I recently had a very bad customer experience, 3 phone calls, two visits to the actual business and talked to the person face to face, and two emails, they guy totally ghosted me, I was going to spend a thousand dollars with them. Never tried to even negotiate a better price, I accepted the price they gave me. After being ghosted for a month, I went to his local competitor, who quoted me an even better price for the same thing. I mentioned to him the actual owner, how happy I was with there attention to detail and fast response, I also mentioned my bad experience with his competitor, he just smiled and said they didn't want your business because they are way too busy with high volume large customers, thinking back it was true. My point is some business are so busy right now that they push some people away and they are still making tons of money......but I am going to remember this, and when people ask me where I got this work done, I am going to tell my story.
I guess I'm not entirely surprised to see their target business shift in the current bike sales environment (i.e., HOT!). At a certain point, when the bikes are selling themselves and people are clamoring to buy, if you are a volume/discount seller already you'd look to start moving more inventory. I noticed on the deals page today a straight ad to sell to other bike businesses. To me what that means is, why would they continue to sell bikes at wholesale prices to the public when their competitors are now also low on inventory and willing to pay close to or wholesale price and buy dozens of bikes at a time.
What I'm getting at, is if working with you as a buyer to sell a $1k bike (with $500 profit to them) takes almost as much time as they can move 10 of them to another retailer for $800 ($3,000 profit), wouldn't it make sense to do that? I assume they look at the $1k bikes as a gateway - if 50% of those buyers really enjoy their bike and come back for a Stromer, Bulls, Haibike, etc model where profit on the 2nd sale is going to be $1K+ easily, then that is where the motivation lies in selling lower end ebikes - as a long term draw-in.
Being frank here, 3 phone calls, a couple of emails and 2 in-person visits to the store and you never pulled the trigger, I'm not entirely surprised they aren't clamoring to get back to you (I promise I'm just as bad sometimes, just thinking about it from a business perspective here). The $1k bikes are meant to be sold directly online (a phone call, an email at most - call in, want the bike, paid for, email shipping info, done), or drop-in local sales, same day, come in, check things out, walk out with a bike.
Right now if they are looking for the best margins, it is probably in taking that warehouse inventory and moving it to businesses that are willing to pay top dollar to satisfy their own retail buyers - most shops want to sell to get you hooked for post-purchase support and subsequent sales. The difference here is that with offering a lower level of long term support, their business is sales focused, both current and subsequent purchases through offering unbeatable prices.
