Well, First I never liked Perforchina Bicycle shoppe, they seemed even more 'fad driven' than the most fad-driven shops in the 1970's and 1980's when I was a young cyclist. That must be the place where Bicycling's "Style Man" was born!
And if PerforChina Bicycle Shoppe cannot get it direct from a china factory, they won't source it AT ALL, because they want their suppliers to bend over backwards for them, they want those 370% margins you get from China's currency manipulation, just like Wallymart (which by the way sued an employee brain-damaged forever by a car accident and stole her lifetime living-allowance settlement.)
If it says Campagnolo and it comes from Perforchina Bicycle shoppe, it's probably grey-market goods...
But the elephant in the room is EBay. You can't get a 26.8 or 27.4 seatpost at an LBS, or at Perforchina Bicycle Shoppe, or at NashbarChina any more, because of Ebay. Ebay has flooded the bike market with used parts. It has liquidated a supply of spare parts larger than most metropolitan landfills, and kept a lot of stuff out of landfills by the way ...
So when you talk about the schism between PerforChina Bicycle Shoppe / NashbarChina, and the LBS, you are really talking about a 3-way race where EBay is threatening the existence of both of these penny anty businesses...
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA, USA