correction
$206 is US retail on a wiseco piston kit replacement all across the USA and this piston works just fine.  The retail you see is for a "OEM" from Spain that is basically the same piston, but it went from vendor to OEM to distributor to dealer to you...alot of hands touching this product plus oversea's shipment, customs taxes, dollar versus euro 1.30 on average...
While we don't advertise the wiseco for the sake of keeping GG happy, it is almost all we sell and distribute to dealers, cutting out the oversea's shipping, one middle person, and our weak dollar, but less profit as well all to keep GG riders happier.....
Also, not correct about Wiseco pistons being limited to "supplier" any and all dealers can get direct, the same as us, its just Wiseco doesn't stock large quantities so we try to prepare and order qty's of 12 to 24 so they will build and have in stock and we had a hard time convincing them to do those small kind of runs of production.
Some parts are more expensive than the competitions, yes i agree, while others are not..KTM radiator versus GG radiators.  We've starting to outsource plastics as well, wheel kits, we have aftermarket wearables for everything on your bike at a lesser cost to you.
Dealer network...isn't where we want it but then again look at all the ktm shops that are no longer.  We've had about 5 dealerships within 150 miles close, just plain close, whether it be Arctic Cat, KTM, Yamaha shops.  Plus Harley Davidson predicts more stores closing in 2010 than in 2009.  Its still survival mode and I feel really good about GasGas's survival.
Deteriorating value?  This one always cracks me up, look around at other machines and the cheap prices they are currently.  The value is only deteriorated if your marketing your bike to the local guy that's never heard of a GG, the used GG's we sell always get a fair price not much worse than the KTM or Yammie down the street.