In early January, my local bike shop turned me away when I tried to buy a 2021 Giant TCX. I walked in ready to pay and just left. They wouldn't consider taking my order. I actually appreciate them not wasting my time given they:
- told me that they were already sitting on 3,000 orders for Giant bikes.
- showed me a printed list of the back orders, it indeed looked like 3,000 orders
- said that Giant was the most backordered brand they sold
- said that they hadn't taken a "custom order", meaning an order for a model they didn't have in stock, in almost six months
- said that they anticipated only fulfilling ~20% of their backorders
More recently, they quoted a friend of mine a 2023 delivery date (!) for a Giant Propel. This is a very large, well known shop that has plenty of "pull" with distributors.
This all seems pretty extreme. Perhaps other brands are in a better spot, but Specialized and Trek are definitely in similarly short supply in my local stores. Direct sales brands like Canyon and YT haven't had many popular models in popular sizes in stock for months, I've checked. The most popular components (especially Shimano) have been on back order for months.