An Open Letter To Chain Reaction Cycles

They definitely do buy grey market. I've bought brakesets from them that have arrived in unlabelled plastic bags. Again though, this to me is a point in their favour. I would much rather receive the product and not have to pay for fancy marketing/packaging, which is just going to be recycled/landfilled.

Yep, that's an additional reason they sell for less. I have also purchased from them and received OEM product. Not a big deal to me, but I do realize that there is no warranty on OEM products. As for US dealers buying direct, yes larger dealers can but they do not get distributor pricing. They may be able to negotiate a discount for large quantities, but it still isn't on par with distributor pricing.

bicycle retail is changing for sure ;)

CRC are specialists in sourcing OE 'deals' in Asia from bike assembly plants and leaking these 'grey' imports to the bike consumer through their aftermarket on-line retail channel

couple of years back? saw the Banshee Scratch HT frame being relabelled as "Brand X Scratch" and sold off cheap after Pacific Cycles (TW) dumped their entire inventory and a CRC agent picked up the deal

CRC have sales agents hooked into every assembly plant:- suits the 'manufacturer' looking to offload excess inventory (groupsets, wheelset, finishing kits), suits CRC for do good business as the on-line middleman, and perfectly suits the customer looking for that 'killer deal' on parts their LBS cannot hope to compete with

what this means for the LBS is rapid change; an attempt to compete with the on-line behemoths like CRC, Wiggle, Jenson, Dan's Comp, etc. is business suicide by slowly bleeding to death on each sale…

I used to work for an independent (2 stores with 3 exclusive import frame brands) and the owner was very business savvy, sourcing all kinds of OE kit (forks, chain devices, finishing kits, group sets) from wherever he could

we were doing all kinds of 'package' deals with our frame sets, allowing us to heavily discount and still make good margins, saw many local competitors go to the wall during this period, as they went head to head with CRC whilst these competitors were paying standard trade prices from UK trade distributors

for the LBS to survive? moving towards quality workshop servicing who those customers who cannot themselves, great customer service and selling 'protected' bike and clothing brands - who will not sell mail order or online

My open letter to CRC goes something like this:

WHAT?? NO FUCKING 650b WHEELSETS??

WHAT?? NO FUCKING 650b WHEELSETS??

You have a 650b bike?

You have a 650b bike?

Thanks to CRC, NO.

Haha face.

CRC doesn't ship Sombrio to Canuckistan!!!

I'm curious on XTR Trail brakes locally

Rose in Germany has Trail levers to Race calipers

CRC doesn't ship Sombrio to Canuckistan!!!

I'm curious on XTR Trail brakes locally

Rose in Germany has Trail levers to Race calipers

There is only one XTR caliper. The difference is the finned pads.

Better get them before they're all broken.

• I did get about two or so days in the park on them before I noticed they were floating about in my rear caliper.

So what's the deal with grey market (confusingly called gray market in the US)? What would happen to all those "grey market" parts if somebody didn't buy/trade/resell them? Would they end up as landfill? I don't get why this is whispered as if it is some kind of evil. A component is designed and manufactured to do what it does. What are people supposed to do with extra parts? Make lawn sculptures out of them?

Not sure about bike parts, but in the tech industry at least, I'd interpret "grey market" == "stolen" (in one form or another). For example, SE Asian subcontract manufacturer gets an order to build 10000 widgets, they build 11000 for the company that designed the widget, and another 1000 for themselves to sell at deeply discounted prices in the "grey market". Parts are completely legit, same factory, same slave laborers building it, just the company that invented/designed/marketed the widget doesn't get a cut. Sort of the manufacturing equivalent of bootleg movies.

Another version (again common in tech) is parts that fail QA screens and are supposed to be junked, but are instead "salvaged" by the subcon and again sold into the "grey market". They look the same, mostly work the same, but might not be what you want powering your fighter-jet control system, or soaking up your impact when you overshoot your landing…

Or the simplest version, a pallet or truckload of parts goes missing from the factory, and gets sold into the "grey market".

Not always the case, of course, but often enough.

Better get them before they're all broken.

• I did get about two or so days in the park on them before I noticed they were floating about in my rear caliper.

You are still not over that, huh? Got two seasons on mine ;-)

You are still not over that, huh? Got two seasons on mine ;-)

No! :)

Seriously, how the frick does it break like that. I'm thinking it's some sort of field Dave emanates.

CRC doesn't ship Sombrio to Canuckistan

Really? That must be new, as I bought Sombrio pants from CRC and shipped them here last year.

There is only one XTR caliper. The difference is the finned pads.

This, I did not know. So no finned pads then. This is one of the problems I have with Shimano and all their product numbers. 985 980 875 870. Wtf

You are still not over that, huh? Got two seasons on mine ;-)

Two seasons on mine also.

I'd love to see the details of the break because it would like show signs of bending before the break. No chance of a fatigue failure from a new part with 2 days of riding.