Originally Posted by
TiHabanero
This is still a win for the dealer as he had zero dollars invested in the sale other than the folks that bought direct from Specialized after wasting the time of a bike shop employee gathering information and selecting a bike in a dealer showroom. Dealer did the work and received a very poor margin if any on the sale. Nice job SBC.
I'm not sure that is always an accurate characterization. A few years ago my kid and I purchased a Stumpjumber Evo frame from Specialized, on line. We selected a local shop from the web interface, and they shipped it to them. They phoned us, and we picked it up immediately, so it didn't even take up any of their space overnight. When we picked it up, I verified that they got a full sales commission. All they had to do was place a local phone call to us. It worked out well for us, and for them.
The current mechanism would have cut them out of the loop, and the sales commission.