At Our Community Bikes we have a solid relationship with several shops in the area and cross overs on people who use our services.
There's definitely a recognition of first time riders, or people just getting back into it finding a used bike, and within a period, raising funds to buy the bike they want from a retailer.
We cross reference repair services depending on our capabilities and stock in parts. But we have expanded our distributors so much that we can usually order anything, and now get people who order specialty premium items because they want to support us, and then buy our service to install it! It's great!
I think that there have been some contentious issues when a retailer has seen us as a competitor and made hostile remarks on social media or to shared users since we've been operating (1993), but they are far and few between.
Not really the thread question, but a part of it is that our relationship with other community bike shops in this city is such that there has been an general alliance formed as the Vancouver Community Bikeshop Network. We share resources, have regular correspondence and meetings, and partner up on programs, space, and such. There's even several members who are staff / volunteers between 2 or more (if not all) of the shops !
(and recently our shop and staffer did a hydraulic workshop for another group of volunteers from a different community bike shop for example )
the bike shop environment here has been really easy to deal with from our experience
(But Hub City Cycles in Nanaimo BC when first started had a bad experience with a local retailer giving too much grief.. another story )
Jesse Cooper
Our Community Bikes
Vancouver