[Closed] Supporting LBS

Are they fitting it all for the RRP or are you just buying it and doing it yourself?

I believe Madison now allow bike shops that have an account with them to price match with the likes of CRC. I'm not sure if there is different 'tiers' of accounts though, my LBS seems to have some kind of big tie in with Madison, and they price match.

I'd have turned you away for use of the psuedo-word groupo

We can't really discount stuff like that at all. I'd fit it for free, yes, but you can buy privately for less than the price we can get it from Madison. Until Shimano etc stop shafting us by selling cheap to third parties, this won't change. I get why customers go elsewhere. I do it myself, but the industry is killing the bike shops.

Nope fitting it all myself so purely parts.

Trouble is CRC and Wiggle don't list boost parts either, only EU shops so nobody will price match these parts. The EU shops are selling for the same price as non boost so my assumption is that the buy price is identical.

How much is it on eu sites out of interest?.

@peterproddy are you trying to say there is so little profit in £1600 of high end parts that you'd actually lose money? I simply don't believe that.

I believe Madison now allow bike shops that have an account with them to price match with the likes of CRC

I've seen price match on the B2B, I'm thinking of testing them against CRC, does anyone know if they'll actually do this, I mean, to for us to match CRC prices and make a reasonable margin, Madison would have to halve their trade prices in a lot of cases.....

Madison don't have a full group offer on at the moment which means the margins are crap.

speak to your rep peterpoddy. theyre usually pretty accommodating.

@peterproddy are you trying to say there is so little profit in £1600 of high end parts that you'd actually lose money? I simply don't believe that.

Give me the full list and I'll price it up more accurately but off the top of my head I'd imagine there's about £450 for an LBS on that sale, so there's not a lot of room to discount no.

Crankset (single, boost) is €342 (£289)while LBS sells the non boost for £263 rrp is £329. Hubs a similar story. I am not paying U.K. RRP for something I know never sells for that price!

that said the only lbs' that youll find with a decent stock of shimano these days are Madison partner stores. the scheme doesn't help much with pricing as such but it makes stock availability so much easier.

You've got to vote with your feet really, this idea that we should pay 20-30% more to support our local bike shops in case one day we might need them and they've got doesn't work for me, all markets will be served, it's the way of business.

They're in no better or worse a position than any other physical retailer, in fact I'd rather sell things that people buy heart over head in 2017 than everyday necessities devoid of emotion against the Amazons of the world.

They need to become a value added retailer - if they want RRP then what are they offering over and above CRC? They can't just box shift and expect to get by on good intentions and the idea that a we're a 'community' because we share a hobby.

If they offered to fit it all, build the wheels, make sure it's running perfectly then of course they can charge more - it's what we do - I sell IT equipment to business, it's a brutally competitive market, if someone calls me and says "I need 25 PCs can you beat Dell?" I have to say no, how can I? I sell a few thousand PCs a year, they sell thousands an hour. If they say "I need 25 PCs to do this job, they have to work in a certain way, they need an expected working life of 5 years, they need this software installed, they need this security measures can you give me that?" Then I can, yeah a few will moan when they get the quote "I could buy all this much cheaper online!!!" yeah, but you didn't know what you wanted and it'll won't do what you want it to do out of the box.

If you want to support a Bike Shop, you have to let them add value, they can't compete on box shifting unless you need it NOW and they have it.

If someone offered me £450 I'd take it happily. That covers someone's wages for the day...

not if the part cost £430 to buy it doesn't.

@pj I don't need value from them I need them to transact business. I don't even need advice. This will boost their revenues and give them profit as well as appearing bigger to their suppliers so potentially getting better deals for themselves in future.
It's literally a case of handing them money and them saying no thanks.

@toppers he said that was the margin. That means profit essentially since they need do almost nothing for that transaction.

then he's daft and you're correct.

I'd imagine there's about £450 for an LBS on that sale, so there's not a lot of room to discount no

lustyd - Member

@toppers he said that was the margin. That means profit essentially

Erm...rent, wages, other costs...

Those are already paid cynic-al. This is free business on top of what they usually sell. They literally just need to transact it and they get extra money.

If someone came to my house and offered me up front payment of £450 plus the cost of goods I'd order from Amazon on their behalf!

£450 minus the discount you were expecting. So not actually £450 then. They were happy to do it for that amount.

Found that most shops like you to have a track record of spending money and not causing issues. I used to get double the club discount at the sponsoring shop. As i spent lots, and never, ever caused them any headaches or wasted their time. Place order, wait for phone call, collect and pay, leave.

One guy caused so many headaches, the shop withdrew the discount so he'd stop coming in.
Returning 3 month old lightweight race tyres that he'd been using for commuting and complaining that they were worn out, insisting on the supplier getting involved with the warranty claim (emailing them directly), then buying another set of flavour of the month race tyres (against shop advice) then doing the same 3 months later. And getting his discount on both sets.

I still got double the discount after it'd had been "withdrawn". Dickhead never got his warranty claims approved either.

I was the only customer in the shop, even if the profit dropped to £300 that's 300 more than they were making before.
I'm fine with it, but I'll be giving a very different response when people tell me to support my LBS in future. This would have been the 4th high end group set plus one bike from them I've bought in a year so it's not like I'm not worth looking after!
Let's support the retailers who want to stay in business through good business decisions 😆

Those are already paid cynic-al. This is free business on top of what they usually sell. They literally just need to transact it and they get extra money.

Already paid... by selling products to customers and using the proceeds to pay for rent, wages, other costs...

You're claiming a shop shouldn't attempt to make any margin on a sale to you because they're making enough margin on sales to other people?

Or are you claiming that because your sale is an easy one they shouldn't expect their usual return on it? What about when one of your high end, awkward to source parts fails in some way, who has to deal with the warranty angst?

Or perhaps the margin they make on your sale helps subsidise the hour their mechanic spent trying to find and fit a suitable inner tube to the motability scooter somebody brought in, despite only charging a fiver because it's a 'puncture repair'*

Supporting LBS isn't free unfortunately.

*this happened to us, not just a mad random example

@ghostlymachine I've spent thousands in there in the last couple of years and never returned anything or complained. Never even needed advice from them as I do it all myself. Like I say, free money

Swings and roundabouts? My old lbs would have honest pricing discussions I've seen the readers prices on stuff. At one point merlin were selling forks for less than trade here. Lbs said buy them I would. Other stuff they have got me some good deals on, when everything was giving out managed to put a whole pile of parts and shoes through on the interest free deal to spread the cost. No discount but got to pay it slowly. They also did so much labour and tools that the parts discount wasn't worth it.

@13thfloormonk I'm not asking for crazy discounts though I'm asking for what would be normal price for the items if they were stocked. Nobody ever pays RRP for bike parts in the UK, and it's easy to see what would and would not put them out of business by prices of every other product compared to retail. If bike shops can sell £2k bikes at £1k because they are last years model then 10% off a crankset is surely doable!

They are welcome to price at whatever level they think the market will stand. The issue isn't customers letting down their LBS by ordering online, it is manufacturers shafting the LBS by selling to them at signficantly higher than online prices.

@13thfloormonk I'm not asking for crazy discounts though I'm asking for what would be normal price for the items if they were stocked. Nobody ever pays RRP for bike parts in the UK, and it's easy to see what would and would not put them out of business by prices of every other product compared to retail. If bike shops can sell £2k bikes at £1k because they are last years model then 10% off a crankset is surely doable!

I don't agree that people don't pay RRP in the UK. So you would do the deal for £1440?

Those are already paid cynic-al. This is free business on top of what they usually sell.

You could say that about every transaction then. When does a sale become a 'free' sale. That groupset could be the only thing they sell all day.

You need to watch your margins on every sale, those in business who don't soon fail.

[Quote="lustyd"]Never even needed advice from them as I do it all myself. Like I say, free moneywhich is why these days i just get it from the cheapest box shifter i possibly can. Even with the discounts it's more expensive than Germany.

@moe I can't even find parts listed for RRP in the uk. Look at any bike shop price list and compare to RRP.
@muffinman and now they don't even have that sale. See my point? If I'd needed them to recommend parts, look up part numbers, if it was something oddball I wouldn't have an issue. This is Shimano kit that just happens not to be on their list probably because they couldn't be arsed adding it.

On a much cheaper LBS point I ordered a cassette click and collect from my lbs because they have several branches and I wanted to make sure it was in stock in my nearest branch. When I went to fetch it it was priced up six quid more than I payed on line! So if I had wandered in and bought it off the shelf it would have cost more . Isn't this a bit odd?

I really want to support LBS's and I try and buy bits and bobs from them from time to time. I just struggle with paying 30+% more on big purchases, such as drivetrains, forks and bikes. Luckily my taste in bikes often means the LBS isn't much more, and sometimes cheaper, than online options.
[u]
FOG-[/u] most bricks and motor shops in most industries do this, particularly chains. I always get a discount ordering online, plus you can stack discounts.
In the past I checked whether a part was in stock, wondered to the shop and its been £10 more than online. They weren't able to match the online price because 'computer says no', so I had to order then and there from my phone for click and collect.

Ignoring the online prices aspect - You basically wanted to make a large purchase of multiple products up to a value of around £1600, and that you thought they may be able to offer a deal for the whole lot with a slight discount off RRP. Its actually not an unreasonable request on your part, and probably a token gesture would have done it?

Its an odd one, you may actually have inadvertently put them on the defensive by mentioning online prices, could have been better off without that. Many businesses just don't believe in discount (we very very rarely discount anything) believing it to be a slippery slope, they could subscribe this notion.

lustyd - Member

Those are already paid cynic-al. This is free business on top of what they usually sell. They literally just need to transact it and they get extra money.

Ranting customer in "clueless about retail" shocker!

I ask my lbs to get stuff in all the time, I'm never charged RRP, but I've used them for years, and have also sent a hell of a lot of people there.

If I had done all that, and they still charged me RRP (And Cynic al's overheads) I'd be going elsewhere...

Ranting customer in "clueless about retail" shocker!

Yup, I may be clueless, but someone has to take this profit and I thought I would offer it to them first since they've served me well other the last few thousand quid. In this instance they didn't even want to have a conversation about it, so Germany will improve their economy slightly instead and the UK will lose out again. The EU isn't the reason this country is doing badly, the British are!

Interesting discussion.

So the RRP on the parts is £1600 and PP reckons there is £440 of margin to the LBS in selling them to you at the that price. Or at least I think he does - is VAT worked into that?

OP - so what number on an RRP of £1600 would have made you hand over your credit card (who would of course take a percentage of what you are paying your LBS too)? How much of a discount do you think you deserve and what margin do you think it would be reasonable for the LBS to make to be worth their while? Whilst the initial order/purchase would not be a lot of work there is always a potential extra work with warranty returns etc for them to deal with.

To be honest you (like me) don't sound like the ideal LBS customer - the service they can add (fitting etc) to make the transaction have value is not something you want.

For clarity what is the best UK 'box shifter' price you could have got what you need from or is it just not available at all from them?

lusty I do think you have a point, the LBS is not going to get the sale without discounting. But even selling at RRP, most LBS staff are on near min wage.

Or are you claiming that because your sale is an easy one they shouldn't expect their usual return on it?

The way you express this makes it sound as if you think you are entitled to that usual return on every sale. Just because you have a 'usual return', that does not automatically make the price for any given item 'fair' or even reasonable.

What about when one of your high end, awkward to source parts fails in some way, who has to deal with the warranty angst?

How often do XTR components go back for warranty? The more common it is, the stronger your point, but the rise of the online box shifters, including the german retailers, suggests that the products are sufficiently reliable for consumers to accept poor or even no after sales (warranty) service, because failures are so infrequent.

Or perhaps the margin they make on your sale helps subsidise the hour their mechanic spent trying to find and fit a suitable inner tube to the motability scooter somebody brought in, despite only charging a fiver because it's a 'puncture repair'*

Can you not see what is wrong with what you are saying? You mention it was a [u]motability[/u] scooter presumably because it shows how charitable you were in charging way below what the job was worth. So you decided not to demand your 'usual return' on that job, and you expect the OP to pay top price on what is in many respects a commodity, so that you can pick and choose when to cut your margins on the workshop activity which is key to a LBS. I'm sure the motability scooter owner will praise your shop to the sky to all his mates, and they too will bring their scooters and BSOs to you expecting cheap repairs. In the meantime, those like the OP who spend large amounts of money on their bikes and kit, and to whom sales are in your words, easy ones, will go online, buy what they want, and fit it themselves. And as for after sales problems, the online retailers have increasingly improved their service compared with mail order 20 or even 10 years ago, and they make it as easy as possible to deal with them.

Wish I could run my business on 40% margin.