Bike bits

There’s something very odd about the bicycle business.

On one hand you can buy a completely new bike for $249.99.

But the cheapest front wheel on eBay or Alibaba will cost you roughly the same, and a decent one much more.

To build the $249.99 bike from parts bought online it’d cost about $1000 at a minimum.

If you ever want bike parts you’re much better off buying the $249.99 bike and pulling the one part you want off it. Which is ridiculous.

I could even pull the $249.99 bike apart and sell the bits on eBay for at least $1000. Odd.

In the old days this would have been excused away as an effect of the economies of scale in a multilayer distribution channel.

The internet was supposed to fix this problem. Supposedly…

Me thinks that this is either yet another unrecognized branch of bistromathics, or some global money laundering scheme (a la Milo Minderbinder).

In any case it’s a great business opportunity for some enterprising online Chinese distributor.

In the meantime Phil, buying the $249.99 bikes and pulling them apart is a better business opportunity than driving around an Uber.