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@VanUden
You've just highlighted the biggest thing that narks me about this whole Foffa debate. I always thought that this forum was about getting people out on their bikes more, encouraging people to enjoy riding for any number of reasons from commuting to just for the hell of it. And importantly simply supporting the cycling community.
There was always a spirit about this forum that was somehow uniquely British, in that it supported the underdog, the quirky, the slightly upstream from the mainstream. Now here's a guy who has set out to follow his dream and set up his own bike shop. He's made mistakes. But he's held his hands up and he's tried to remedy them. And incidentally if any of you have ever had the balls to try and run your own business you'll know that making mistakes, especially in the early years, goes with the territory.
What you're suggesting tomd from a business perspective is utter nonsense. How can a small business possibly hope to compete with the likes of Fuji on price? Of course it can't. Simply because they don't have mass production and consequently worldwide outlets and therefore the luxury of being able to write off last year's model almost at cost making little or no real profit on what in business terms are leftovers. But despite this the Foffa prices are still pretty close to buying from some faceless mega-brand if that's what you want to do. Your money, your choice.
I think the main problem here amongst those who only slag off what Foffa are doing is jealousy. People are envious and consequently massively opinionated about what Foffa 'should' be doing in their opinion. The subtext I see when reading between the lines in some people's posts on Foffa is 'you don't want to do it like that, you want to do it like this!' or 'oh no, you really didn't want to do that I would have done it far better!'. But you didn't set up your own bicycle business did you? You just posted on an internet forum about why somebody else had done it alllllll wrong.
Support a local business. Support individuality.
Rant over.