I think there is a point to this, but it can be a gray area. Technically, Rivendell is mainly an online seller, meaning they are theoretically taking sales away from my local shop. However, this mostly remains in the theoretical realm, for mostly obvious reasons. On the other hand, Amazon is currently destroying more businesses than Walmart or Home Depot ever did. I don't shop there as a rule.
Then there are the more direct competitors, such as VO, or big online bike shops like Modernbike, Niagara Cycles, Wiggle, etc, as well as purveyors of wool products like Ibex. When it comes down to it, though, there is not a huge amount of crossover product. Riv specs but does not sell the pedals linked in this post. And as Patrick points out, this is not an official Riv site, and does not require owning a Rivendell bicycle to participate. Still, I would guess most of us are big supporters of the company. I almost always adhere to the request Grant once made about several products that can be found elsewhere for perhaps cheaper prices--hey, if you heard about it from us, buy it from us as a courtesy. Even with stuff I have been buying for years from other sources--the black wool merino sportskins, for example--if Riv has my size in stock when I need something, I buy it from them. There are rare exceptions--I used to always buy my Boeshield when placing orders, but now they only sell the small can, so I started getting it elsewhere. And the rear rim on a brand new Atlas wheelset just took an unrepairable hit, but Riv does not sell these rims separately. The manufacturer offers it for $87.99 plus $14.00 shipping, or I can get it from Bikemania for $59.99, same shipping charge. (Of course BM has every single configuration in stock except the 36h silver finish that I need...) In the bigger picture, this constant drive toward the *apparent* cheapest price, the reliance on subsidized shipping (yes, even at the increasing shipping, it's all subsidized) and cheap labor, the destruction of local anything, is all coming to a not very pretty end. It has only lasted this long because those who derive great benefit from it have done everything possible to keep the globalization scheme running as long as possible. Meanwhile, I'm heading over to Rivbike.com to buy some pannier rails for my Clem rack, and a few other assorted Goods & Sundries. On Saturday, February 11, 2017 at 8:06:50 PM UTC-5, iamkeith wrote: > > I appreciate a good heads up as much as the next guy, but i do think we > need to reign in the discussions about shopping elsewhere besides Rivendell > - at least on this forum. As Grant put it recently (in multiple ways and > places, actually), a business like theirs lives and dies with sales. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
