I wish we all had shops like that. Dutret may not. I know of one, buts its a ***** to get to and never open when I need it. The vast majority of the shops in my area actually sell a lot of stuff above MSRP, and would never give you any kind of special deal...period, no matter how friendly you got with them. If you ever asked them to come down on a price, they'd probably laugh in your face. Personally, I'd rather support Nashbar than shops like that.

I agree with Fugazi and Dutret. The economics makes sense, plain and simple. Some people have different types of demands, so are willing to pay different prices. If you can change prices to accommodate these different demands, more profits for you.

Knowing a wholesale price will help in decision making. More information leads to more efficient choices. The shops who charge too much on top of wholesale are not maximizing profits as they would if they had greater volume with lower prices. Keeping these prices "trade secrets" just allows the greedy ones to take as much as they can before the smarter, efficient ones with lower prices over take them. Efficiency - ever heard of Milton Friedman? Are free markets too right wing for this forum?

This may favor the larger shops, with economies of scale, but small shops can also find their niche. What do small shops have to offer? Nothing much more than a large shop, sorry guys. The only thing they really have to offer are the people. I would pay double the prices at a LBS if the guys are super cool and knowledgeable compared to the dicks at Performance. LBSes are becoming a thing of the past. They have to become more aggressive and smarter; find what they are good at and make it better - carve out your own niche. It is sad to see a LBS close down, but thats just life. Winners and losers. If you don't want to be a loser then get ahead of the curve, or at least stay on the curve - start offering more on the internet. It may eat at the store front sales, but online sales will more than likely make up for it.

Go out and support your LBS if you can, but don't lose sleep over it. I love my LBS and will continue spending there for as long as I can, but I also know its limitations.

I was about to type +100, but that would include full retail markup. For this thread, +65!

A lot of people have explained why publishing wholesale prices would be bad for bike shops. Customers would be even bigger jerks, would talk more about what they read on the internet, etc etc.

But why would allowing wholesale prices to be published by forum members be bad for other BF users? Is it wrong for The New York Times to publish information about secret government programs because they received classified information from informants who were breaking the law by talking about them? My point is, it doesn't see to me like it's bikeforums.net's job to enforce these secrecy agreements -- that's between an employee, his boss, QBP, and an OP's conscience.

Finally, this is not a leading question, but an honest one: does publishing these QBP prices hurt online bike shops? Like, say, Bluesky Cycling, Bikeisland.com, or bikesdirect.com?

By the way, one of the threads that Brian closed is here,
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=314284
with ensuing discussion here:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=314667

I know all (many) of the Japanese wholesale prices, and can say that the shops in Japan make VERY slim margins on everything. So far from double mark-up, as a previous poster proposed.

Doesn't sound like you have a store front operation selling small ticket good like a bike shop does.

Holy Christ what a naive perception. Yes, in a small way your argument seems logical. You've created a fictional "overhead cost for the act of selling", ignoring the other costs associated with maintaining a business. Would you have your employer only pay you while you were actually performing in the act of working, reducing said pay based on time spent in the bathroom, talking with coworkers, retrieving office supplies, etc?

If they extend you this courtesy this time, then you'd of course pay "list" next time, right?

I'll give you +100, I do no markup on my support :D. C'mon, what's this about "error of his ways"-nonsense? You share trade secrets, helping other buyers. A whistleblower of kind.

Side note: the mods think they're so smart for editing other people's posts. They don't realize that one day, sooner or later, that'll plunge bikeforums.net owners in hot water. Someone is bound to publish something that a certain legal entity will find objectionable enough to sue. The owners of bikeforums.net will then WISH they could say "but we are not responsible for what the patrons post here". Yes, they wish they could say that, but they can't, because the answer will be "the fsck you don't - you have a history of regularly editing your patron's posts, that makes YOU directly responsible for EVERYTHING tha appears here. No cigar, see you in court.". Ad lawyerese liberally to make it more lawyerous.

If folks could make money running a shop where they consistently sold items below comfortable margins, there would be a shop on every corner. It's like natural selection; shop owners that are too stupid to stand their ground on profit margin simply go out of business.

If you don't buy it, someone else will. Don't assume you are the last bastion of hope for the shop to get rid of that part that you must have at a 30% discount. Your money is not greener than the next guy's.

From what I've understood shops make most of their money selling complete bikes and doing mechanical work, not selling bits and parts so it seems having no markup on those would really make it pretty worthless to even bother. A lot of people are willing to pay whatever price. If I want to find out wholesale I just ask a one of my friends. It's not hard to figure out. Being in good with shop people has always gotten me good deals. I'm usually satisfied if I can get parts from the shop online price plus would be shipping costs.

It's not fictional though it may be hard for some to grasp. This lack of intelligence or understanding is why so many small business owners run their businesses into the ground(or at least make much less than they could) by making stupid irrational decisions. There IS an incremental cost for each additional sale and things like employee break time should be amortized over the sales they can make to come up with this while rent and electricity should not.

When setting prices this cost should not be considered the same as static parts of overhead and once your prices are no longer fixed it should be the main consideration when bargaining with someone who is going to go elsewhere if you can't reach an agreement.

The fact is that people who are going to look online to find the wholesale cost of something to bargain with are either going to buy from an LBS at a reasonable price or buy online if the shop won't provide one. The person who is going to go in and be happy paying MSRP or 20% below MSRP won't even take the time to find the prices at online shops for comparison let alone search message boards for wholesale price lists. All keeping the lists from being posted accomplishes is making the haggling a bit more tedious for the former and encouraging the shop to blatantly lie which wastes everyones time. We're not talking about making $10 markup here in there instead of $30 but making $100 or $150 instead of $0 when I walk out on a $500+(msrp) order.

Regarding getting to know employees. I prefer to make friends with people in situations where they won't lose their jobs for not being friendly and once friends with someone I prefer to not pressure them into risking their jobs by extending their discount to me.

The principles of sales vis a vis dealer cost vs buyer cost remain the same, whether it's a storefront operation selling small items or a different kind of business selling primarily mid- or high-priced items. I have worked the sort of retail that you seem to be saying I don't know anything about, and the same principles hold true there as anywhere else.

Edit: Oh, and I wonder - just how much economic study and deep market research have you done? What have you done to keep up with the changing nature of retail and service markets? How about the changing nature of product information and how it is both disseminated on the web and how that affects the knowledge of the buyer? Hell, how about the basic psychology of sales and what people buy and why? I

but but

unless you have specifically sold a 26" innertube to a guy who is demanding you price match an online store for a deda stem then your experience isnt applicable here

Oh, wait, your right. I'll just go back to my burgeoning entrepreneurial activities and sulk amidst my growth potential.

I work in a bike store and have something like 45% discount. I bought an item the other day and later discovered that I paid the same price (after discount) as all other stores charge for the same item.
So mark up for this thing is around 500%.
As for internet prices. Well, if you live in Canada, then most of the time it is not worth buying from ebay even though the price may seem "awesome". With shipment you'll often end up paying more than at a local store.

supply and demand...

in any business it's assumed that they are getting it for a cheaper price than what they are selling it for. if people are willing to pay it, then power to the business....

when i worked at a clothing store which sold it's clothes for 2x as much as a competitor with literally the same products (im sure some of you can guess where i worked in highschool), i asked the manager why and he literally said to me , "as long as girls/guys keep walking in with their parents credit cards, and are buying shirts for 40$, there is NO reason for us to lower our prices..."

talk about infalted prices...look at the clothing industry...

supply and demand...

Just to clarify, generally, business have 2 major categorical costs; Fixed cost and variable cost. Fixed costs involve the lights, a/c, rent, employees, insurance, everything that costs money whether or not you sell a single item. Then, you have variable cost; this is what you pay for the item you sell. FC+VC=TC of operation. This is how economies of scale work.

Solution: buy Shimano! Also, a better product.

wot ? buy shimano cranks which are probably made by sugino ?

huh? shimano makes their own stuff... the DA's are better cranks than the 75's though, agreed there.

Also considerably more expensive, especially if you want Octalink.

sugino definitely used to make shimano's cranks
not sure about the current stuff

but i'd heard the trend was for many manufacturers to move towards sourcing cranks from sugino or at least the forged blanks