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irony
My LBS could special order anything that TE carries. It's just that - once again - distribution costs are astronomical, especially for a niche market (and sadly in many areas road cycling is consicered to be a "niche market", not to mention female-oriented road cycling). My LBS carries a few women-specific items and they tend to be at - or above - MSRP. Ever walk into a LBS and see $89.99 on a Terry commuter skort? I have. That's above retail, but it accurately reflects the cost of getting that product to the market via that distribution channel, plus a reasonable profit for the LBS. It's not the LBS's fault. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't expect them to sell product at a loss just to be competitive. It's just that a distributed network is an inefficient way to allocate limited resources (specialty apparel, components...), but a very good way to allocate abundant resources (labor, tubes, lights, chains, lube...).
Many bike shop customers allocate their personal resources backwards in an effort to "support their LBS" - i.e. they spend a large proportion of their cycling budget on specialty items ordered through a local bike shop. That means that they don't have enough of a cycling budget left to spend money at the LBS for labor, small parts, etc. But in doing so they are really contributing to the downfall of the LBS because it can't make enough profit selling specialty items. Often the LBS's cost for a special-order item is the same or higher than what you can purchase that item for through an e-commerce site, because the major online retailers have negotiated lower prices and have less shipping cost.
Example: it seems like if you let your LBS special order a crankset for you at $450, when you've seen it on sale for $350 online, that they have got to be making big bucks on it, so you feel like you're supporting the shop. And since your budget for upgrades this month was $450, you let your buddy who's handy with bikes install it, because you can't afford the shop fees. The reality is that the shop probably would've made at least as much money if you'd have bought the same crank online for $350, and then paid the shop $50 to install it. Then, while you were there, you could have also purchased a patch kit, a new chain, some CO2 cartridges (online shops can't compete on CO2 because of air shipping issues), and had a small downpayment left over toward surfing over to TE for a commuter skort.
Look for this trend to continue over time. Shipping costs are rising quickly with higher fuel prices. Those prices aren't going to go down. The more branches in the distribution channel before items get to a consumer, the more the shipping cost is a factor in the final price. Buying locally-manufactured cycling products may be an option for some lucky few, but for most of us, it's just not going to be an option. (Anyone out there have a village derailleur-maker?)
I keep looking over it and I don't see how anyone loses under this scenario. The only differences are that you get the crankset professionally installed, you get more stuff, and two companies make profit rather than one.
Of course this analyis only works in a world where you have a fixed number of dollars allocated for cycling, which is my current situation. The ultimate solution is for all of us to have unlimited budgets to spend at our favorite bike shop. I'm expecting that to happen in my household any day...about the time my pony arrives (I've been asking for one since I was 4).
