On Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 11:17:06 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 10/20/2020 8:01 PM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

O.K., let's get Andrew onboard and test out your theory. Andrew, start selling all you stock below cost and vanquish your competitors. You will be Walmart in no time. Andre will bankroll you, at least until the Yellow Jersey IPO -- or bankruptcy, whichever comes first.

-- Jay Beattie.

Are you trying to say that Andre's theory of losing money on everything
you sell but making it up on the volume, doesn't work in the real world?

It does work, at least until all your investors tire of pumping in
money. That's when you go IPO and find a lot of clueless small investors
to lose money. The founders often do get rich before the whole thing
collapses.

I was told that one start-up I worked at was a "rocketship to the moon"
by the recruiter. It was a lot of fun, but my stock options were
worthless by the time I could exercise them. But the founders made out
like bandits.

I hope that bike shops enjoy the current boom.

Another humorous thing is that you can sell below [your] cost and still be selling above other's costs. Our family owned a drug store, and my father was a Kodak dealer with preferred pricing, but we could still buy flashbulbs/flashcubes (remember those?) cheaper on sale at the carpet-bagging Thrifty Drug that moved into town in the '60s. They had purchase limits, so my entire family would go over in shifts and buy them out. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c4/d9...670ea166e8.jpg (boo, hiss).

You can get half of everything in the QBP catalog cheaper from Wiggle or PBK. Shimano pulled the plug on those two, but other brands are still cheaper than QBP. There is no way a local bike shop can price compete -- except moving close-out, seconds or others' overstock. Rivercity does millions in sales, but not because they are cheap. https://tinyurl.com/y3bgpbfn

-- Jay Beattie.