Recently in Perth, our CBD has been influxed by the big 3, Specilized (Ride Advise), Trek (Riders Choice) and Giant's own store. All within the last year.
Having worked in arguably the biggest bicycle store franchise in Australia (at the original franchise store) for the last 7 years. It seems that the franchise will die soon, unless the franchise actually allows the shops to work together in order to secure deals within the group. Within our group, this is not happening. It used to, but they are trying to eat each other's tails rather than banding together.
I worked in a bike shop that failed where, at the end, the recurrent customers couldn't believe it could happen to such helpful, friendly guys. Problem is, they represented some sort of loosely defined 'core' to some of the staff who somehow perceived them to be of particular value and fell over themselves to help them; when in reality all the customers should have been the core, because customers are obviously the core of a retail business. This explains the polarised comments about service I think, because it's pretty common in shops that go under.
Bike guys are rarely good retail guys, although there are some retail guys who are into bikes.
This. This is sooo true. We have guys who've spent well over 30k-40k each at our store, but are now getting us to price-match and still expect the same level of "above and beyond service." Some of these guys are now supported riders by brands we don't stock and just come in to chew the fat, but haven't brought a single thing from us in 6 months. There is a stage when the staff and owners need to recognize that they are wasting their time by talking to these guys and letting new customers fall by the way-side.
"The staff come across as arrogant", is normal to hear from customers who have been to x shop and never got served or ignored because "the staff were too busy wanting to sell the 3k+ road bike". Shop's think they are delivering great service to their 'core' group of customers, but that is not the group of customers they need to focus on. It's looking after the families, the random kid who wants to get into road riding or saw a Danny Macaskill video and wants to give it a try. This builds a rotating group of customers, once they learn enough from the shop, they out-grow you. This is what most of the people on these forums are, people who have out-grown their LBS because they've learnt from the LBS about buying online and fixing things themselves. It's natural progression. The internet has allowed this natural progression to quicken and many customers wouldn't shop at the same store for more than a year. It's great when those core customers come back to purchase a bike from you! It's a blessing that they remember you served them well and will happily buy a bike, but not much else from you. Take what you can get!
This natural progression also comes with stores who now purchase stuff from wiggle/CRC to compensate for Shimano Australia's pricing and to a lesser extent, Monza's pricing. Once they setup, they always buy from the Australia distro's, but shops that have been around for awhile will buy from cheaper sources where they can get away with it.