Either

1. get a used bike and add parts as needed from online deals
2. make friends with the LBS, buy stuff in the winter when it is 1/2 price

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I try to support the local shops that in turn support the sport. For a frame I often get something used or a demo from a local rep, but I'm not super picky I guess.

I am biased, but if you are near a decent LBS then developing a good relationship with them is very beneficial. People who scan the interweb often get the wrong thing and spend hours doing it.
When you see a new bike at a big discount on-line there is almost always a good reason why. When people get used bikes they are often the wrong bike or size or the bike has something wrong with it. Buying a used bike from somebody you can trust and is the right size is good if the price is right.

1. I've had to pay import tariffs on stuff from PBK, Wiggle, etc. occasionally. Lower cost items never get hit, higher cost items occasionally do, but I haven't worked out why particular items get stopped.

2. Of the last two wheel sets I bought, I got one from PBK and one ex-rental from RaceWheelRental.com (now defunct?). The ex-rental wheels were shipped to a partner store (Colorado Multisport) and I picked them up there.

3. Varies. I got my last stem from the LBS, but my last saddle from Wiggle.

4. I do most of my own work, but if the LBS is going to do most of the work then I like to buy the majority of parts from them too. If I buy online I build it myself. I was talking with my LBS last week about a gruppo upgrade, which I'm likely to do through them.

5. Last bike I bought I had shipped over from the UK. In my defence, I'm British and I was buying a Boardman (which couldn't be had here in the US at the time). My last MTB was an LBS purchase.
Open-mould isn't my thing, and if I'm having something built I'll work with my LBS to see what they can do. Buying a complete bike is something I'm more likely to shop around for, but I'll ask the LBS what they can do.

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http://ironvision.blogspot.com ; @drSteve1663

San Francisco and Ventura craigslist

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Not to be *terribly* snarky (but at least moderately), what's your working definition of a "Top quality road race bike?"

Maybe, given my financial situation, but pretty much any bike with 105/Rival/(Don't know campy's lineup, sorry) or better and corresponding accoutrements is a top quality road race bike. It's almost hard to spend more than 1k on a lightly used (or something like bikesdirect) bike and not have something absolutely spectacular. Swap saddles and stems to preference and you're off.

This prudent shopper used a bevy of ebay, classifieds, and online sales to put together his latest bike (I do 95% of my own wrenching, save having a bearing press), and will buy odd parts here and there from the LBS. Mostly aim for new old stock or lightly used components. Or buy a whole, lightly used bike that's underpriced (awkward frame or something) and part out what I don't need. But that's pretty time costly.

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The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.

-Albert J. Nock

I've built up 4 bikes from the naked frame or frame\fork up, mostly I buy from my LBS and a bit from ebay bike stores.
My LBS and I go back to the mid 2000s, he gets me all sorts of good deals on low-mi used or new equipment;
using reputable NA ebay bikestores has also netted me some great deals

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res, non verba

"Not to be *terribly* snarky (but at least moderately), what's your working definition of a 'Top quality road race bike?'"

obviously this is open to opinion, but, forgetting everything else that could be said, the euro companies don't seem to care what ends up online for US consumption. one can pretty easily find bianchi, bmc, ridley, merckx, boardman, storck, pinarello, wilier, etc., available, at least the closeouts from the year before. you would rarely see cannondale, specialized, trek road race bikes online, shippable to your door, but the pretty good euro frames like these just mentioned, that's what you'll tend to see. it's what i tend to see. oddly, not from the UK sites, rather from competitive cyclist and other US sites.

i don't know why. i suspect it might be because these euro brands don't want to piss off the euro dealer base, but aren't as fussy about pissing off the US dealer base. but i'm just guessing, bearing in mind that there are exceptions: boardman as one example has a very small US dealer base right now so, at least for now, it's allowing online sales so that people can find the product.

in any case, one could conceivably buy a euro frame from a US online seller and then build it up via PBK.

yes, as any slowtwitcher knows i'm hyper-supportive of the LBS. however i'm not writing anything your pro LBS isn't faced with daily. i'm trying to get a sense for what you all do.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I built my last 2 bikes from the frame up.

My BMC road frame I got on closeout (previous years model) from a US online retailer. The groupset got from merlin cycles in the UK. I did get hit for import duty on the groupset so my savings were not as big as I was hoping for. It still ended up being cheaper than my local bike shop. Wheels I got on sale (around 40% off) from a US online retailer. Things like bars and stems I usually buy online when there is a sale. If I need it right away and a local shop has it I will buy it locally. The saddle I bought from a local store. After my bike fitting i discovered the saddle I was using wasn't working for me on this bike so I went out and bought one locally after demoing one my fitter had.

I did most of the assembly myself. I did take it to the shop to purchase a bottom bracket and get it installed. The groupset came with a threaded bottom bracket and my frame takes a press fit one. I also had the shop cut the steerer tube for me.

My cyclocross frame I bought from the local bike shop. There are no online sales for Trek bikes. The shop gave me a fair price. The wheels I had custom built by a US wheel builder. Most of the groupset I took off my old road bike. I had the shop I bought the frame from install the bottom bracket and cut the fork steerer tube. I also bought a few other parts from them like a chain, bar tape, and cables.

If my local shop has what I want at a reasonable price I will strongly consider giving them my business. I almost bought my road bike on sale from a local retailer, but it wasnt exactly what I wanted. It had the same frame I wanted, and Sram Red groupset, however it was the 2012 red without the yaw front derailleur. I wanted the new Red with the yaw derailleur. Also a built bike in my size came with 170mm cranks and I ride 172.5 on my road bike. By building it up myself it cost me around the same, and everything was exactly how I wanted it.

Tires I almost always buy online usually from the UK. I usually ride Continental GP4000S tires and my local shop will charge $65-70 per tire. Amazon usually will have them closer to $50 each. With coupons and sales I can usually get them $30-35 each sometimes a little less from PBK. The downside is PBK free shipping is slow and I probably wont get it for 25-30 days.

Competitive cyclist does have some good deals. I bought my Yeti mountain bike from them. If that deal wasnt available I probably would have bought a bike from my local bike shop with lower end components for the same price.

My last bike was put together through Ebay and Craigslist. All parts and frame were new or barely used. It was a Scott Foil with Zipp 101, and full Sram Red except for cassette, a top of the line selle saddle. Not including the quarq which I owned it was around $1700 fully built and it weighs right at 15lbs. I consider this a prudent race quality bike.

I just bought a nice (full Ultegra build) road bike from my LBS... significant discount off a 2014. Also decided to upgrade the saddle through them, and bought some pedals from them too (they gave a discount on those with the bike purchase). These guys know what they're doing, and their fitting fellow is very particular and takes his time. I'm happy to support them.

I think you've got a pretty good sense of how to build up a bike for the least cost from the Internet. Frames aren't available from the big U.S. brands, group sets are ridiculously cheap from the u.k. sellers. Wheels, and contact points are less predictable for the cheapest source.

I've never paid tariffs when ordering form the u.k.
Last wheels I bought were from a local store. Wheels are one of the hardest things to find discounted, I think.
Saddles, stems, bars, and seatposts are a lot like wheels, sometimes you find that deal, sometimes you don't.
I always build myself if I order online.
Frames are available from certain companies and certain stores. It can be hard to predict. Competitive cyclist is a good first place to look. Planet X UK gets a weird assortment of stuff, as does chain reaction for frames. A lot of times I get the sense that it's stuff discovered in warehouses or overproduction.

Really, you can do pretty well for yourself with this kind of mind frame, but you have to accept some things right up front. There are less good tri frames going this route. You need to do a lot of ordering. You need to hope all of your orders are filled correctly. You also have to be a decent wrench to have that new bike satisfaction.

Personally I always buy frameset, groupsets, components and wheels separately and predominantly import my self (Australia distributors are notorious proce gouging and add no value to the supply chain, and in many years experience offer little to no support in aftersales support).

Mainly because off the shelf specs don't meet my needs (I ride LOOK so not on most LBS shelves anyway).

Also if the value of orders is under 1000AUD you pay no import duties and taxes.

HOWEVER, with the recent turnaround in the value of the AUD vs. USD, i am absolutely now looking to Australian mail order specialists more.
BUT i will always do a google shopping price compare as first point of sourcing, the big UK vendoprs are still just price competitive.(WIGGLE, CRC, RIBBLE, MERLIN, PBK etc).

As an engineer in this game for over 20 years I trust my bike prep far more than local spanners.. mainly cos i care, and i will take all the time to do the job exactly right and how i want it. They cannot economically achieve that. So no value add of using LBS. Also many LBS on the Gold Coast are dickheads (sadly... ), with no customer loyalty or customer service skills so i learned over time that in their case they do not deserve my customer loyalty. So vote with your feet as they say..

This scenario is common with experienced mechanically adept people i ride with... there is a huge number just buying off the shelf though with no knowledge around bike build, fit and prep etc.... i whice when i hear what these people re charged for basic bike maintenance when it is so ridiculously simple.. .anyhow another discussion topic no doubt..

[/img]I just went through this and built up a true no-excuses race bike for less than the cost of the wheel set alone (minus cost of PM).
I purchased like-new frame set and new f&r derailleurs + bars from an online resales shop who did the build. I was not anxious to deal with s2 cable routing.
I sourced brand new rival the shifters from ebay, and had them shipped for the build.
Used and existing crank-set.
Zipps from Boulder Craigslist, brand new but 1/2 retail
There were problems. Believe it or not, they had the frame mislabled as a 58, it was a 61. Happily, it ended up still working for my fit coordinates. Also the build did not turn quite as perfect as if a top-shelf place like the Service Course or Excel would have done it, but it also did not cost me $200 to have it done. All that said, having done three builds myself, I will always go this route in the future. If I was 25 (or 55) and kidless than I would enjoy the process taking my time, but right now carving out an afternoon to trim housings and use shopvacs to pull cables through cable sleeves on the weekends is not really in the card. And toddlers make horrible shop assistants....

"Also many LBS on the Gold Coast are dickheads (sadly... )"

yes, off the subject, but in defense of the dickheads: since 1990, when first traveling to your fine country, when it comes to business establishments of any sort, everybody in OZ (in or out of business) thinks everybody else in business is a dickhead. at least that has been my observation.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

:), the dickheads don't need defending they have numbers hahaha

Dan, I totally have supported my LBS, helped it set up, built bikes for its stock fill , supported servicing clients bike sand bike fits.. all for free.. over a number of years.. Sadly with growth and time pressures the vendor lost the ability to offer service and replaced it with arrogance and indifference to new and regular customers.. i walked away at that time and found it impossible to recommend them anymore.. ..

I totally support those offering high quality services to customers and stand by their work for the long term.. these people will have my lasting loyalty... the others (of which there are so many) i leave to their own devices.. other customers can make their own call on if they are satified etc.. and thats cool too..

And yeah it is a gorgeous country, i love it, however customer service is not a specialty.... other folks do it better IME...

Cheers

let me cast my earlier remark. it's not that australians often are critical of people in business. they are just very often critical of other australians in business. again, just my observation. lovely people. lovely country. great athletes. great athletic culture. just that almost every australian selling anything to another australian is a wanker.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

too funny, i guess its because they used to just nick it and inherently disagree with having to pay for anything and hence having it sold to them ..

OK no more convicts gags.. out.

Are you using the word "prudent" to mean "budget-conscious"?

From your examples, you're only talking about new, not used, bikes?

"Are you using the word "prudent" to mean "budget-conscious"?"

maybe, but, not as in low-priced. actually, the opposite. if you wanted to buy a maserati, or a hublot, but you didn't want to pay more than you needed to pay, how typically is that accomplished by our readers when considering higher end pro bikes?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'm sponsored by a shop so I get special deals or demo bikes. I order most parts from them and get my finishing touches from eBay. They love me so they assemble it for me

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USAC, Health and Nutrition Coach
http://www.echelonhealthcoaching.com
use code SLOWTWITCH for %15 off

get a relationship going with your LBS. its amazing what they can do for you if you show loyalty and treat them with respect.

Buy a used top quality bike.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Buy everything off ST classifieds obviously.