must be. I just don’t see any other way for the variation.

The CRC chainsets come in a brown box with a CRC logo on and a barcode product label so I guess they buy them in bulk and box them up themselves. However I am also guessing the one you buy at the LBS will come in a full retail box with the usual stacks of shimano instructions for every language under the sun?

I know it’s nice to get something shiny in a nice box but I prefer the brown box, download instructions if you need them route. Cheaper and better for the environment.

Oh and one word of warning for anyone ordering from CRC – the last 2 SLX chainsets I had from them both had the plastic pre-load nut missing.

I suppose if they are bypassing the normal import route then it is slightly understandable why shop owners who have to buy from the distribute will be getting pi**ed off. Still no excuse to take it out on the unsuspecting punter though who doesnt know any different.

I am guessing CRC warranty the parts themselves then as they are big enough to soak up the costs unlike an LBs who would have to go back to the distributor who then goes back to Shimano?

On a lot of stuff it’s not just the packaging that’s different.

Madison would want about £100 from an independent bike shop for an SLX chainset.

I think it is odd that people don’t think it is rude to ask for a discount based on the price asked by one of the worlds biggest cycle retailers. In many cases the person working in the shop (most likely earning about £6/ph) is placed in the awkward position of having to say, ‘no.

I think Americans or psychiatrists or someone would describe it as passive aggressive.

Are we confusing markup and margin? Margin is usually the gross profit expressed as % of the selling price eg a margin of 33% on a £150 is £50, so the buying in price was £100. This same item could be described as having a 50% markup to get the same selling price.

The bikes we sold typically had a margin of 30-35%, whilst components had a margin of 45-55%; note a 50% margin is a 100% markup

Maybe the margins have come down…?

The funny thing is we used to get laughed at by our clothing suppliers who would suggest a markup of 235-300% ….

Hi,

I have similar issues with my LBS, a well known one in Sheffield. If you ring or go in person they can be intimidating. If you’re after parts they often refer you to the workshop: I used to be in the army and I remember marching timidly up a corridor to recieve my meagre pay from the platoon sargeant – feeling gulity to ask for my pay even though I’d busted my ass for it and was entitled to recieve it. I have a similar feeling walking up to the grumpy bastards in the workshop of said LBS! They once made me feel one inch tall (in front of an audience) when I asked them to send my forks to Fisher Outdoors for a service (the rockshock distributer)- a procedure which Fisher hapily pay for. I’m 33 years old, 6 feet tall and nearly 16 stone – I’m not a child! Their rival LBS were only too happy to send them for me.

It’s got to the point where I go to their often more expenisve but helpful rivals, so I don’t have to suffer the ritual humillation of asking for a part.

If the LBS is to survive, they need to offer what web companies can’t – personal service.

Some shops have become so established that they feel they can select customers who they think are worthy; those that can talk the talk or flash the wallet.

My loyalty for this particualar LBS has sadly vanished, making buying from CRC feel more ethical.

Al

price match is ‘like for like’ after all and retail box V oem parts is not like for like.

Rose stuff also comes in clear plastic bags.

I am starting to feel sorry for the LBS trying to compete…but the ones who actually ‘try’. Some i won’t use again.

Also oem is massively cheaper to the companies that can get it eg merlin who get it for their own brand bikes, they might just over order 😉

Pauly – it does depend what components you’re referring to? An xt cassette is an xt cassette, oem or retail. Forks are the item that springs to mind that often will have differences

Hence ‘a lot of stuff’.

edit: XTR BB – RRP £48, CRC price £38, Rose £16. If you go into somewhere that sells them at RRP then you have money to burn! (obviously as you are buying XTR!)

RRP is £39.99
Madison trade price is a fair chunk higher than the Rose price you have quoted.

took the RRP from CRCs page. I thought it was a bit high.

oooh, I think I might ride out and pay a visit to the poorly-disguised shop in question tomorrow or friday, for all his randomness and hot temper, if i am going to pay £25 for some gloves I’d rather hand £25 in real money to him than £23 to an internet shop. *waves*

Maybe I didn’t explain my point very well, so here goes; I’d have thought the items that are sold the most* eg bb, mechs, shifters, cassettes, cranks, brakes etc – there’ll be no difference

*bit of guess these out sell forks

The CRC chainsets come in a brown box with a CRC logo on and a barcode product label so I guess they buy them in bulk and box them up themselves. However I am also guessing the one you buy at the LBS will come in a full retail box with the usual stacks of shimano instructions for every language under the sun?

My SLX chain set turned up in a silver retail box……..which did surprise me.

I have a LBS that can be really good and can be very helpful, but it depends who you speak too which is a pain as sometimes you get discount and other times not a penny and they charge way over the odds Shimano Deore cassette springs to mind wanted £40 CRC wanted £16 tried the other bike shop and they wanted retail which i didn’t mind paying £29.99 as I was in a hurry. I will admit most of my stuff comes from the online retailers for this reason.

Do you get people in front of you and on the phone asking you to compromise how well you work?

Yes. Its business. I’m sure when ‘LBS’s buy stock they have a conversation with the Account Manager for the brand on payment terms for flexibility and on price for any sort of pre-order discount.

Yes you wouldn’t walk into Tesco’s and haggle but then again on expensive purchases why not?

Yes. Its business

+1

I do plenty of work as a consultant at a small firm for less than our ‘advertised’ prices, additional work for free, etc

In terms of the bike shop in question it’s up to him if that’s how he wants to deal with customers. Maybe he doesn’t need to price match if he does enough business by adding value somehow instead of dropping prices for people randomly calling on the phone.

I can’t blame him for being rude on the phone, it’s very annoying to have to answer the phone to someone wanting him to deliver components at CRC prices (which means much smaller margin – if at all!), especially when he’s probably had people doing it all day and not giving him any money nor business.
On the other hand, the only real selling point shops now have over online is customer service and there’s several shops I now won’t use as they’ve either spoken to me like an idiot (no thank you, I ran a bike shop for several years!) or have just been outright rude.

If I am going to buy something online, I make sure I can fit it myself and if I need to try something on for size I buy it from the retailer I tried it on at.

Just don’t go there again. Theres a shop here in Manchester I wouldn’t shop at.

Poor little LBS, how dare the OP think they are a business when in fact we should be treating it as a charity case!

All he had to do was say sorry I can’t match, but i’ll try and look after you etc etc, but instead he decided to throw away a potential customer

As to shop owners above saying its rude to ask for price match, get a grip you all work in the same industry, CRC are your competitor.

A recent example I had, I just bought a bike online with £600 discount. I wanted to but it from lbs, I spoke to a very polite woman at lbs who said sorry we can’t get near that price, its a very good deal I would buy from them, but if you need any advice about it in the future just pop in. Just in being polite and honest she has secured them business in the future

The bike shop is mainly in the wrong, you shouldn’t really get angry at the customers.

I work in a LBS, we do our best to price match.

This is a typical example, customer comes in, “have to got ….”, “yes it’s …”, “CRC have got it at ..”, “ok i’ll check what we can do it at”, checks computer, what we paid for it is 10% more than CRC are selling it at, “sorry the best we can do it at (quotes price running at a measly margin, relying on return trade), “i’ll order from CRC then, i wont be coming back”. This happens a lot.

LBS are not trying to rip the customer off, they simply cant afford to sell stuff at little profit or at a loss. CRC/Rose/Merlin get cheap OEM stock or bulk buy so pay far less for stock than a LBS.

I hope the OP can appreciate why the salesperson maybe a little wound up.

Dean – I don’t think people genuinely realise that you pay more than CRC, you could maybe tell the customer that?

Surely the business model is wrong though if you have to pay more than CRC? Also I have one LbS which is competitive on the whole to crc, how come they can do it and other lbs can’t?

They day you are rude to customers/potential new customers is the day you have too much business on your hands.

FunkyDunc – That one lbs that you know of that has prices close to CRC on the whole, will just be taking it in the ass, sucking it up, relying on building up a large customer base, going with a high volume/low margin approach. How long have they been going for, how big are they?

It’s only some things, not the whole lot that a LBS will be paying more than CRC sales price, but it is a normal occurance.

I know margins of 50% have been quoted in this thread, the most my LBS sees is 35% based on rrp, but that on a minority of stock. Low to mid price stuff typically runs 25-30%, high end runs 20-25% all based on rrp.

Then consider that CRC/merlin commonly run stuff at 35-40% off rrp.

Then to put this into perspective, I get stuff at trade as a staff perk, but i still do some shopping at CRC.

It’s not the business model that’s wrong, it’s the supply chain management and privately owned distribution company dividend needs!!

Most distributors have varying pricing levels, based on volume sales/commitments etc. A few buying strategies occur nowadays for the likes of CRC/Merlin/Some other onliners…..

– They buy direct from the manufacturers which cuts out the UK (or other European) distributors
– Their volumes are so high that they are given unique pricing levels, well away from what your average LBS will ever see
– They pre-order volumes which pre-define the pricing and the manufacturer becomes ‘reliant’ on their pre-orders (same old same old economies of scale at the production stage)
– They are the first port of call when a distributor has over-stock…..if in doubt/too much stock/struggling to pay their lines of credit, sell the lot to CRC!

Interesting times indeed! We were in a bike shop in Italy recently, small and friendly…..and noticed a large number of CRC boxes on the floor! I passed a comment to the shop opener about him having to use CRC as a supplier…..to wit he responded that in actual fact they were customer boxes waiting to be assembled!! He went on to lament about the Italian distributors not being able to get anywhere near CRC prices and that he often has people coming in now to ask him to look at the CRC site and help them with parts compatibility checks!! Mind you, they are Italians!

Ok so shouldn’t lbs’s be looking to miss out the costly distributor who is obviously making nice money for not much work? all group together and buy as one shimano etc, might not get as much discount as CRC but better than paying a middle man, and jumping up and down saying its just not fair….

There are many takes on this depening on what your thoughts are. However, there’s no excuse to be rude to people when you work in a shop – you can still say ‘no’ but in a polite way. If you work with the general public you have to put up with the cr*p – like it or not. If you don’t want the cr*p then don’t work with the joe public.

My old LBS (where I also used to work!) was always very anti to anyone coming in, asking for mail order parts to be fitted. My take was charge the customer for the fitting (but make it clear you won’t warranty the parts etc), and at least make some money from them – you can’t win them all but you can at least get some, and you may get more custom from them in the future. And as people keeping repeating, if you’re anti from the start, you lose that customer FOR EVER. If you try and help/meet them half way, then they are more willing to give you a go and pay a bit more, at times, to buy from the LBS. My new LBS isn’t the cheapest, but try to get close and they’re fanatsic on help even with parts that haven’t been bought from them. So I try to support them as much as I can, and am always telling people to give them a go.

Money is money at the end of the day – most of us don’t have cash to throw around. Plus we also live in the globalised world with internet and online sales. The world is changing and the clever LBS keeps up and keeps evolving.

It’s not as simple as that and I’m not sure that all small LBSs are jumping up and down!!

Good distributors are there to do their jobs – carry stock, support warranty, champion brands, tie-up their cash in product with the associated risk/exposure, and provide marketed channel distribution. It’s a different business to retail. Nowadays it’s harder than ever for them too as there are arguably too many trend driven products and fickle customers.

CRC are well on their way vertically within the industry and as soon as their shops get some traction too…..I’m going on a permanent holiday…..buying my components no doubt from CRC!!

strike a local auto garage said they would only fit parts that they sourced. Funnily enough they quoted £197+VAT for the part that Europarts only asked £70 (no +VAT) for.

When I brazenly pointed this out they said ‘its our rules on safety’. Yet I know of two garages that will happily fit salvage parts to my old cars in exchange for good labour rates and continual business.

The fact of the matter is the LBS has to offer something the on-line retailer doesn’t for people to go there. The logical step is to go with which ever option gives you the most for your money. Buying a bike ATM from three different bike shops. I got together a spread sheet of the components I wanted at the best possible prices then got two shops to see if they could get close to it. One shop got close to the price, offered me a test ride on a smaller size model they had in stock and offered to build it up all of the back of one phone conversation, not rocket science that I chose them. Looking for a saddle in another shop and they let me try out 10ish test saddles in the shop on a turbo and let me take a test saddle for a month, I’ll happily use them again. If I hadn’t gained these extra things from going to an actual shop then why on earth would I bother spending extra over on-line? Shops probably can’t get close to online prices but they should be fighting for your custom and the proactive ones always get me through the door.

Iain

Hora – you’ve got to love the whole car industry (that’s another topic all on it’s own).

I only know of one bike shop who has ever refused to fit parts they didn’t sell on the grounds of safety (and I don’t think they’d ever seen a pair of fork worth more than £50!!!!).

Labour rates alone can be a good earner. I don’t understand any business that turns a customer away.

as a dealer the attraction of a buying group is a very interesting but unfortunately its only worked in few small instances…partly because we all have very different views and no-one in the trade seems to agree…

ive never been rude to a customer like the op experienced but the constant price match coversation can be a bit wearing.we do it but within parameters of making something.the bottom line is that the majority of you guys who read this are not the ones lbs should be targeting as your competent with tools/kit

The industry is a mess and the traditional LBS is getting a poor deal.
They dont have the cash flow or buying power to get bulk deals, they have to go through UK distributors for key stock. (warranty backup being one reason)

I see the rise of big companies like CRC, wiggle etc dominating the high end market and the LBS being lost apart from the shops where selling bikes isnt the main business model, or selling cheap family bikes is profitable.

Im re-evaluating our approach to our shops and looking into possibilities of dealing direct with manufacturers in the far east, and selling our onw branded kit, amongst other things.

One thing is for sure, that a lot of people are merely driven by price and the LBS will do ok if it can compete on key items.
Also CRC often only discount 8-10% and matching this is ok.
And this is often from their wildly over inflated RRPs anyway.
(Yeti ASX RRP £1899, it never cost more than a grand.)

Its a realy tough business to be in.
But Im lucky, the guys in our shops have politeness and customer service by the bucketful.

Interesting to see the discussion above about the economics/business strategy/future of LBS in the UK. I’m in Australia, and we’ve seen the independent LBS all but wiped out over the last decade, to be replaced by large national chains who work on a different business model. They do have the purchasing power to get good discounts from wholesalers, centralise their maintenance to a few regional workshops, have moved into ‘own brand’ bikes, rationalise their stock to just the stuff they know sells well and has decent margins, and utilise all the latest consumer marketing/loyalty techniques like email newsletters, sales for regular customers etc. like CRC and Wiggle do.

Do you have this yet in the UK? Seems to me its probably the only way to go to compete with the online retailers, but it does mean the end of the friendly local ‘alladins cave’ of bicycle bits LBS that we all know and love…

I think Evans are the main shop that is doing what you say along with Edinburgh.
It would be a shame if the UK goes how you describe in Australia.

But m interested to hear from distributors on what they are trying to do in this as they could be the biggest losers.

but it does mean the end of the friendly local ‘alladins cave’ of bicycle bits LBS that we all know and love

You mean those shops that sell everything at RRP and give loyal customers hot cups of tea that’ll cost them 20p to make?

I welcome changes and competition. Lots of close outs and deals. Break the power of the Distributors.

Sancho, gotta say that distributors in general are an endangered species – its just evolution – the supply chain is flattening out! Manufacturers have a role to play, and so do retailers, but distributors are an anachronism from the days when you couldn’t fly to Shanghai to talk to the factory personally, didn’t have supply chain logistics companies to drop ship the product, and couldn’t speak to an international customer base over the internet. They’ve all but disappeared in my industry, and IMHO its high time they did in the bicycle component industry as well, as they just make it more expensive for us consumers, and add little value.

I think the distributors have done a great job over the years, but the industry is changing and Im not sure how they will get on.
Look at Kona pulling out of Paligap and now distributing centrally in Europe.
The prices are still the same.

The prices are still the same

The markets there to suppport the prices here. Why drop them if no one else does?

Plus us British like to think of bikes as ‘they’re worth it’ don’t we?