Harhir

I had spokes cut a few days at my local bike store to rebuild a wheel. They are now charging $2 per spoke plus extra for the nipples. So at 36 spokes this is almost $80 with tax. Did the store just inflate the price or are spokes really that expensive meanwhile? Few years ago I got them for half the price at the same store.
Unfortunately I don't have the option anymore to choose another bike store since the two other we had closed down in the past months.

base2 

Still a buck a spoke for 14ga straight where I live.

I did pay $1.50 per spoke for 72 double butted on my last build, but that was a rare exception.

Inflation @ 2% per year for 10 years equals what? A compounding calculator could tell you. Purchasing Power Parity, I think is the term. Though I'm sure an actual economist will weigh in.

$2 doesn't seem an unreasonable if it was a dollar 10-15 years ago.
That the price hasn't budged from a buck a spoke in 25 years ought to be the real story.

indyfabz

Are they the exact same spokes?

fietsbob

Better prices per spoke are available if you bought 50 or 100 at a time, but , you bought fewer.

so given that and the cost of running a retail shop to be serving you, in person. you have nothing to complain about..




NB: machine built wheels can be shipped from wholesaler to a shop and the built wheel costs less than the sum of its parts, @ retail ..






....

base2 

Me? 14 gauge straight, with a J-bend and brass mipples is what I used in 1997 when I taco'd a wheel showing off on a skate board ramp in Hawaii. That was a buck a spoke 28 years ago.

Same as my 14 gauge straight, J-bend & brass nipples on all the wheels I had built last year, & the year before.

I pick up my Nuvinci N380/Son 28 wheel set on Friday. It has 14 gauge straight, J-bend & brass nipples too. The price is weirdly constant.

Milton Keynes

They're a lot cheaper on Amazon.

indyfabz

No.

katsup

i bought a couple of spokes last month in 2 difference sizes (26 and 700) for $1 each and both came with a nipple. Another local shop I have bought from about a year ago was $1.50 (29) with nipple.

I'm not sure the gauge, I just brought an example in and told them to match it.

AlmostTrick

Steel tariffs?

bakerjw

I just bought 72 Swiss Alpine 3 double butted 15/13/14Ga spokes for $1.55 each. For the type of spoke, I felt it was a reasonable price. Had I gone with 14Ga straight spokes, I'd have expected a bit less.
Having had a handful of wheels built recently, I don't see that prices have fluctuated much.

HerrKaLeun

Less than $1 for double-butted SAPIM spokes on ebay if you buy 32. $22.40 to be exact. Never bought straight gage, but they should be cheaper.

yojimbos_garage

LBS has to be more expensive, just the fact they interact with customers in an expensive store cost more. they only cut spokes every blue moon, making the machine proportionally expensive. And they sure buy fewer spokes than a commercial seller.

Retro Grouch 

I suspect that spokes are a money loser for the LBS even at $2.00 a piece.

Basically the shop has to either cut and thread the exact length that you need or they have to inventory a bunch of different lengths. One is labor intensive, the other is inventory intensive. It used to be easier because there were basically just either 14 straight gauge or 14/15/14 double butted. Today there are probably dozens of different spoke configurations - all in varying lengths. Considering the time it takes for customer interaction and custom cutting or finding the right product, I'm thinking spoke sales are a customer convenience rather than a profit center for the LBS.

The last spokes that I've bought were from Dan's Comp. They are a cut to size operation with cheap prices and quick service. They won't sell you spokes over the internet, you have to telephone and talk directly to their spoke guy. Even they have recently cut down on the number of spoke styles they carry.

BirdsBikeBinocs

No. Read the thread.

ThermionicScott 

+1.

I wonder if that's why Cambria Bike cut way back on the spokes they offer, too. They've been on my radar for a few years after ordering some 1.8/1.6/1.8 spokes for a special wheel build. Now they only stock a handful of pricey Mavic spokes.

Slightspeed

I recently had a new set of wheels built for my '64 Legnano. I already had the Campy large flange hubs. New Sun CR18 rims were $35 each, free shipping, which I was OK with. Double butted SS spokes and brass nipples were over $140! Couple of years ago I was able to get a nice set of Reynolds Stratus Elite wheels, built, and shipped for less than these new spokes cost. I was leery at first, but they have been great wheels, never had them trued or anything. They just keep rolling along. But $140 for 72 spokes and nipples (+ 2 Velox rim strips). Really?

wschruba

The operative word bolded here. You are paying for the person who cut the spokes. If you wanted to purchase blanks, I'm sure they would oblige with a lower price.

That said, yes, spokes can be that, or more, expensive.

Since the OP hasn't been back, we don't know if they got an amazing deal on boutique spokes, or if they got 2mm galvanized spokes

Rick

I just built a set of wheels for my Son's Fuji touring bicycle. Sapim Leader spokes were $.35 each, nipples $.14, Polyax Nipple Washers $2.95 per 20 and $10 shipping. I used Ryde/Rigida Andra 30 rims. The rims, hubs, hp rim strips, tubes and tires were ordered together from across the pond.

DrIsotope

My LBS has a Phil Wood Spoke Cutting and Threading Machine. Those are... not cheap. It does allow them to sell individual spokes cheaper, because they don't have to stock a bunch of different sizes, just a few.

Beyond that, I don't know if I would complain about $2 a spoke (as I only have wheels with fairly low spoke counts,) but I'm not running out to buy Sapim CX Rays at nearly $3.50 a spoke either. Spokes cost more than the hoop.

Marcus_Ti

Could be. Depends on the exact spoke. The (new) steel tariffs, themselves, only apply to unfinished steel products....not to finished ones.

Real life actual examples:
1) DT makes its unbutted spokes from imported steel wire, in house. The elbow, the cutting, the threading, the head--all of it. So therefore they get dinged by the (new) tariffs. Because they steel wire on a spool is an unfinished product

2) DT butted spokes, however....start life as imported spoke "blanks" (butting, and rough cut to uniform length). These blanks, in tariff law are classed as "finished" steel--and therefore NOT subject to the new steel tariffs.


The are other tariffs already in place of course....and were other bicycle-industry-specific ones added this summer as well.

HerrKaLeun

Is it possible the LBS also measured the hub and rim and calculated the length? If so, an upcharge is justified since buying online puts that task and liability on the buyer.

Tariffs are not the reason, the material cost of spokes is very minor. The cost is in labor, machining, distribution....

AlmostTrick

Thanks for the update, Marcus! Someone else reading this thread said No, that tariffs couldn't be a factor. Apparently that's not the case.

Any way, eventually it won't matter. The steel and other tariffs will bring production to the US, where workers will earn high wages and the prices we consumers pay for the products will somehow go down or hold steady. New math, I suppose.

base2 

But the tariff of a thing sold by the ton is pretty tiny when applied to a thing sold by the gram. An additional $175 to $200 per ton divided by 90,7815 grams per ton equals 0.0002203092 to 0.0001927705 dollars per gram of steel.
Moving the decimal to get cents per gram...
0.02203092 to 0.01927705 cents per gram

312 grams for 64 spoke DT Double butted 14/16 gauge equals about 4.875 grams per spoke.

4.875 grams times 0.01927705 added tariff equals 0.0939756188 additional cents per spoke.
4.875 grams times 0.02203092 additional tariff equals 0.107400735 additional cents per spoke.

Really? About 1/10th of a penny. About 3 cents per wheel, or about 5-7 cents per wheel set. For spokes manufactured from raw, unfinished, imported material. Tariffs are not the reason spokes cost the end user what they do.

Math.

Marcus_Ti

Like that actually matters. A real life example, in 2013 Hynix had a fire at one of its RAM factories. Nothing was damaged and production volume was not impacted--per Hynix's own company statements. Overnight RAM prices doubled, for quite literally no reason at all. A similar thing happened when HDD factories got flooded by a typhoon---but production was restored to full capacity within a month or two--and HDD prices stayed spiked. Similarly in the petroleum gas spikes before and around that time shipping rates of all kinds doubled and the cost of goods went up--ostensibly because it was so expensive to move goods....well TL;DR the gas prices went down and the price of goods of all kinds did not (for example bikes and bike components).

TiHabanero

DT Swiss spokes are sold in a box of 100 count per size. The shop must purchase the whole box. If they only use 32 of the 100 spokes in the box the rest of them sit on a shelf until someone comes along with a need for the same size. I have worked in a shop that had common sizes on hand. Any request for a size outside of that range the customer paid for the whole box. That was the only shop I worked in that did that. They did sell the box at cost because they did not want dead inventory hanging around for years to come. Not sure if they do this anymore as they now have a Phil Wood spoke cutter. Expensive, but over the course of a decade or so it should pay for itself provided wheel builds stay plenty.

unterhausen

I don't think so, because it's a finished good or they import wire.

I think I still pay $45 for 32 spokes at my lbs, but I could be wrong.

I thought that DT spokes are available in random counts from QBP