Taking dollars and jobs from a scene that is small to start with is something I now have to take personally for my own survival. But to add the real truth, your avoidance of Australian Goods and Services Taxes, import duties and warranty costs by your offshore business model, the industry here is simply unable to compete. So not only do you take dollars from the bike industry on an unfair playing ground, you’re taking dollars from our economy at every level. Freeloading on an industry and a country thats been built over years of hard work.
In bmx, there is no point buying from Dans Comp or Chain Reaction because the bmx industry sorted themselves out and made the prices in Australian stores comparable to overseas mail orders.
$1400 for a USA made frame custom bike. BARGAIN!!! Strictly BMX - CUSTOM CULT BAD BOY BIKE
Strength to his arm…he’s passionate and articulate but is anyone here going to stop comparing their local price & value options (not the same things BTW) with CRC and making their own decisions? IMO it’s not the buying public and/or CRC he should be ranting at, it’s the BIG local distribs like Bikespurtz & DirtJerks.
Interestingly, I’m looking at a local price on a ‘last year’s model’ frame I’m interested in that’s $33 cheaper than CRC’s price.
yeah, its that 10% of the 100% difference between Aussie prices and OS prices that is really driving the industry into the ground WTF.
I don’t claim to understand why the prices here in Aus are twice that of OS, but it seems like a real Gerry Harvey type argument that it is the fault of, what amounts to 10-15% of avoided tax which drives people to buy OS.
I know of one shop (there must be others) that grey imports select items, buying from CRC and Wiggle b/c the landed cost to them is close enough or cheaper than their buy price from the local distrib and they don’t have to wait on the distrib’s order cycle.
I do admire 20/20 for taking a stand.
But to think that a international company is provide a price that is too good is a no brainier.
There’s three things in business.
Quality, cost and time. You can only have two,
If this means waiting (time) for a product if the quality and cost are better then people will go there.
I blame Australian distribution for this.
It’s similar in the surf industry, sex wax is rrp $1usd in the US.
The same block retails for $5aud here.
It can only be two things, not enough margin on the product or the aus distro being greedy.
So if I buy a cycling product online and save 30%, and then spend those saved $$$ on a local product, like Coopers pale ale for example, i’m helping the local economy are’nt I??
Also, pretty interesting that Zen Garage would feature that on his site, noting he also owns the www.bikesmoveus.com.au forum and himself started this very thread:
This. When you’re sitting at the computer looking through distro prices and they are ~20% above the price online there is a problem. You take those parts to a bike shop to get them fitted though, well there’s plently of amusing analogies for that, but I reckon it’s the epitome of stupid.
and then there’s that shop down around Caulfield somewhere that’s aligned itself with Wiggle…so if you buy stuff from Wiggle, they’ll happily fit it, for a fee.
Let’s just say Aus distro can be shit.
There is a company i will not name that are in the bike industry.
I phoned them a few times during the week about who stocks them in qld, No answer.
Did the drive around to no avail, On there web page theres a distro mob number so i call it saturday about 11.00am.
Asked who sells them in Qld, The guy basicly said “What the fuck you rang me on a saturday to ask me this fuck off and ring me back during the week”
I said i tried that the last two weeks no one answers.
All he had to say was a shop name, I told him to fuck off ill buy online.
His reply was like i give a shit what you do, do you think i need your business.
Really? So if I go to the effort of sourcing some of my own parts for a new bike online because they are half the price of buying in a store, and there’s bits I can’t do, like build the wheels or install the headset or sort the gears out, I’m gonna get laughed out of a store if I ask them to fit the parts for a labour fee?
Wheels are decent example… I’ve bought hubs and rims online and had them built… I empathise with the stores for sure, but…it’s a money thing. Is this bad juju?