAT YOU CAN FIND IN EVERY MAGAZINE OR ON EVERY WEBSITE ON THE PLANET:
Here's the way this works. IF and I mean IF there is a distributor for the product you want that you can buy it from, you must place a minimum order. That means that if I want to sell you that 2$ bolt or that 80$ saddle, I need to commit another few thousand dollars to make an order large enough to meet the min order requirement. Sure, sometimes you can order smaller amounts but you don't get the same price for the same goods (no discount). So who pays the extra money for the special order part?
To ship one box by UPS or FedEx or whatever is FAR MORE expensive than using other shipping companies that specialize in bulk, commercial freight. So who pays that extra cost?
So you see, selling you that saddle may actually cost me a considerable amount of money. I need to think, is the pitiful margin I am going to make on this product (which is ever shrinking because of e-stores) worth the labour (yeah, our time to write, process, receive, inventory and stock stuff), the risk of ordering stuff we may not need just to make a min order , or can we tie up yet more capitol on goods that may sit for 6 months (is it late in the season? Do we really need more tri-tops NOW?)
This is a pretty complicated decision that seems so simple from your end.

Me want-Me want NOW!


HAVING STAFF THAT KNOWS EVERY PRODUCT AVAILABLE IN THE CYCLING WORLD: We used to have reps come to our store every Saturday morning to give us PK (product knowledge) seminars before we opened for business. If a rep wasn't available, it would fall to one of the staff to become "expert" on a product and teach the rest of us. Even doing that, someone would walk in, almost daily, and be looking for something we either didn't carry (distributed through a competing bike lines' channels) wasn't available to us (no local distributor) or that we simply hadn't heard of YET.
I would comb through every issue of every bike magazine available in our area and see products that we just couldn't buy and I knew that eventually, someone else would see that ad and want one. So what can I tell them? If they really want it I can do what they can do - contact the company (maybe) and order it directly (or have them refer me to a distributor that isn't local for me). I am providing a service and trying to help my customer the only way I can. It's not a scam - it's service.
There are so many products out there, new models, features, colours or just plain new products are introduced in every issue of every magazine and constantly on the web. It is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to keep up. You do the best you can and if a customer asks about a product you have never heard of, you find out.

I am willing to bet that there are many products that you haven't heard of that you LBS has. I'm sure they can tell you all about products they do have on their walls. The stuff you can actually buy.

Regarding STOCKING EVERY VERSION, MODEL, STYLE,COLOUR OF EVERY PRODUCT AVAILABLE:
This one is pretty simple to understand. How many bike locks are there out there? If you include every model of every brand that you can google, literally thousands. Do you really expect a store to carry say, 300 different locks? Never mind the display space issue or the cost issue. As a consumer, how could you ever choose? Most people struggle over 52 flavours!


We had a buying policy of Good, better, best. We would (whenever possible) cherry pick a product line and choose 3 product that we thought offered the best value between features and price. We would choose en entry level product, a little fancier one with a few more bells and whistles, and a top-of-the-line model. Sometimes customers would ask us why we didn't bring in one of the other models and we would explain why we chose the ones we did. IF we started to have a demand for a different model, we would re-adjust our buying.

This policy gave us a pretty broad range of goods, and best utilized the wall space we had and was an effective way to ensure that our money wasn't tied up for months on end on some product that we can never sell at full margin and that, when we discount it to FINALLY get it off the books, that discount seriously cuts into the wafer thin margins we made on the other products that did sell well.

I can go on for hours about this. I don't know if you even care so I won't bother. What seems like a simple - give me what I want and give it to me now - issue, is far more complicated than it seems.

As for staff THAT ARE RUDE, UNHELPFUL AND LESS THAN KNOWLEDGEABLE: Most people work in shops because they have an interest in cycling. My background was from the road. For all intents and purposes, mountain bikes didn't even exist when I started working in the industry. (I still remember building our first batch of Stumpjumpers!). We had a mechanic in our shop that knew everything that there was to know about suspension and esp. 4-bar linkages. If you came to me with a question about suspension, I would walk you over to this guy and watch him go. If a customer started asking about Mavic headsets, the reverse would happen.

Having said that, I have fired a few lunkheads...they're everywhere and some of them are good at hiding it until it is too late...

You can complain all you want about your LBS. I'm sure many of your complaints are completely accurate. Not all shops are good shops. I've been in some pretty crappy ones myself. Try living in a town without one. e-stores will get you so far but, there will come a time when you wish that that crappy bike shop around the corner still existed. There will be something you need to SEE or try-on or measure, just to be sure. It is a place where you can find other people to ride with or to swap stories with. A good shop can also be a hub around which the local cycling culture can revolve. They organize events and are involved in the local community in a way no e-store EVER will be.

My suggestion is to develop a friendly relationship with one of the staff in one of the stores and deal only with that person. They can become expert in your area of interest and will be more willing to help you with special items or when you have special needs or requests. If you walk into a shop, guns a blazin', and start making special requests, you are less likely to get what you want if they have never seen you before.

I hope this wee bit of perspective will help.

Originally Posted by Wordbiker

, "Yeah, it looks like you do your own work"

Originally Posted by oilman_15106

All LBS must die! Yea, oops wait a sec. where will the OP get a tube or cable on Saturday morning? From the internet? No he will go to his giant inventory of bike parts that he keeps in his basement. It is called "Time Value of Money". Go look it up, you might learn something, maybe, I guess.

Originally Posted by Rev.Chuck

word. I have a picture collection of the results of guys that do their own work.

Originally Posted by Bushman

I keep spare inventory of cables, chains, quick links, housings, brakepads, inner tubes, tires, spokes etc.

whats wrong with that? seems like common sense to me to keep stuff like that around in the house, so i DONT have to bug a LBS on a saturday morning.

Originally Posted by Bob Dopolina

THIS I'd like to see!

Originally Posted by unrooted

I also know ******* that are too scared to work on their bike, one guy even thinks that he must go to one particularly horrible shop in town because they sell Treks, which is what he has. There are definately things about Logan Utah that I like but, it is not the people.