I enjoy my lbs. Campus cyclery is great, they have a really good staff and a good selection. Just as someone stated above, it’s nice to form a relationship with your lbs and their employees. My lbs, and others I’m sure serve more than simply just selling bikes and parts. They donate prizes to alleycats, organize rides and races, and generally can serve as a nexus for the cycling community in your area. Plus, for buying small doo dads that would be wasteful to ship the lbs gets my pick. Hell it’s cool to go up there just to shoot the shit sometimes.
My LBS experiences: When I was looking for Stan’s rim strips, all the local shops were baffled. They kept giving me blank stares and trying to give me tubular tire glue, or telling me they didn’t have that kind of rim tape. Ultimately I went with the ghetto tubeless method. Still, moron with road-rash on his face tells me presta valves are only for racing bikes, and there is no way anybody would race on a two inch tire, so nobody makes the 24x1.5-2.00 presta tubes I asked for. I bought those exact tubes at another shop.
Also, none of them ever have anything I need in stock, and sometimes they don’t even offer to order it. They’ll tell me “oh we’re going to order some new stuff next week, call us on Friday to see if we decided to order the stuff you want.”
of the two shops that i go to there are usually a handful of people who are completely clueless either paying $20 to get a tube fixed or getting upsold to carbon pedals. these are the people who keep the shop in business, and who the business is usually tailored around. i stopped feeling guilty when am employee tried to sell me a pair of $200 carbon bars for my '87 cannondale road bike.
[quote=thehappyrobot]yeah…it sucks that a brick and mortar shop has to pay overhead for a real location instead of a having shit stored in a spare bedroom or closet or warehouse and pay their employees.
i hate how all these self-rghteous bike shop bricks are trying to stay in business.[/quote]
it’s not like anyone is saying, “don’t shop at your lbs!” it’s just that, sometimes being an intelligent consumer involves buying online.
[quote=thehappyrobot]yeah…it sucks that a brick and mortar shop has to pay overhead for a real location instead of a having shit stored in a spare bedroom or closet or warehouse and pay their employees.
i hate how all these self-rghteous bike shop bricks are trying to stay in business.[/quote]
$85 for Noodles is almost %100 percent markup and is well above retail. That’s not “trying to stay in business” that’s “gouging the consumer”. There’s a difference. We can and have had this argument here a lot, but the conclusion really is that tarck really isn’t the target market for most local shops.
my lbs loans tools and sells used parts. they also let me use thread cutters and such so i give them the bulk of my biz. tubes and such. i do buy tires at PBK which is kinda local so i can pick up there and save the shipping. i buy some stuff like clothing and helmets online coz they don’t have a need to stock the baller stuff.
Isn’t PBK is England? I thought you lived in Oregon.
i’ve worked many hours at a few local bike shops
that being said
lbs don’t have much for me these days-
i fix all my own shit, don’t buy new parts, patch all my tubes, and the bikes i am interested in/ride haven’t been made for close to twenty years now