Add 1.32 to whatever numerical value you've attached to "killing", divide it by 2, and you'll have the average salary of some guy who runs an LBS. Are we really having this conversation? The LBS owners I know make better than minimum wage, so I'll decline any invitations to the make-believe world where they spend half an hour to make a buck and a half on a $30 transaction. Get real.

A typical spoke costs a shop less than a dollar, including brass nerp. The typical wrench makes, on average, $12.15 an hour. So, there's $25 or so of the $33 after the parts&labor come out. Sure, shops have to pay overhead like rent/mortgage, insurance, utilities, initial costs for equipment, etc. But guess what? Those are mostly fixed costs that will exist whether you replace that spoke or not.

Those are the costs of doing business, and most every brick-n-mortar business will have similar expenses. To charge a lot of markup is one thing, but to make believe that the markup doesn't exist b/c you gotta keep the lights on and pay the rent is simply dishonest.

I've been in the bike industry for 30 years. I made more when I worked for someone else as a wrencher. There's no money to be made here as an owner unless you have access to significant capital. But banks don't need to loan money anymore to make money since Glass-Steagal went away, so they don't. I've been told by multiple banks that their underwriters now "frown on small business loans". And I can't think of another industry where customers so often expect things for free. More than once, I've grabbed a wheel someone brought in, trued it on the spot so they didn't have to make two trips, and when I walked over to the register, was greeted with an indignant "you're gonna charge me for THAT?" Or "can I watch you work on my bike so I don't have to pay you next time?" Or my favorite: can I, like, borrow a tool real quick?", which to my ears sounds exactly like "can I, like, have $10?"

Now, conversely, I have some truly awesome customers who value my expertise, but they are older and wiser. They see the value of having a knowledgeable, reliable shop nearby and are willing to pay for it. The young guys that come in are often clueless about how their bike works, but don't want to have to pay to get it fixed, so they run them into the ground then seem mad at ME because youtube couldn't fix their bike for free.....

But the money to pay those fixed costs has to come from somewhere and the money to pay February's rent has to come from somewhere.

Yeah, that'd probably come from sales and repairs. More reasonable prices will likely lead to increased sales and repairs, right?

Lower prices may or may not increase the number of sales and repairs. Lower prices will always reduce the revenues per sale. The "sweet spot" is a business decision and everybody draws the line differently.

wrong.

between 1995 and 1998 i worked in a shop that sold cannondales
back then most of their production was in the us

i dont know if the wheels were made in the us
and i dont know if they were hand built
or
more likely
machine built

but
every single wheel that came out of a cannondale box
went on to the truing stand before it went on the bike
as they were absolutely the least true
and most uneven tensioned wheels
that were being specced on bikes we sold

i cannot image that their qc on wheels has gone up
since the company was sold
and production moved overseas

so no
33 dollars
does not sound excessive
for a wheel
off a cannondale

pricing is pretty close to what we charge but some of our prices need to be raised. wheel building is 55, i think it should be double because it takes up so much time. tune up is 90 which is brakes adjusted, derailers adjusted, all bearings adjusted(if applicable), wheels trued and frame and wheels wiped down.
rear wheel spoke install is 35.
tire install with wheel off bike 10.
wheel on bike 15
frame up build is 200(too cheap IMO, should be like 300)
brake adjust 25
derailer adjust(includes hanger alignment) 25

At the bike shop I go to , this one mechanic can change a front spoke on a traditional wheel in minutes. If he has to custom cut the spoke a few minutes more. Now, that's for a wheel in good condition, not bent, nor rusted. About $10.00 worth of work.

Then why, pray tell, do bike shops lose so much market share every year? How do bike shops hope to survive if ppl can get nice parts online, or get cheap/free service at co-ops?** The price-gouging business model has buried plenty of shops already; it's going to get harder and harder to make that work as time goes on.

-rob

**Before you start in on how co-ops produce some terrible hack-jobs (and, admittedly, co-op repairs can be pretty abysmal), try to recall some of the LBS repair horror stories that have been recounted here and elsewhere.... Shops are far from infallible.

Awesome. I bet they get a lot more business than the guys who charge $33.

And they'd need 3.3X the volume to make the same.

Personally I'd rather work less but produce better quality work and make the same.

That makes perfect sense, if you're in business for 1 week.

OTOH, with each customer you service, you build a rep. If I needed a spoke replaced in a wheel, and a shop charged me $33, I wouldn't complain about it to the mechanic, nor would I complain about it online or take it personally. As I said upthread, $33 is a little steep, but it's not utterly ridiculous. But, you can be sure I'd never, ever go back to that shop. And, while I wouldn't run down the shop's name unbidden, I would definitely tell ppl that the shop overcharges, should anyone ask me.

The guy who charges the fair labor-- the $10 guy-- he's the sort of guy I'd go back to. His is the sort of shop that I could heartily recommend to other ppl. You don't build a business by charging an extra twin per repair; that's how you shrink your clientele.

Have you ever managed or owned a retail business?

Was the rear wheel off the bike and the tire/tube/rim strip removed, was it a disc hub,was the wheel fairly true before the spoke broke, etc.?

Would you have had the correct length spoke, the appropriate spoke wrench, a truing stand, a dishing tool, etc., and the experience to do the job in two hours?

You owe the shop a six pack of good beer and a "thanks"!

Prices will vary by markets and location.

A good rule of thumb is that shop time is usually $1.00 a minute but most shops have set rates to set an average price for a given job since estimating is very difficult when you might not be doing the job yourself.

Anyways...

Changing out a spoke takes a few minutes but involves more than this as the wheel will need to be checked and trued so half an hour is a good amount of time to set aside for a job like this.

Nope. I managed some food services stuff BITD, and I currently work as a manager in a decidedly non-retail field.

Instead of questioning my credentials, maybe respond to the concept that, by savagely burning your customers on easy/routine repair jobs, you may be alienating them and reducing future sales/service opportunities?

Oh, to be sure, if a shop were remiss in researching going regional labor rates without providing a commensurate value, they could certainly see a drop in clientele. What I do question is the implication of lowering labor rates as a universal solution for increasing clientele. Often that can be a recipe for disaster as the volume could surpass the shop's ability to provide said services in a timely fashion, leading to a net decrease in volume, or worse.

I can't speak to the industry as a whole (actually I could, but I won't), but we've opened 3 new locations in the last 5 years, and comp stores are up double digits year to year over the last 12, So I'll stick to the way we're doing it, thanks.

we have the highest labor rates in the boston area with no shortage of customers. our biggest draw is efficiency and turn around time. many shops in boston have a 3+ week turn around during the season(even for a flat fix). we do flat fixes on the spot unless they choose to leave the bike. our turn around is 2-3 days, 4-5 days if i order a part. most of the labor pricing in the boston market is very competitive. 45-60 dollar tune ups is easy to find.

This sounds a lot like our shop. We're even w/ the highest prices in our area, have the most experienced mechanics around, and manage to get pretty much everything done on schedule. We are never backed up more than 4-5 days and do pretty much everything by appt. We are consistently busy and have a constant flow of new customers. I see absolutely no reason to lower our service prices so we can make even less profit on an already low profit part of our business.
It's pretty obvious to me that [MENTION=2159]surreal[/MENTION] has some pretty firm ideas about how retail works, but they're not very realistic.

Heh...The Call Girl Principle in action. The principle states that, "The value of a service rendered diminishes rapidly once the service has been performed".

There is a reason plumbers, lawyers and ladies of the evening negotiate their prices upfront.

My wife broke a spoke on her bike and the LBS quoted her $35, so that sounds about right. I pulled the broken spoke for her, sent her back to the shop with it and she returned with a handful of replacements. Since then it's just 10-15 minutes of work at home to replace it.

The ones that drop everything the moment he walks in the door to make him the #1 priority, put his bike to the front of the line of bikes to be worked on, all work takes less than 10 minutes so he does not have to wait long, and it is free.

Oh, right, it is an imaginary ideal that could never exist, and if it did, it would not be there long. To be clear - this is a round-about way of saying that the expectations are beyond unrealistic - the bike shops "killing it" are a product of Surreal's imagination, and they are not limited to the rules which pertain to the real world.

10 bucks to strip a tire/tube tape off rim, replace spoke, reinstall all, check or true ? all for 10 bucks. wow that's a deal.
if he's a legit shop, store front, he must be booked out for weeks.