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I'm with you and @dancing james on this in fact, my main source of Rapha is Ebay and I buy/like it primarily for the quality and durability, pretty new to it in fact, but the bits I have are much better and more comfortable than the previous cheaper bibs and jerseys. I was more commenting not with a #buyer hat on.
The way, at times, they seem to advertise Rapha as a select club, just the feel you get from some of the images and website, at least used to. Then thinking that by expanding to Wiggle makes that idea less strong, but the tradeoff of using Wiggle's coverage is understandable. In the meantime of the last few years it seems like DHB have been growing into having a more premium quality, copying elements of what Rapha did well and the previous defined gap between Rapha and brands like DHB is blurring a bit now.
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Squaredisk
I got Core Winter tights with pad for £47, don't care if they came from the same shop as DHB...
Good kit, low price. Couldn't give a fuck about the rest of the "exclusivity" or being in a snobby club. Rapha's best selling point to me has always been quality and design-both of which are now far more hit and miss and are far more likely to stop me buying again in future than their brand image. If anything the snobiness put me off buying stuff as much as the price.
Service wise I don't mind not buying from Rapha direct either... Last core bibs I bought had blatantly been worn/stained/returned and just flogged again without being checked. That's probably less likely to happen via Wiggle too, and their dispatch and shipping is fast and free.
¯_(ツ)_/¯