wrong
i can order something as a 1 off from overseas and have it delivered to my door in a few days
the shop here wants to charge double , they want me to go into their shop and pay in full before they order it and then for me to go back
to their shop and pick it up when it arrives and take 2 weeks plus before they have it
the dealer here that 15 years ago made me go to them and pay in full and wait 2 weeks for a xr250 spoke closed up shop last week
you pay in full when you order a part from overseas, why not pay in full when you order it locally? as a seller, i'd say if you don't make people pay in full, about half will flake on you. i still have a pc3 for a 1098 i bought years ago without taking a deposit, it's now worthless. i had a guy do the same on some special order tyres. you can tell me you're a great, trustworthy bloke all you like, pre payment makes you prove it. if you don't work in retail, it might be hard to understand, but in retail you treat everyone the same. retail really does suck. which is why i don't sell specialty parts. service parts are somewhat different. there's not a heap of options based on personal taste.
if i want to order a 1 off part from a supplier overseas i generally pay the same price as you would. i will pay the same shipping as you, so when it arrives here it costs exactly the same. i will add 25% to it as a general rule as if i don't make money on it then why am i bothering. then i have to add gst. and then i have to send it to you. so it'll be at least 40% more at a guess. and take the same time plus maybe 3 or 4 days, given you're on the wrong side.
sprocketcentre.com for instance have a lot of stuff that is cheaper than i can buy it anywhere. i simply have no way to compete with them. so i don't bother. which is why some things you can't get locally anymore, which is not an issue until you need it tomorrow. then you bad mouth every local supplier for not carrying stock, as opposed to last week when you were bad mouthing every local supplier for being too expensive.
if it's something a local supplier would have stock of, then i buy from them at their trade price, the % discount of which varies. but i will sell it at their recommended retail price. plus postage to you. the price they recommend, and sell to me for minus discount, generally allows for the fact that they order a heap of stuff, some of which sells fast and some not. so they put a margin on it as they see fit to make money over the entire order.
for example, rizoma sells a heap of variations of many things, in 4 to 6 colours. people always want the one you don't have, so to try to satisfy all demands you order a range and hope it all sells. to support that you have to mark it up. if you don't, you lose money. business is about making money, not friends. the line between surviving and greedy varies, but surviving is generally a bigger # than people would expect. i believe the local rizoma importer (or one of, bike craft) has prices that are pretty competitive internationally, i'm not sure how he does it.
often it's about getting the parent company to acknowledge that you as a national importer/distributor are a worthwhile business, because the reality is you order 2% of what the north american importer orders so you get treated like crap. and the fact you can't sell it because you're too expensive because you can't make any money out of it because you pay more for it they just laugh off because they'd rather send a big box the the usa anyway.
of course, some people charge way too much because they're greedy and/or come from the days when an island was an island. now it's just another drop off point in a global community. they either change their ways if it's still viable to charge less, reduce the scope of or drop the product line to reduce overhead (ie, you can't buy it locally anymore) or if they're lucky see the writing on the wall and shut up. if not, they go broke.
