LBS reasonable markup

Frank Krygowski

GS wrote:

> The whole topic got me wondering... how many on this group
> who are gung-ho on supporting the LBS don't support the
> local guy in other areas of their consumerism? I'll bet
> some of you here are on a Dell computer - bought through
> mailorder. Why not go to the local computer guy? You
> would've gotten much better service.

This computer was custom built for me by a local guy.

> Some of you probably buy your books and CDs on Amazon. Why
> not spend full-price at the mom and pop book store down on
> Main Street?

Sadly, we have no mom & pop bookstore within seven miles,
AFAIK. Barnes & Noble drove them out of business. Hell,
Barnes & Noble even drove Little Professor (another chain)
out of business here.

But FWIW, my all-time favorite bookstore is Powell's
in Portland OR. It's about 3000 miles from here, but
it's amazing!

> Ever send flowers or candy through 1-800-Flowers.com, or
> FTD.com? Why not go personally to the local florist or
> candy shop?

I've always gone personally to the local florist. But, sign
of the times: Their shop is now flattened to make room for a
Walgreens mega-chain drug store. :-(

> Even when you're not using mail order, sometimes your
> shopping patterns have just as much impact. Ever notice
> how the local hardware shop is now almost extinct? Yet we
> all willingly go to Home Depot because we know that their
> prices will always be the best and we can get everything
> we need in one shopping trip.

<sigh> About ten years ago, our terrific local hardware
chain, Stambaughs, folded in the face of competition from
Lowes and Home Depot. I still hate it. Lowes gives me my
choice of 18 styles of toilet paper holders, as if that
matters to me. Stambaughs used to carry every fastener
known to mankind, every obscure bit of hardware you could
ever need, sold by pleasant old guys who had been working
the hardware business since the 1950s. Now it's Lowes or
Home Depot.

> How many of us go to Starbucks instead of the small,
> privately owned coffee shop? The list goes on and on.

Sorry. I drink tea. Preferably oolong.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Pete

"tcmedara" <tcmedara@REMOVEhotmail.com> wrote
>
> The market speaks. If Home Depot didn't deliver what the
> majority of
people
> want then they wouldn't be so successful -- all conspiricy
> theories aside. It's kind of funny how you hear so much
> criticism about the Home Depots
and
> WalMarts of the world, but the parking lots are always
> full. Money talks -- these place attract customers and
> make money, that's a successful business model. Like it or
> not, that's just reality. Can't the LBS's of the world
> adapt to those circumstances?

If LBS's adopted the Walmart model, we'd have one.
Performance/Nashbar. Like it or lump it.

Pete

Pete

"Frank Krygowski" <frkrygow@mousepotato.com> wrote

> <sigh> About ten years ago, our terrific local hardware
> chain, Stambaughs, folded in the face of competition from
> Lowes and Home Depot. I still hate it. Lowes gives me my
> choice of 18 styles of toilet paper holders, as if that
> matters to me. Stambaughs used to carry every fastener
> known to mankind, every obscure bit of hardware you could
> ever need, sold by pleasant old guys who had been working
> the hardware business since the 1950s. Now it's Lowes or
> Home Depot.

Actually, Lowe's usually has that obscure bit of hardware or
fastener. The problem might be finding it, because that
pleasant old guy isn't ther to point you in the right
direction.

Pete

Claire Petersky

"Frank Krygowski" <frkrygow@mousepotato.com> wrote in message
news:40cfbb8c@news.ysu.edu...

> Sorry. I drink tea. Preferably oolong.

Oolong? You struck me as a sencha kind of guy.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky Please replace earthlink for mouse-potato
and .net for .com Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm See the
books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

Frank Krygowski

Claire Petersky wrote:

> "Frank Krygowski" <frkrygow@mousepotato.com> wrote in
> message news:40cfbb8c@news.ysu.edu...
>
>
>>Sorry. I drink tea. Preferably oolong.
>
>
> Oolong? You struck me as a sencha kind of guy.

I don't know what you can tell about a person by their tea
choice (as opposed to their tea leaves) - but I'm definitely
an Oolong kind of guy.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

David Reuteler

Claire Petersky <cpetersky@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
> Book store: I'm lucky enough that I have a used bookstore
> in my neighborhood, and a branch of the public library,
> as well as a Barnes & Noble. The library and the used
> bookstore get the first crack, but the B&N is there as
> back-up.

you shouldn't steal from the public library, claire. or at
least move them to the third place.
--
david reuteler reuteler@visi.com

Todd Kuzma

tcmedara wrote:

> The market speaks. If Home Depot didn't deliver what the
> majority of people want then they wouldn't be so
> successful -- all conspiricy theories aside. It's kind of
> funny how you hear so much criticism about the Home Depots
> and WalMarts of the world, but the parking lots are always
> full. Money talks -- these place attract customers and
> make money, that's a successful business model. Like it or
> not, that's just reality. Can't the LBS's of the world
> adapt to those circumstances?

The WalMart model is lowest price. That's it. Folks
don't really care if their underwear is made by 6-year
olds chained to sewing machines 20 hours a day as long
as it's cheap.

The downside of this business model is that we are a high-
wage country in a low-wage world. Just about everything that
we do can be done by somebody else cheaper.

Todd Kuzma Heron Bicycles Tullio's Big Dog Cyclery LaSalle,
Il 815-223-1776 http://www.heronbicycles.com
http://www.tullios.com

Matt O'Toole

Todd Kuzma wrote:

> The downside of this business model is that we are a high-
> wage country in a low-wage world. Just about everything
> that we do can be done by somebody else cheaper.

And yet, we still have one of the lowest unemployment rates,
and highest standards of living.

Matt O.

Todd Kuzma

Matt O'Toole wrote:
> Todd Kuzma wrote:
>
>>The downside of this business model is that we are a high-
>>wage country in a low-wage world. Just about everything
>>that we do can be done by somebody else cheaper.
>
> And yet, we still have one of the lowest unemployment
> rates, and highest standards of living.

Well, yes and no. Here is our current worldwide ranking
according the the latest UN statistics in several key
indicators:

4th Per Capita GDP 36th Unemployment Rate 10th Years of
Schooling 32nd Life Expectancy (Male) 31st Life Expectancy
(Female) 33rd Infant Mortality

We aren't always as good as we think we are relative to
the rest of the world. What the future holds for the US is
not clear.

Todd Kuzma Heron Bicycles Tullio's Big Dog Cyclery LaSalle,
IL 815-223-1776 http://www.heronbicycles.com
http://www.tullios.com

Ryan Cousineau

In article <40D0CFEC.8090904@TheRamp.net>,
Todd Kuzma <tullio@TheRamp.net> wrote:

Why do I get involved in political-statistical bunfights in
bicycle newsgroups? To paraphrase Homer Simpson, maybe I can
be the voice of wisdom that guides the mob.

> Matt O'Toole wrote:
> > Todd Kuzma wrote:
> >
> >>The downside of this business model is that we are a high-
> >>wage country in a low-wage world. Just about everything
> >>that we do can be done by somebody else cheaper.
> >
> > And yet, we still have one of the lowest unemployment
> > rates, and highest standards of living.
>
>
> Well, yes and no. Here is our current worldwide ranking
> according the the latest UN statistics in several key
> indicators:

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm

The UN Statistics website annoyed me until I gave up trying
to use it, and went elsewhere.

> 4th Per Capita GDP

http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com...ountry_desc.php

This listing (mostly based on 2002 estimates) gives the US
as second, $37,600 pcGDP, behind only Luxembourg ($44,000!),
but fourth is possible in the latest data. What is
interesting about the listing I have referenced is that
there are only two nations in the top ten with a population
over 30 million people: the US and Canada (a distant 9th
with $29,400). Going down the list, the next big country is
Japan, 13, $28,000 (Japan's science-fiction economy should
be analyzed with some caution, but that's a posting for
another day), and then Germany at 18th and $26,600. No G-7
nation makes less than $25,000 (hello Italy!), but the gap
between the US and any large nation is substantial.

> 36th Unemployment Rate

http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com...ountry_desc.php

Forbes says 18th in 2002, a figure I find much more likely,
but this is a relatively volatile number. One caveat is that
unemployment rates are affected a lot by structural issues
within a country, and that different countries use subtly
different ways of measuring unemployment, which makes
comparison difficult when dealing with small differences.

The top 20 countries include Japan (see previous warning
about science-fiction economics), a bunch of Eurasian
"tigers" from Portugal to Malaysia, all the Scandinavian
nations, notorious statistical anomalies Switzerland and
Luxembourg, and interesting anomalies China and Mexico. I
would be very interested to see how China calculates its
unemployment rate, but the Chinese economy is hot by any
measure. As for Mexico, clearly it's sucking up all those
NAFTA jobs, but it's not clear where they're sucking them
from, since the US and Canada (28th on the Forbes list) have
unemployment rates that are as low as anything seen since
World War II.

> 10th Years of Schooling

You wouldn't want your favourite country to rank way off on
this one, but I wouldn't worry too much about it, as long as
you're still making more money than all those smarter
countries. One curious thing is that despite all that
schooling, the common metrics of real academic research and
advancment (Nobel prizes and research publications) are
still disproportionately dominated by Americans. So whatever
they're doing, the smart kids are not getting left behind.

> 32nd Life Expectancy (Male) 31st Life Expectancy (Female)

The diseases that kill Americans early, are, rather
hilariously, related to to overeating. I don't mean it's
funny if Uncle Mike has a heart attack and dies at age 50
because he liked Cheetos too much, but from either a
historic global or a contemporary third-world perspective,
it is malnutrition that is the classic problem (well, in the
third world the major killer is diarrhea, which is only
funny until you find out how effective and cheap Oral
Rehydration Therapy is at saving lives...). In order to get
US life-spans up to Japanes and Scandinavian levels, I
propose a vast new government program in which social
workers will be trained to walk up to fat people eating
unhealthy snacks, slap them silly, and give them a bunch of
leafy green vegetables to take home (physician, heal
thyself...).

> 33rd Infant Mortality

http://www.geographyiq.com/ranking/...fant_Mortality-
_Rate_aall.htm

My numbers are actually worse than yours. 35th for the us,
6.75 deaths/1000 live births. Japan has 3.30, and the US is
worse in this stat than any other G7 nation. Some
perspective should be kept: the US is better than Israel and
worse than Italy, at 7.37 and 6.19 respectively, so this
isn't an insane rate for a developed nation. But I think
pulling even with Greece (6.12, and this in a country where
my relatives there are afraid of the hospitals) would be a
reasonable goal.

To give some idea of the spread between prosperous nations
with apparently functional health systems, Canada is in
20th at 4.88.

And why on earth is Greenland reporting 16.80 deaths/1000
live births?? Are mothers there routinely exposing their
babies if they don't like them? Seriously, they're below Sri
Lanka, at 15.22.

> We aren't always as good as we think we are relative to
> the rest of the world. What the future holds for the US is
> not clear.

Oh for sure. And as a humble Canadian, I keep a distanced
but still sharp interest in these stats. But by any measure,
the US is an economic powerhouse.

China and India want to be the next superpowers, and both
have a legitimate shot at the title, and have made huge
progress. The US doesn't have a large amount of control over
that at the moment, aside from ridiculous and nihilistic
solutions ("we begin bombing in five minutes.") But if I had
to bet, I'd say that India, starting from well behind, is
going to find that being something like a functional
democracy is going to give it a substantial advantage over
China. For China to stay ahead of India, I suspect it will
have to start giving up on Communism even more completely
than it has already. And if it does that, the US can
probably look forward to the kind of happy dotage Europe has
experienced in the presence of a US superpower: no longer
fully in control of its own destiny, but not going anywhere
terribly scary, either.

> Todd Kuzma Heron Bicycles

ObBike: The migration of the bicycle industry has been
practically a microcosm of industrial transitions in the
20th century. It started out with dominant English and
American industries, plus European componentry, now largely
reduced to specialists at the high end of the market or
domestic companies with overseas production. Then it moved
to Japan, and when things got pricey, the same formula
repeated as the industry moved to a cheaper "tiger" economy,
in this case Taiwan. And now the pattern is repeating again,
as Taiwan finds China eating away its low-end business, and
showing all signs of improving itself into the high end.
Don't fret for Taiwan too much, though: just like Europe,
America, and Japan, the outgoing bike industry will leave
behind a high-priced residue of designers and marketing
companies, plus top-end manufacturing, that will be a going
industry for the forseeable future.

What was the question?

--
Ryan Cousineau, rcousine@sfu.ca
http://www.sfu.ca/~rcousine/wiredcola/ President, Fabrizio
Mazzoleni Fan Club