Originally Posted by Notso_fastLane

Usually shop owners are still making money a couple of ways (not a huge margin, mind you, but it's there). There is a 'fixed' price in shipping because they are constantly getting large shipments of parts from their vendors, so throwing more parts in doesn't add to the shipping cost, it's already factored into their pricing for all the stuff they sell. Many LBS will get wholesale pricing which is slightly lower than retail (again, not huge margins, but should be enough for a good store to stay in business and turn a profit).

So that bar tape (to take a very simple example) they sell to you for retail, which is more or less the same as retail you'll get from a lot of online vendors like Amazon, sells for $10. They paid their vendor $8.50 for it, and bought 20 of them with that order, plus all the other parts they get in that shipment. That's just how retail works.