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@Dammit
I've got friends who work for the big chains who get parts at trade who buy stuff from Wiggle/Chainreaction, likewise I've got a friends who work for UK distributors who also sometimes point out to me stuff being sold from the big online shops at less per item than they pay when bringing stuff in in a shipping container.
In the grand race to the bottom which the Internet has helped promote I think we have to accept that the majority of bicycle parts are heavily commoditised, and therefore they should not be counted upon to be cash generative for a smaller business which cannot command large discounts.
That is- to the person who has invested enough time to be able to say, correctly, I need an item X from manufacturor Y, I will search for this and purchase the correct one.
This is interesting in that we totally ignore the time and effort which has gone into learning about bikes, which for fairly straightforward machines can be quite complicated.
i.e. if you ask MDCC_Tester which chain you should buy he will be able to provide a definitive answer, whereas if you ask my dad which chain to buy he will say "a suitable one".
My dad would therefore be receiving value for money if he walked into a bike shop and asked which chain to buy, and then bought it for say £25- he would not have to invest time studying things bicycle in order to be able to buy a cheap Whipperman for a tenner from an online store, he could use that time tinkering with his Beowolf cluster in his study.
My rather tenuously made point here is that we are missing the whole argument, as we are all "enthusiasts/hobbyists" with a decent knowledge base.
Yes, there are YouTube video tutorials and so on, but watching them takes time- and time is the ultimate currency.