"Chris" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:"BaCardi" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:I stop buying from Excel, Performance, Colorado Cyclist, Nashbar, etc. when the bike shops
decide to stop raping customers on price.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
If LBSs could afford to charge what online clearinghouses did, they would. Do you honestly think
their business model is based on customer alienation?
There are several good local shops in my area. I have one that's a particular favorite because the
owner has gone a little bit out of his way for me a couple of times. I would like to give him more
business than I do, and am willing to pay a little bit more to do so. Even in this pro-LBS context,
however, I feel I need to defend Bacardi's general point, if not his inflamatory language. It's not
_just_ that my LBS charges full-retail on every last component, accessory, and piece of clothing
that it sells, no matter how long it's been on the shelf. It's also that they don't seem
sufficiently aware of the disparity between their selection of stuff and the selection available on-
line. They won't discuss my torn position as a consumer rationally. I don't know whether they're
ignorant or just think their customers are. Either way it's a turn-off. Here's an example:
I stopped at my favorite LBS (and at two other shops, too, where I had _exactly_ the same
experience, strangely) a couple of months ago looking for a pair of tights with a chamois. At first
I was told there was no such thing. Then after I pushed back lightly the guy (not the owner, but not
a newbie kid either) admitted that "maybe some of the European manufacturers make them, but you
hardly ever see them." When I observed that all the major on-line outlets carry these as a regular
item, sometimes even two or three different kinds, I was met with an inscrutable kind of a shrug
that seemed to me to mean something like, "What does that have to do with us?" I wasn't in a
confrontational mood that day, but I felt like asking, "How do you expect me to give you my business
if we can't even have a conversation about why I spend most of my bike budget on-line instead of in
your shop?" The phenomenon appears to me to boil down to a very common front put up by retail staff
in all businesses (not just bike shops) that insults customers' intelligence with the attitude, "Why
would anyone ever want anything that we don't have in stock?" It's worth noting that the one shop I
go to where they do NOT seem to have this attitude is the one shop – a more general-purpose bike-board-ski-skate-tennis-
paddle shop
- that has significant discounts! (I.e., what I call reasonable prices.)
I worked in retail for many years, including in a bike shop as a mechanic, so I do know all about
the customer who needs to have the latest and greatest even though it's too expensive and it's lousy
to boot. I know that it's sometimes possible to win a customer's loyalty by talking him respectfully
and articulately out of that purchase and into something tried and true. I also know that sometimes
customers know stuff that people on the floor don't, and that with the right attitude it's possible
to learn from them. In any case the reality in the Internet age is that everyone has a ready
alternative for some or most of the business he might give to a LBS, and an attitude in the shop
that does not intelligently address this reality will drive the customer to that alternative faster
than you can say "add this item to my shopping cart."
- Tony
