Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> "Becca" > wrote in message
>> One of my friends is visiting this weekend, and she owned a bicycle shop
>> until Walmart opened Her store closed one year later, along with the
>> store next door to her, which was a fabric store. This is why some
>> communities do not care for Walmart.
>
> Yet some high end bike shops are thriving. You can't compete with Wal Mart
> for the every day kids bike but when it comes to higher end stuff WM has
> nothing like it.
>
>
And you don't have to spend a lot more to get good quality. I am very
active in biking and often friends who want to get into biking will ask
for recommendations.

We have two very competent reasonably priced local bike shops that will
spend the time to make sure you get a good fit and won't sell you a pile
of junk. While they have $5,000 bikes you don't have to spend a lot more
than wally to get a good bike. They will ignore my recommendations
because wally tells them they are their buddy in all of their marketing
and buy a POS bike that has crappy components and doesn't work smoothly
and maybe doesn't even fit them so they will go out one time and get
disgusted and never try again.

If enough people do this the local bike shop can't keep the doors open.
I know the place I usually use is hinting about closing.