Use extreme caution here. If there is an atmosphere of inequity or impropriety it could come back to haunt you. If someone feels like they deserve a special deal for all their hard work, might another feel like they should get first rights on a really sweet cruiser that comes through? If the balance is lost, it could cause loss of public trust. Happy Rides! Art

Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:14:03 -0700From: bicirider@gmail.comTo: thethinktank@bikecollectives.orgSubject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Collective members/ordering from QBPcorrect me if I'm wrong (I'm curoius about this, but everyone seems kinda vague on the details), but I think that there are two different types of wholesale agreements that bike projects might have with QBP. Some of us have striaght up wholesale priviledges and some of us have a special thing worked out for non-profits. The non-profit status makes it easier to get the initial QBP account, but there are limits on how much stuff you can order (and I think that you can't get the 'bike builder' deals on frames/groupos). I've been told that this is the kind of account that BICAS (where I work) has, but I can find nothing about it on the QBP website.If you have a regular wholesalers account, you are supposed to follow all the rules and laws that any retailer would (charge standard mark-ups, pay sales taxes, follow all federal state and local laws, blah blah blah). However, it is common practise for retailers of all sorts to sell shwag to their employees at cost (it probably cuts down on employee theft), and it is pretty common practice for employees to turn around and sell said shwag for next to retail price (witness the 'EBay Store' phenomenon). QBP recognizes this and probably doesn't care. Neither should we. As collectives, we don't offer stuff to our 'employees' for wholesale to prevent stealing, we offer wholesale to ourselves because we recognize that we work hard for little or no money and, frankly, we're in it because we love bikes.If your org has the non-profit sort of account, all of the same probably applies, except that you can't order that much stuff from them week to week, so a large personal order might be a problem.Not only does QBP not care if you sell stuff to employees/collective members at wholesale, employees are elegable for pro-deals on selected brands. See that portion of the website for details. Ultimately it seems like QBP has little to say about it: they want you to ensure that the parts bought on pro-deal won't be resold, and that's about it. I can't think of any really good reasons why a shop wouldn't give wholesale to its coremembers, except that sometimes patrons kind of sneer when you finish helping them with their huffy and climb on your carbon fiber blingbling to ride home.BICAS has a really good relationship with a normal shop in town (Ordinary Bikes). BICAS doesn't sell much stuff from QBP; we send folks to them. Ordinary gives us some crazy discount on shwag. Nearly wholesale. Good vibes, good gig.On the otherhand, the BikeChurch in Santa Cruz where I used to work sells tons of stuff from QBP (underselling the regular shops on small ticket items) and tons of stuff at wholesale+tax to the core mechanics, and still has an alright relationship with the shops. Even the snobby ones.Damn that rambled on.my hands are dirty but my clothes are clean,kyle On 1/30/08, plan_9@riseup.net plan_9@riseup.net wrote: I was wondering if anyone has any policy in place that allows ordis-allows collective members from ordering new parts, frame/forks, oreven complete bikes from QBP. Shops that do allow ordering, whatrestrictions from QBP apply?Thanks, AndrewFMCBW_______________________________________________Thethinktank mailing listThethinktank@bikecollectives.orghttp://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.o...