Frustrated as well.

My LBS has been a family business since 1978. I have been a customer off and on since 1979 when I moved to the area when I was 13. The son who is my age now owns the place and he is a GREAT proponent for the area and does a ton for the community. I am a member of the local advocacy group that he is part of as a board member and a sponsor and on a first name basis.


I will probably never buy a bike from them. I buy all my bikes used and he doesn't sell much of what I am interested in such as racks, bags etc all though he will order anything I ask for.


That said they are a high end bike shop and cater to people riding Madone's not so much the budget commuter, self reliant type like myself. I try to give him the buisness whenever possible but when he is close to 70cents a spoke higher then I can buy online with free shipping for the same brand spoke it really adds up. When you are rebuilding set of 36 spoke wheels it is $50 bucks. I am about to do that again. I have put them on the spot and gotten some discounts.

What he has going for him is his people. They have always gone above and beyond and know me by name despite my average purchases being under $20 a visit.

Want to support him but I just cant afford it sometimes.

Being self reliant is detrimental to a LBS. What can ya do? Sometime's life's not fair. :) Keep in mind the majority of people on this forum are a minority with bike ownership. LBS's make a good deal of money changing flats, adjusting gears, tune-ups, etc.

Also, there are other ways to support. If you refer a customer and make sure they tell them "GRIM" sent me, it's worth more than any $20 part you could buy!

The problem is capitalism. Sort of. My LBS is great; they have good mechanics, they often do small jobs for free, and they even offer advice on how to make DIY repairs. They've been getting a lot more expensive lately, though, which has bothered me enough to complain to them about it. Their response? Rent. They don't actually own the building they are in, and the owner of the building has been relentlessly raising rents for the past couple of years. He can get away with it, too, because the neighborhood has gradually been transformed from small industrial to a collection of wine bars and places that sell Italian shoes for $400. The LBS, which is actually very popular, has responded by increasing their prices so they can pay the increased rents. They don't really want to leave the neighborhood, and since the neighbors are richer, they'll probably survive the price increases. The bottom line is that I pay more for a wheel build than I used to so that some rich guy who doesn't care about bikes at all can buy a nicer BMW. Like many others here, if I'm just buying parts for work I can do myself, I now just buy elsewhere.

That said, it's important to keep things in perspective. The LBS in question still gets a lot of business from me. I recently paid them $40 to do my brakes, because I hate doing brakes myself. It seems like a lot of money, but compared to the cost of a brake job for a car, it's sort of trivial.

Wrong.

The problem is the government trying to drive the economy and regulate private industry.

Why is the stock market up? because the government printed money to cover bad decisions in other areas as a result of their regulation instead of letting capitalism run its course and a few companies go under.

The government though programs like the "fair housing act" enabled people who had no business buying a house to buy one. The government regulated those evil bankers and became enablers through Fanny and Freddie. Then it tanked asshats like Barney Frank was saying nothing is wrong when the opposite was true but his Lover (that he got the job for) was making a killing over and Freddie Mac with his help in the government.

It drove up real estate values making the rent go up on the LBS. THEN to add insult to injury the goverment does stupid crap like "Quantative easing" that devalues the dollar. Sure it makes the stockmarket look great to the ignorant that dont understand that the reason the US stock market is up and a barrel of oil over $100 a barrel is the government made our dollar worth LESS on exchange rates with other countries making it harder for the small guy to be competative.

Bingo.
Prices are not really going up, dollars are going down.
Not that we should be going OT with the thread.

You've been watching too much Faux News, dude. This is pure baloney. The economy tanked for two primary reasons -- bad decisions by big business and LACK of effective government regulation. Funny how the conservatives caused the economic crisis and then turned around and blamed it on everyone else.

I generally go to my "lbs"(sorry noob here) for smaller parts like cables etc... but I try to do all the work on my own. I plan to take my newest bike(built up from frame/fork) in for a tune up to make sure I didn't eff up a lot.. It's a learning experience for me. The more I learn the less I'll have to rely on the interwebs/lbs/my know it all in Oregon.

Don't take it personally, for whatever reason they are pricing some components more than other shops, shop elsewhere as you need. If you are comparing their prices to mail-order and shops that don't specialize in rentals they're bound to come out higher to justify the low turnover. Not knowing the particulars of their business it's also possible they are under financial constraints to get as much as they can out of each sale, ie. rent went up, whatever. I've seen the same with a local shops. With some things it's worth it, some things it's not.

I have never needed any support from the LBS. The one time I went to them with a mechanical issue that I didn't think I could handle, they couldn't handle it either so I went home and found that I could handle it.

The markup is honestly pretty ridiculous. They have stuff marked up to 50% over suggested list price in many cases, which is double or more online prices.

I go there if I absolutely need something today. Otherwise I'm going online. Honestly, I don't even think I'll buy my bikes locally anymore. The only time I need something TODAY is if I'm on the road and something bad happens like I blow out the sidewall of a tire, though then I'm more likely to call for a ride. This has only happened to me once. The only thing I've bought from the LBS in the last 2 years has been a couple of tubes last week, because my family was going on a trip where bikes were mandatory equipment and I didn't have any spare tubes to send them off with.

We use QBP, Olympic, and we get items direct from certain companies. We would love to have the best prices in town but margin on a lot of bikes and components isn't that great.

". . . to feed the soul which has been compromised elsewhere in a Charlie Christian kinda way for their 'career'..."

Sure you don't mean Robert Johnson? Charlie did die way too young of TB but I don't recall hearing of any soul compromises on his part (like selling one's soul to an imaginary devil).

". . .one time I went to them. . ."

yeah. . .one time, one issue, all LBS = fail. . .???

The more people who go online to save a few bucks the more local businesses fail. The less local businesses there are, the less local jobs there are. The less local jobs there are, the higher unemployment is. The higher unemployment is, the more people who shop on line to save a few bucks whine about how the government is causing joblessness.

Go figure...

... and all preceded with "The more local shops who hike their prices, the more people go online to save a few bucks".

If you want to throw politics in you could precede that with "The more local government hikes local taxes, the more local shops hike their prices to stay afloat."

You are correct... I meant Robert Johnson. I've been making the same mistake over and over again for decades... seems like I'll keep condemning poor Charlie for years to come. Must be that I fancy the irony of a Christian selling his soul.

You've been listening too much NPR and MSNBC dude. Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

I don't generally go online to save a few bucks. I go online when prices are half or less of local prices. I paid $600 for my dishwasher at the locally owned appliance store instead of $450 at Best Buy (for the same model) to keep the money local. However, when it came to buying a 42" LCD TV a few years back, online I got the thing for $800, locally it was $1700 for the same model. Screw that.

Similar story with the LBS. I'm about to order a set of SPD compatible pedals and cleats for $35. Locally the cheapest set I can find is about $100. Sorry, not paying 3x as much. I'm also looking at a trailer. 2 wheel cargo trailers on eBay are $120 shipped. $300 locally. Again, close to 3x as much.

If the prices were anything like close, say up to 50% more, I'd buy locally. Or if the LBS was something I really needed, like if I had no ability to fix my own bike and really needed them to be around. But as I said up-thread, my experience is that the LBS are less competent wrenchers than I am.

One does not "watch" NPR... unless you love staring at radio speakers, I suppose. Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

FWIW (off-topic I know), I don't think the big businesses in Wall Street made bad decisions, at least not business-wise (which is all they care about). They were just arrogant and greedy, and the government bailouts in the end enabled them to get away with it (whilst "stabilizing" the economy - not necessarily a bad thing, but obviously a short-term gain only). Same with real estate and construction. I do agree Wall Street regulators didn't do their job though, and it was crazily easy to obtain housing credit before the crash.

I realize that this is just as off topic as the other replies above, but you realize that's not actually the case, don't you? The 'evil' rich guy in your scenario is likely not paying his employees the exact same rate that he paid them when you first got your wheel built. And the health care & other benefits he has been paying them likely cost him significantly more as well. I'm assuming that over the period of time that you reference, you have gotten a raise of some sort? The employees of the 'villan' with the BMW likely did too, which would raise his cost of doing business, aside from any other costs he may have had to absorb over the years.