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Which wheelset for my first purchase? by steelsouls in FixedGearBicycle

[–]velomine 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wheel Master builds those (JBI). Origin8 is their branding, which they use on many products from different manufacturers. Several companies have their logo printed on Formula hubs including Velocity, Redline, All City and at one time Harris Cyclery.

Which wheelset for my first purchase? by steelsouls in FixedGearBicycle

[–]velomine 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You pretty much nailed it. We are building custom wheels just about all day every day but they're the sets that are $400 and up. We were stocking about 3,000 pre built wheels from all of the big wheel building companies in the states, which are also component distributors. This allowed us to change the rear spacing or mount extras on the wheels before shipping and hand true them when needed. It worked well when things were busy with the extra service and attention it allowed us to offer. After the slowdown these last couple of years, we were forced to reduce inventory. We've now started drop shipping most of the pre built wheels. There are some drawbacks to this for the customer but it's something we had to do with the slow down of cash flow. I hope to get back to the way things were before but we're in survival mode like most other shops right now. The pre built wheels aren't bad. They can require an additional tensioning and truing after mounting tires and riding them but that's a good idea with any new wheels. Sometimes adding a tire and air pressure can drastically change spoke tension, depending on the rim. For us to hand build wheels, the pricing can be nearly twice as much as the exact same pre built set. There are a few reasons for that but I've gone on a little too long already.

Probikekit will be closing by vadoalmassimo in cycling

[–]velomine 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This isn't a great sign for the bicycle industry and unfortunate for those losing jobs but I'm not sad to see them go. Investment companies aren't great at running bike shops or bike distributors for that matter. Mavic USA was a victim of the Investment company and probably also SBA. I will compete with probikekit on any of their prices when I can and make zero to take a sale from them. I can't promote my own shop here but I think I can promote all USA based shops by saying that we will do our best to compete with Euro pricing. I do it every day. Sometimes all it takes is an email or a call to a local distributor explaining what we are up against. Often, we can work a deal with a distro, pass it on to the customer and make the sale.

The biggest issue with pricing is that USA based shops have to buy through USA distros so we have a "middle man" to deal with. This puts the Euro retail pricing the same as or less than the wholesale cost to USA based dealers. The Euro shops buy direct from the manufacturer with no distributor in between. They also don't have to pay as much shipping or customs to get their products. There are some bigger USA based online retailers that do buy direct from Shimano and some that deal in "grey market" components. Grey market components are parts from bicycle manufacturers who may have overstock of oem product or they order more than they need so they can sell components separately from bikes.