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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

> ...have killed brick and mortar retail.

There's still a lot of brick and mortar retail, and it does not seem to be disappearing, but it is not really about re-distributing the goods anymore, but mostly about paid support. For instance, a lot of bike shops in my area are turning into repair and assembly workshops, where you are welcome to bring the bike that you bought cheaply from an online retailer and they help you assemble and adjust it. I guess the earnings for that usage are much larger than for re-distribution, since 100% of what the client pays is directly for the shop.

EDIT: also, I have issue on the fact that you call buying cheapest goods a "loophole". There's nothing wrong about it in an efficient market.

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I've seen similar conversions to service-only, and I'll just say that service was a loss leader for us. We never found our service department to be profitable on service alone. Some of it was the complexity of the type of bikes we services (high-end, aero-focused bikes) and some of it was because service pricing has largely been subsidized by healthy margins on parts sales.

The service-only shops will never be anything more than cozy lifestyle businesses. And a few of those that own service-only shops actually live in the business to make ends meet.

Maybe the high-end segment is too niche. But if there are hundreds of thousands of bike commuters in your urban area, you need quite a lot of service shops. Right now they seem to be over-saturated and give you a rdv mid-january if you ask. It would seem that things are going quite well for them!

I recently bought a new bike in one of those shops and it essentially amounted to the seller buying the bike online from his laptop in front of me.

Not sure what you mean about "cozy lifestile business", but is seems great, especially if it allows to make ends meet.

In U.S. cities it's more like thousands or tens of thousands of bike commuters (during good weather), but commuter bikes are either rented from bikeshares or are junkers that get replaced for a couple hundred dollars from time to time. If any market has customers, it's high end.

On the other hand, people who buy high-end bikes are very likely able to repair and adjust the bikes by themselves, so they will never set foot on an actual store. It's precisely the daily commuters not interested in bike mechanics who would need and appreciate the most a physical workshop. Not the sporty types! For example here in France there is the Cyclable line of stores [1] that are very explicitly not targeted towards the sport of cycling (you won't find any lycra shorts nor carbon frames), but to cycling as a means of transportation. They seem to be doing quite well. The bikes that they sell are also quite high-end. I tried to go there this summer but the first time I was turned down as I did not have an appointment!

[1] www.cyclable.com

My LBS (actually a local chain of 5 shops) has a month wait for servicing, which they do at one central location. I was quite happy to pay a few hundred bucks to get my brakes bled and everything retuned but not prepared to lose my bike for a month. As it is I got the parts/tools I needed from Amazon and did the job myself. I'm not sure if this is testament to a fantastic Covid-19 driven uptick in business or their lackluster business acumen.

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