a long time ago I stopped hating stores for charging markups. I realized that is how they make the money that keeps the lights on and feeds their families. If the markup was so large, there would be a store coming along that charged less and provided the same service to take the market. The reason you don't see that is the markup is not extreme. Bikes are a relatively high risk, low volume product, and so markups will be higher. If a bike (or component) doesn't sell in the current model year, the store will likely not make anything on it, having to mark it down. As for manufacturers, they are all competing for your money, and yes there are some brands out there that charge less, so why aren't you buying those? They charge less since they spend less on R[HTML_REMOVED]D and don't have the latest features that you want, right?
Thinking about it, why does a pair of Roach pants (name brand, stylee product, low volume production) only cost $149 when they are made of heavy durable fabric and a pair of designer jeans made of denim (high volume production of common product) sell for $80?