It doesn't matter if they have a location near you. They very much are an LBS IN Walnut Creek that happens to maintain an online presence. In this day and age almost everyone is an online retailer.

Whether or not Rivendell is an LBS is completely irrelevant to this discussion. I don't care about bike shops that are actually local to me. I certainly don't care about one in a city I will never even visit. I kinda care about Rivendell only because they are an online retailer.

I owe one to Grant. Solved a lot of skin issues with Grandpas Pine Tar soap. Regularly sourced from Riv until a local store brought it in. As for bike parts everything comes from my local bike shop. I like to keep my neighbors employed. Hope he generates enough mula to do the hula!

A nifty cap is headed my way after seeing this. I will never own a R-Dell but I appreciate their presence in the cycling world and hope that this is the wake up call their business needs to right the ship.

Page check: 5 and counting.

Did my bit to help GP out. MB-0 and XO-1 in the fleet both graciously signed by Grant.

Tough niche. Granted (pun), very cool niche. I am a little out of my element here but from what I see he builds bikes/parts for the average person. Bikes have been built that way forever, very few race professionally. Seems to be geared toward Rando/Gravel? but those are not mainstream as Walmart doesn't carry rando bikes for someone to want to upgrade to. And many here said they are great and will help, but also said they have no plans of actually buying anything. And this is the group that likes stylish bikes, but retro style doesn't seem to get a much traction due to everyone wanting the original stuff and buying it as a find.

Not trying to be a jerk, just an outside opine as I am not for or against Rivendell. I do hope it works out for him, but either way he has had a fantastic run to be proud of.

+1

And 4,000 + views. OMG

Kingston has made his argument all through this thread, he doesn't give a damn about his own LBS much less someone else's, just whoever is the cheapest.
He wants the guy selling out of his garage making a quarter off of each transaction rather than the guy who will get on the phone and help when you need it.

This is too bad, hopefully this works. I did my part.

I don't begrudge anyone trying to find the cheapest price for anything (as long as it's legal). I do have an issue with someone sucking all the info they can get from an LBS or on the phone, then turning around and buying it at the cheapest site. Nothing I can do about it, but it's just not a nice way to do business.

It's Kingston's money to spend in a free market economy. I don't try and impose my values on someone else. I have a favorite shop in town that I try and buy everything I can from, because I want them around for all the free advice they give me. I'm at a place in my life that spending 10-20% more on a relatively inexpensive hobby won't make a difference to me or my family's quality of life. I follow the GP advice that whenever I go into a bike shop, I'll always spend a few bucks, even if it's only a tube or a patch kit. I encourage others to do the same, but don't fault anyone for not doing so.

True enough I suppose; FWIW I would love to own a Rivendell because they will accommodate much larger tires as a rule than most vintage bikes will and I run the largest tires possible. Unfortunately I simply don't have the finances to purchases a Rivendell.

However this thread has me thinking that maybe I will sell my 81 Allez and a couple of other finds and finance that Sam Hillborne I have wanted.

Whatever I think about local bike shops is irrelevant to this discussion about Rivendell. Despite having a physical location, Rivendell is not a normal LBS. I assume that local sales is a small fraction of their total revenue. For all intents and purposes they are an online retailer with assembly and a showroom in Walnut Creek. If it makes you feel better I don't showroom local retailers of any kind, not just bike shops. If I look at something in their shop, I buy it in their shop. I don't spend extra at local shops if I don't value their services, which for local bike shops I don't.

Regarding Rivendell, it's a tough business model. Once you buy a one of their bikes you never really need another one, and you don't need to upgrade any of the parts unless they break, which rarely happens because they were spec'd for durability in the first place. I was looking for excuses to upgrade my sam hillborne so I could buy something, and it just doesn't need anything. I could get a silver crankset, but the sugino that's on there right now is perfectly fine, and I like the gearing better. It's a great bike and will continue to be so until I decide to sell it someday.

I bought a set of wheels from a guy last summer who had a Rambouillet that he bought new 15 years ago or whatever that he had ridden a lot (several SR's and a few grand brevets). It was virtually unchanged since the day he bought it. Even had the original shellacked bar tape. Tough to stay in business when repeat purchases are decades apart if ever.

Bad planning, over optimism (admitted to earlier in the thread) and under capitalization have sunk many businesses. With the economy doing well right now, unless practices change dramatically, long term will be in peril.

I bet you are a blast at birthdays for nieces and nephews.
"Now little Timmy, i was going to a $25 itunes card because you are a teen and your phone is your life, but instead i got you $25 in cash since gift cards are a grift(look that up, Timmy) and they redistribute wealth to corporations."

Little Timmy thanks you while also being confused since he will now have to go buy the giftcard with that cash to then turn it into itunes credit.

Rather than toss 'em in the box 'o crap, how about everyone buying a $10 gift card they don't think they're going to use pool them to form a raffle? If twenty of us play, that's $200, which might actually get used by the winner.

Of course, now that I think of it, it would be better for Grant if all those gift cards actually go unused. So maybe not.

**********

I really doubt he or any business owner wants charity.

There is already something for that. They are called charities.

I've purchased some really cool things from them in the past, hope they make it through this. In a world of behemoths, it's still very nice to have some little guys/gals around.

I realize he's not asking for charity, but selling gift cards for cash is a great deal for any business that can. Simply because a certain percentage of them will get lost, forgotten or just unused along the way. The only downside card issuer is having to carry the balance of unredeemed gift cards as a liability on the books until they are redeemed or they age out. (In my state, you're not allowed to put an expiry date on a gift card paid for with actual money, but for accounting purposes you're allowed to take 10% off the value of unredeemed gift certificates each year beginning one year past the issue date. Whether or not you choose to let the card redeemer enjoy the full face value of the card when he shows up 3 years later to get some merch is up to you).

As someone whose small business has donated several thousand dollars worth of gift certificates to charity auctions over the last 10 years, I will say I'm at least a little relieved to see that less than half of them ever get redeemed. It makes me feel like I can afford to keep being generous with such donations. I think issuers of gift cards in general are playing the odds a little bit that way.

I wonder if Rivendell is getting eaten up by the market niche they created. There are lower price real steel retro-ish products from VO and Soma, upper priced offerings from Compass, "corporate" brands like Surly and All City, and a bunch of small volume steel framebuilders that might not exist if not for Rivendell.

I've heard Grant talk about not wanting to attract Specialized and Trek into his niche, but maybe he overlooked this threat from below.

I'm in for a $10 card. You start the raffle.

OK, we'll do it.

And here's how we'll do it: everyone who wants to donate their $10 card to the raffle can PM me, and I will make a list. On or about 15 March 2018, I'll print out the handles of everyone who's entered on a piece of paper and have my lovely assistant pull one name out of a hat, old-school. If you are donating more than one card, you'll get more than one piece of paper in the hat. My name will not be in the hat. As a bonus, I will toss in a gift certificate for a free night at my hotel -- knowing it may never actually get redeemed; see my post above :)

I'll PM the winner, who can give me his or her address which I will forward to the card donors who will mail the cards to the winner. Or if the cards can be re-gifted electronically, we'll do it that way; whichever the participating donors prefer.

Honor system applies here; please don't play unless you have already ordered a Hail Mary and intend to give it up to whomever wins the drawing.

Edit: to be clear, I don't need your address until you win. Don't jinx yourself! :) Two PMs so far; the grand prize is up to $20

Sound good? Who's in? PM me, or post it up here.

Mixed feelings:

On the "loan them the money" side:
- I like Rivendell's bikes
- I like Lord of the Rings
- I like Grant Peterson's "buy what you actually need" philosophy
- I like that Rivendell refuses to sell crap, they sell what actually works and will actually last

On the "you know what, they made this bed and they should lie in it" side, they have a brand that:
- is completely on trend and arguably the instigator of the the whole adventure bike / Golden Saddlery / retro / John Prolly / pseudo-rando / Crust bikes / wide tires thing that so very hot right now
- carries a completely disproportionate amount of awareness given how many bikes they actually sell
- enjoys an enormous amount of goodwill among cycling cognoscente of a certain ilk
- is well differentiated, can charge a premium and people will pay
- has one of the few genuinely well known CEOs / heads

...and they managed to screw it up. Hire a business manager, fer Pete's sake.

I'm a bit conflicted in my views on Rivendell. I think they serve an important market, I'm just not sure it's particularly viable from a business sense, and particularly trying to keep it running in the bay area. I don't know what their rent / labor / utilities / insurance overhead is, other than it's probably double what it would be in other areas of the country. That is a pretty tough hurdle to overcome when, ultimately, all online retailers are fighting against Amazon. It's no accident their prices are 2x what you can find stuff for elsewhere. The only way that works is if you are selling something unique, that can't be sourced elsewhere. Other than their frames, I just don't see what they're selling that can't be bought elsewhere, or at least something pretty close.

There is also the problem that ultimately, their suggestions as to what you really need in a bike is about 95% in line with "buy an old mountain bike, and put some townie bars on it" Sure, their bikes have lugs and much better paint, but when you get down to it, they're competing directly against a $100 used MTB, with another $100-$200 in tires and parts. There are plenty of folks that want "A Rivendell", or aren't comfortable converting an old bike, but the fact that a converted MTB checks most of the boxes means that $300 bike is always there, keeping their prices suppressed. The Treks / Specializeds / Giants of the world don't have that problem. They've pretty successfully pushed the idea that you need more gears, and more carbon to be happy. There isn't any $300 equivalent of their $5,000 carbon sleds keeping their sales and prices down. (Personally, I think most of the race oriented crowd has been hoodwinked, but there are enough of them that the big guys don't need to worry about old bikes.)

I wouldn't mind having a Rivendell, I just can't see ever buying one, when vintage road bikes, or converted MTBs deliver so much, for so little. (Which really is the essence of their problem, in a business sense.)

All that being said, I have bought a few hail Mary's. I learned a ton from Grant via his website and Rivendell Readers when I was first starting out, and that's worth a lot to me. I don't agree with all his views, especially regarding tires, trail and frame stiffness, but there's still a lot to like.