Reading that announcement really felt bad.

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This "measure" is probably for protecting the local/regional distributors (I think they can't prohibit any EU country distributor from selling to another EU country - because of the EU regulations - "single market"). If it is what it appears to be, I'd expect every EU shop to be affected (obliged) - including Bike Discount (that made no announcement about this for now, as far as I know).

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What was the problem? My assumption:

The likes of Chain Reaction Cycles had really big discounts relatively regularly, plus they would offer free shipping from time to time. On top of that, if buying from outside the EU, you get an extra about 20% discount, since VAT (Value Added Tax) gets deducted from the price.

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This resulted, at least in my country, in many people ordering online, from abroad, not buying from the local distributor. Which, in turn, resulted in the local distributor having very low stock, so when you need a part in a hurry, you're in trouble.

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So, this has its pros and cons. Might, just might end up with local distributors having a higher turnover, maybe even more parts in stock. We'll see.