Originally Posted by
davei1980
For any LBS owners out there -
I order parts through my LBS all the time. They never charge back shipping to me and the prices are always within +/-$1 of Amazon, Jensen USA, Nashbar, all of which I believe have very fair pricing for online retailers.
I shop with my LBS for a lot of reasons which you can probably guess at, but my question is are they making money on these transactions and if so how? I would hate for them to take a loss on my piddly little orders. How can they price parts with the online retailers who have a fraction of the overhead? I don't think this is unique to my LBS, there's a few shops I have noticed who price parts this way.
Not an owner, but...
As mentioned earler, not abiding to MSRP will get your account pulled. Shops going out of business do this, as they don't care anymore.
Wholesalers have tiers; the more you buy, the lower your price is. Different shops may not pay the same price for the same part.