[duck9191]

That's part of being a dealer, you deal with customers who can find it cheaper, if they can't explain in a way that sells their service and justifies the cost difference to the customer they should seek some one with the customer relation skills to do so because its a large part selling.

Same goes for being a distributor, you will have to deal with dealers who do not care for your direct to retail sales. You will never make them happy because they are partially being cut out and don't care about your bottom line just theirs. They don't care that you have the burden of carrying inventory or parts which are large capital investments which drive up the cost of goods sold. Every industry is moving towards wholesale distributors going B2C because as a whole two step distribution is dissolving.

I work in a recreation industry for a wholesale distributor that does a good amount of B2C sales and have to deal with both sides of it every day. Never going to make everyone happy so do what moves the most bikes for your company. If you are worried about brand value dilution then go to MAP pricing and make dealers "sell" their extras so everyone is on a fair playing field and the bike can be bought everywhere for the same price + extras like assembly.

An apparent 43% price hike is going to ruffle some feathers, either they buy or they don't.