Re: Dear LBS

Hi Andy,
When your looking for a niche product, most LBS will not have it in stock.
Just not
a good business decision to devote limited space to something that you're
only going
to sell once every year or 2.  Can't remember the last time we had a
customer walk in
off the street looking for cantilever brakes.

John

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 7:40 PM, Andy Goodell <[email protected]> wrote:

> I needed new brakes. My old cantilever brakes just weren't cutting it
> anymore, and my commute and rides in general too often see large hills
> ending in high traffic areas, so I couldn't put this off any longer. I
> looked around online to see what I might want to buy, and thought I should
> check a few local shops first. If they've got the parts at a reasonable
> cost, I'd just buy them locally instead of waiting for shipping.
>
> Unfortunately of the many brakes out there, wide cantilevers was just
> something not in stock around here. Ithaca is pretty big on cyclocross, and
> I even saw one of the bikes on the stand with exactly the type of brakes I
> wanted to buy. But when I asked for them, there were none to be bought.
> Neither store I went to stocked what I was looking for. Now, I know not
> every store can stock everything, but you'd think that not stocking an
> decent variety of brakes would be a good idea. I ended up going home and
> buying them online.
>
> It made me think that this is really a chicken and egg problem. If they
> generally had the parts I needed, I wouldn't rely on buying parts online as
> much. But since I've been let down nearly every time I went to buy locally,
> it's become normal to just buy the parts online for cheaper.
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-- 
John Wood
Open Road Bicycles
Missoula, Montana, USA