End of the road for independent bike distributors?
bicycleretailer.comI live in a college town with several bike shops, all of them still tied to the traditional retail model. The one I suspect has the worst prospects is the most upscale one. They have a big clean showroom full of expensive sporty bikes, but their mechanics are second-rate. You can tell because their shop is in the basement and you're not allowed to come down and watch them work on your bike. And the one time I made the mistake of going there for service they sniffed at my decent, well maintained commuting bike because the paint was dinged up and it was covered with road dust, charged me twice what the repair was worth, and didn't fix the problem. The shop I'm rooting for has a tiny showroom and a big repair shop right behind the counter. There's grease on everything, and I'm pretty sure they've been under-charging me for labor because they know I commute by bike. They already order and assemble bikes for people, and they also rent by the day. They, I suspect, will be just fine.
Spot on.
Every bike shop has a "flavor". There was the "carbon fiber" shop where I'd get funny looks if I dragged my commuter bike in. They closed up shop and moved even farther into the suburbs. It'd take me an hour to bike there now.
Then there's the "commuter shop". Where they charged $0 for labor when I walked in one cold, messy winter night with a shredded tire and a crazy story. That does simple fixes on the spot quickly and painlessly so my commute time is bumped by less than 30 minutes. They'll get my business every time. I haven't tried to do an online order with them yet though; we've just bought bikes off the showroom floor.
The best ones handle a range. I don't want a mechanic who's too good to touch my commuter bike, but I don't want a dude wrenching on the expensive Campagnolo bits on my road bike whose experience primarily consists of bashing stuff together on fixies, either.
I really miss my shop in Italy - that guy occasionally worked on pro's bikes. Like the guy who won a gold medal in the olympics. But he always had time for me, and whatever bike I brought in - whether it was the rusty commuter or the nice bike I'd bought from him.
I would never consider buying a bike on line. They're always going to need maintenance and having someone who knows what they're doing is worthwhile.
Your blog about Italy is really interesting, thanks!
My go-to bike shop is a commuter shop right at the base of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown. He's always getting all sorts of walk-ins from, e.g., banged-up people whose brakes failed them on the downward slope into the city. The entire space is the maintenance area, and he's always right in front of you working on bikes.
You can also order bikes online and have them shipped to him for assembly, and his rates are extremely reasonable (something like $45 for a single speed, $75 for a geared bicycle). He did a great job assembling my bicycle.
Poor guy also works something like 80 hours per week, because he's always there during opening hours (which include everyone else's commuting times), and he often works late on the backlog of bikes to repair that's been building up.
so glad to see that place mentioned! it was my morning coffee stop when i lived in new york. the owner/operator is great to chat to, lots of interesting stories about the neighborhood.
Yeah, lots of interesting stories about the neighborhood and your typical "just rolled into the shop" horror stories from people's commutes. Lots of banged-up people coming through there. He also does a big business with bike messengers, and if you end up chatting with them you hear all sorts of interesting stories. Many stories involve running from the cops for traffic violations as if it's just a routine thing. It's true though ... bike messengers don't get tickets as they won't let themselves be caught, and the police aren't going to start a dangerous car chase over a ~$200 ticket.
It's also hilarious how often people waiting for the Chinatown buses try to use his bathroom (and how good he's gotten at rebuffing them). I think he should start charging for bathroom access.
About the only work I don't do myself on my bikes is handlebar tape because I don't have the patience for that shit. But I'd rather have a bike repair shop at hand that I trust and will offer me the best advice, one that I know I can drop my bike off when I'm in a pinch, one that will tell me what I should order when I need it. I will order it from them every time. I don't want a shop with all the fanciest bikes and offer such cogent advice as:
"This one's got grippier grips than that one and it has a basket and it's pink."
"Can you tell me about this groupset? How does it handle mud? does it age well or is it going to be rusty as fuck 6 minutes after I walk out of here?"
"Did I mention it's pink?"
I wanna know that the XTR groupset functions in the opposite direction of the XT and that even though it's more intuitive for someone that doesn't ride that often, if you've ridden day in, day out for the past 10 years and you suddenly switch to gear shifters that go the opposite way, that fucks with your head - and your ride until you've reprogrammed yourself.
I wanna know that the ultra expensive plastic shielded brake cables aren't going to be any better 3 months down the road because all the shielding wears off and I paid 3 times over what I could've paid for cheaper ones at no real long term benefit. Meaningful advice. Not just technically accurate.
I want the mechanics who know their shit inside and out. I want the sales guys to be riders, not just hardcore elite riders but every day commuters who are passionate about their bikes. I don't want to talk to someone who works here because "it was the only job I could find that fit my schedule."
These guys are the reason I got into biking in the first place. Because their passion inspired my passion.
Yeah, usually the people with the best advice are the tougher older bikers who just want to ride. They've seen the hype cycle come and go a dozen times, and they just don't have time for that kind of BS anymore.
Absolutely agree. And it's the gruff and grumpy older bikers that I always go in search of when I walk into a bike shop. This is the kind of relationship I want with the service department in my bike shop:
"Hey you, you look like you've been in here since 1963, what can you tell me about this component?"
"It's shit, get this one instead. It does exactly the same thing, looks the same, feels the same, fits your bike the same. It costs about 20% more but'll last 10 times longer. The older design sheds muck better meaning less wear and the compound it's made from has the same tensile strength as the newer one but it doesn't rust because it was made before they cheaped out and started making shit quality product. I don't even know why the fuck they released this one. The old one was better. We're gonna stop carrying their newer stuff until they get their shit together."
They don't tend to mince words. They tell you exactly how it is, rather than exactly what they think you want to hear to get you to part with your money. In my opinion, you cannot pay enough to have people like this on your team.
This is quite accurate.
In my past I worked at a greasy bike shop and turned wrenches for several years. The smaller bike shops without the gloss and glamour of high end branded stores have a different mentality, and they are far more scrappy than their more "elite" cousins.
What you'll find is that when times get tough the elite shops will shut down because their overhead is higher, they carry more stock of higher priced merchandise, and they tend to have an attitude of exclusion toward their customers.
Meanwhile the scrappy grease shop will just cut back to carrying the best selling items, reduce some operating hours, and maybe drop a brand or two until the market picks back up.
There's a reason why the smaller shops usually have been around since the 70's or 80's and the larger elite shops always look shiny and new; The smaller shops live and the larger fancier shops die.
One model that wasn't mentioned explicitly in the article but I think might work is let customers have their bikes purchased online be shipped to the shop for assembly. I ordered my last bicycle from BikesDirect and it was tricky to get it set up just right. A bike shop could probably do it in an hour. It took me five or six hours.
Even if assembly doesn't directly make a lot of profit, it's a great time to sell accessories and service plans.
> A bike shop could probably do it in an hour. It took me five or six hours.
Yes but then you miss out on an almost "bonding" experience with the machine and feeling of intimately understanding it. That's why I do most of my own car repair, even though it takes me longer than a shop would take.
Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about the "Romantic" vs. "Classical" approach to such things.
> Yes but then you miss out on an almost "bonding" experience with the machine and feeling of intimately understanding it.
That's true. Thirty years ago I had more time than money and working on my stuff was very satisfying. These days I would rather go to the movies with my wife, help my kids with their homework, walk my dog, or take a nap. I'm doing better financially, but my time is scarce.
I've read Zen. I loved the motorcycle travelogue part and but was bored by his treatise on quality.
For me, being self sufficient for maintenance dramatically alters my cycling experience. Taking my bike to a mechanic would involve loading it into a car and driving it somewhere, waiting, and repeating the process when the work is done.
Naturally, it can take time to get parts, so if something is actually broken, then the bike is out of commission for a while. But a minor benefit of poor urban planning is that I've got space for a spare bike or two, or three, plus a bucket of spares that I've collected over the years from trashed bikes. ;-)
Also, doing the work at home means that there's less of an impediment to keeping the bike in good adjustment more or less continually, so parts don't come loose and start to deteriorate. Major repairs become less frequent. More or less weekly, I go down into the garage and check all of the bikes in the family fleet. The effort is practically trivial. I also involve the kids in this work, whenever possible.
With an eye towards doing my own maintenance, I choose my battles when I get a new (or more likely, used) bike. I prefer parts that are likely to be reliable, and that are straightforward to adjust without a proliferation of special tools.
Basic maintenance is an essential cycling skill. Bikes are lightweight machines by necessity, so they can't be over-engineered for reliability. Bikes will inevitably break down on a fairly regular basis.
Fortunately, they're also boneheadedly simple machines to fix. You can learn to change an inner tube, align a derailleur, adjust a brake caliper and true a wheel in about an hour. If you have those skills, you can do 90% of your own repairs. You'll have an infinitely better cycling experience, because you won't end up stranded at the side of the road because of something that could be fixed in two minutes.
Indeed, and it's also a necessary skill if people are going to buy bikes online. I think it's pretty likely that a bike receives its initial adjustment and testing after it's assembled by the recipient. And I've read about quality lapses such as bearings with little or no lubrication, and insufficiently tensioned wheels.
I think you mis-spelled "bodging" ;)
I've spent months, maybe years, of time fixing and maintaining cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. It's useful when something breaks on the side of the road or when you get an estimate for repair. There is the satisfaction of being self-sufficient and able to do it yourself. There's also the screaming frustration when you break something-- which happens when you're learning like over-torquing a bolt (tighten until it spins then back off a quarter, anyone?). cracking a housing, snapping the head off a stuck bolt, watching a unique and critical part improbably pick up speed on a flat work area as it rolls away from you drawn to the siren song of a sewer grate or a gap in the deck. I want to spend time with family, friends, on hobbies, or, you know, actually use my vehicle instead of recreationally bust my knuckles on it. I'm happy to read all the manuals and squint at exploded diagrams then pay someone else to do it while I go play.
Once you've done that work once it will be much easier the next time. Affordable bikes don't have any sort of self adjustment, everything has to be done manually, so if you don't know how to make the adjustments you will be in the shop every few months getting it tuned back up. In my experience shifters are the worst for getting slightly out of whack as the chain wears out, and are the most fiddly when tuning. Brakes are the second worst as you're trying to balance the spring tension on the two sides exactly so it doesn't rub.
I'd say wheel truing is the worst. It's tedious and you really want a dedicated wheel truing stand, and you may need spare nipples in case you round one off. Second to that is setting up tubeless tires, it's messy and you might need an air compressor to seat the bead.
Derailleurs are easy once you know how to set the limit screws and adjust the cable tension. Disc brakes are tricky, but again if you know the trick then it's pretty easy as well.
Occasionally I imagine that I understand how to set derailleur limit screws. Inevitably, that illusion shatters within a month. b^(
The easiest way to get a derailleur limit setup is to de-cable the derailleur, and back both screws all the way out.
Then the derailleur spring will bring the chain all the way to the highest gear (smallest cassette cog), and since you backed the limit screw out, the chain will want to rub against the frame stays.
Use your fingers to push the derailleur up into a lower gear and then turn the limit screw for the outside limit one full turn. Repeat this until without using your hand to guide the derailleur the chain rests in the highest gear without needing any force, but also doesn't rub against the frame stay.
Then use your hand to push the derailleur all the way to the lowest gear (largest cassette cog) and try to get the chain to fall between the cassette and the wheel spokes. If it can fall over the inside of the gear and into the spokes then turn the limit screw for the inside limit one full turn. Repeat until the chain can reach the lowest gear without using excessive force, but cannot fall off the cog toward the spokes.
Add some lock tight to both limit screws so that you don't have to adjust them again, and you are done!
Now just reattach the rear derailleur cable and adjust the tension if you need to.
Also, if you don't have a cable puller, an easy way to tension the RD cable is to put the chain on the second smallest cog, then tighten the cable bolt. Cable pullers are really worth the money, though. Especially for cantis.
Quality brakes are usually easier to adjust. Like Avid V-brakes or Magura rim brakes for instance. Luckily I did not have to bleed them yet. Cantis are by far the worst, although I've never used Avid Shorties.
I just experienced this with a bike I bought my wife on Amazon. Amazon offered free assembly at a bike shop about 5 miles from my house. The bike was shipped to the shop, I was notified it arrived, and 3 days later I got a notice it was ready for pickup. The shop was friendly about the exchange and we ended up buying several accessories while we were there.
This works when Amazon picks a bike shop to do the assembly but often times they use independent contractors that have absolutely no clue how to assemble bikes. I've seen forks put on backwards, handlebars upside-down, real nightmares.
This approach makes a lot of sense. Where people really need help is bike sizing and fitting. What size bike do I order? How do I adjust it to fit me? Bike manufacturers will list a height range for each frame size on their website. You will need to adjust things differently if you are on the upper or lower end of that range.
The other model I've seen work locally is demoing high end bikes. Specifically mountain bikes. The local shop has a weekly mountain bike ride where you can try out several bikes. This is probably worth the effort if they sell a couple extra bikes a week. The mountain bikes they demo range from $3-6k. This shop has bikes on the show floor, but could easily switch to demo only.
I have spoken with many bike store owners and employees, they know they can't compete with the prices you can get for parts and accessories from online retailers. But very few have an alternate plan.
The ones I see who are being smart about this reality are instead focusing on having absolutely excellent mechanics and experiences like shop rides to get groups out on amazing day trips / overnights. There is a huge value add in teaching people skills and thus converting them into more advanced cyclists who'll want better gear.
One other thing that I wish more shops would offer is fit tests. The one I did was over an hour of adjustments to a stationary bike that was designed to be adjusted (i.e. the frame measurements could be changed) and them watching me ride it with a slow motion camera. At the end of it, I now have exact measurements that let me order a custom bike or know whether a stock bike will fit me if I order it online. It simplifies the online shopping process immensely because I know there are specific brands that simply don't work for my body type without extensive modifications once I get the bike.
It's probably not applicable to people who are looking for a $100-$200 bike, but for people that are looking at $2k bikes, getting this kind of test done is well worth the $100 or so that it costs. Having a bike that isn't just adjusted properly but is the perfect size for your body makes such a big difference in how enjoyable it is to ride. It's funny to look back at the first few bikes I bought and the buying experience. I basically looked at features, reviews and aesthetics to arrive at the one I wanted and then had the shop adjust it for me. And while I could ride it, it was never anywhere close to the comfort I feel on a bike that I've selected based on my exact dimensions and riding posture.
If people are going to buy their bikes online, shops should lean into that fact and try to provide services that facilitate the customers preferred buying experience. This kind of ~$100/hr service is both a money maker and a way to enhance the online shopping experience.
This is spot on - the shops that will survive will be the ones that provide knowledge, service, and experiences. Group rides, classes, free espressos while your bike is being serviced, etc.
Well, actually, a cook and kitchen shop in a big city just closed. They did all that and still people just ordered from the web
As a 17 year veteran of Independent bicycle dealers, this hits it right on the head. The most successful shop I ever worked at focused their inventory on parts and offered 24 hour turnaround provided the bike didn't require special ordered parts. Service is the only thing that can't be replaced by the internet.
And service is what distinguishes bike shops from each other. In reality, bikes are commodity items, things you can buy anywhere and are sensitive to price. The same for computers, appliances, and most electronics. Service, however, is unique to that store and people remember good service (and bad). When I get good service at any type of store, I feel good about the experience and am more than likely to spend my money with them again. And a key point, I am willing to pay more to get it.
Also, on things the average citizen can't/won't easily order online. Spokes are a trivial example but there are also lots of add-on components.
except when you can throw away your $150 bike and replace it for the cost of its repair ;)
Spent years working in a bike shop, so this was a really interesting read for me. He may be right, but I can't help be think that most people just don't care enough about their bikes to have enough customers to sustain a good Service Shop. Most people have a bike, but would never bother taking it somewhere fancy like this to get it fixed or serviced. They paid $100 for it at Walmart.
He said something in there that caught my eye:
"Think back to the '80s when market experts were predicting that internet sales were going to doom UPS and FedEx ... Huh?! Crazy as that sounds, that's what experts said, which made absolutely no sense to me."
Is that true?
To answer your question, the quote about the internet supposedly lowering FedEx’s market value in the 1980’s is total nonsense.
The financial markets had zero awareness of the internet in the 1980’s (with good reason, as the Internet didn’t become commercially significant until Marc Andreesen wrote the first web browser called Mosaic in 1993 putting the internet in the hands of normal people for the first time). If we read the quote charitably and conclude they had a typo and meant to write the 1990’s it’s still nonsense as FedEx’s stock price was completely unaffected by the crash at the end of the internet boom in 2002, demonstrating the market saw no significance of the internet to FedEx’s market value, positive or negative. The market didn’t begin to think seriously about connecting the dots between FedEx and the Internet until well into the 2000’s, at which point it was clear online buying would be good for FedEx.
yep.
I can recall 90's / early 2000's stuff about email being a concern for mail service before ecommerce was as big, but thats completely different than the 80's and ecommerce, neither of which were a thing.
> Most people have a bike, but would never bother taking it somewhere fancy like this to get it fixed or serviced. They paid $100 for it at Walmart.
As with many other markets, the middle is being hollowed out - there's a large low-end ($100 Walmart bikes) and a niche of high-end pro-sumers who have disposable income and time to spend on expensive hobbies (I believe a "decent" mountain bike starts at $1,000-2,000, going up to $xx,000).
The old middle ground ($300-500 bikes bought by unknowledgeable consumers who need the help of local stores) is what is being gutted by the decline of the middle class' disposable incomes and the specialized knowledge high-end hobbyists can now attain thanks to the Internet.
Service businesses can do well targeting the high end. The low end products are disposable.
This is incorrect in my experience. I live in a city with a high percentage of bike commuters and they all ride bikes that fall squarely in the middle of your price range (anywhere from $400-$1000).
There is actually an entire segment of the cycling industry that has sprang up around catering to this demographic, urban commuters who want something functional and hip looking and are willing to pay the premium, but don't need a $1000 mountain bike for their trip to and from work. I have not taken a full survey of every bike commuter I see in my city, but I feel confident in assessing the cost of their ride falls under or just around $800 (assuming they bought brand new and not used, I think less people tend to buy new).
The amount of these hip cyclists grossly outnumbers the amount of "prosumer" cyclists (spending $2,000 on a carbon fiber bike) I see on the weekends riding trails. I would imagine these numbers are inverted in the suburbs, where you wouldn't find as many bike commuters, but the suburbs are also lower density than a city and therefore fewer potential bike riders to compare with.
EDIT: Also your point about middle class incomes and their effect on how much a consumer can afford to spend on a bike doesn't square with economics. I see your general concern regarding middle class wages not keeping pace with economic growth, but if a bike is essential to someone's lifestyle they will find a way to afford what they need.
And on a related note, many city dwellers are starting to give up on the concept of owning a car, favoring their bike or public transit or ride shares as a means to get around. Do you know how many bikes you could afford if you sold your car and no longer had to maintain its upkeep/insurance?
Unlikely in London where serious multimode bike commuters will be riding Brompton's of which the entry levels are about a grand and nice light weight on is more like £1700-1800
A Brompton is a superb commuter bike, but it's only one option. Most commuters don't need multimodal capabilities, particularly if they live within Zone 6.
Ah rich people who can actual y live that near :-) I was thinking of those that use the train
Good sales people at a bike shop can often convince a person that the cost of ownership over time for their new bike is less than that cheap wal-mart bike, and that it will be more enjoyable to use during that time. And often that's entirely accurate.
The hard part is getting the customer to go to the bike shop first, rather than the big box store.
>>>> Most people have a bike, but would never bother taking it somewhere fancy like this to get it fixed or serviced. They paid $100 for it at Walmart.
That's probably true to a certain extent, but so called "department store bikes" have been a constant baseline of the bike industry for decades. So I think that the ups and downs of bike shops are largely independent of that baseline.
People still do buy slightly nicer bikes, and are still willing to get them serviced. At the very least, they buy those consumables. Most people need help figuring out which part will fit on their bike, and how to install it.
> Most people have a bike, but would never bother taking it somewhere fancy like this to get it fixed or serviced.
They be pricy...
A while back some girl hit me so we threw my mangled bike in her trunk and went up the street to a bike shop. Would've cost more to fix it (just in parts, who knows about labor) than I paid for the thing so we just went to their sister shop that sold used bikes and she replaced it out of something in inventory.
I could fix it myself for probably 1/3 of what the shop was asking but most likely won't bother unless my current bike gets stolen or hit by a car.
Yeah, that's the typical result nowadays when manufacturing is so cheap. I can see that changing somewhat here in Europe as more new products get an ecotax slapped on top, but it will take a while to surpass the cost of a knowledgeable worker in a developed country.
It's more that the price benchmark has been set so low by Bike Shaped Objects.
A good back wheel will cost more than a bargain-basement department store bike. The good wheel will easily last for 10,000 miles if properly cared for. The department store bike will be good for nothing but scrap after a thousand miles.
The value equation depends entirely on whether you use your bicycle as a mode of transport or a piece of leisure equipment. For people who potter about in a local park once in a blue moon, a Bike Shaped Object is perfectly satisfactory. Their bike is probably going to rust away in their garage before they actually wear anything out. These cheap bikes are built as disposable items for infrequent and undiscerning users.
For a regular commuter, quality matters. It's worth paying $50 for a pair of Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, because they're damned near impossible to puncture and they'll outlast four sets of off-brand tires. It's worth paying $60 to get your bike properly serviced, because a breakdown will make you late for work and preventative maintenance works out cheaper in the long run than neglect. It's worth paying $90 for a Brooks B17 saddle, because it'll survive until the heat death of the universe and it's as comfortable as an old pair of sneakers.
Might be hard to fix an out of alignment frame
They might be proven right with Amazon shifting toward using their own delivery services if top N retailers follow and switch to delivery options other than UPS and Fedex the prediction might come true
The world is a big place, even the USA. So many of Amazon's dreams and current services apply only to cities of a decent size. It can't be worth it to them to have their own delivery to the middle of nowhere. Even UPS struggles with overnight in my area. I'm sure Amazon will succeed in their goals, but there will be some pie left for the others.
As you outlined yourself Amazon will be using it's delivery services in high density, high margin areas leaving low margin low density areas to USPS, UPS etc. This will def. hurt UPS and Fedex.
TLDR: Losing volume from Amazon isn't so bad. As I worked support in a UPS hub in Jacksonville, FL, I can confirm that actually, losing some volume from Amazon will help. The facility I worked at was at volume capacity per hour over five years ago. Updating the belt system in the building is problematic due to space available and time lost during the shutdown. Year over year the volume has only grown as more people order more online. The capacity in that hub remains the same which means they have to run more sorts/shifts and the operations start to collide together and so on. A little less volume could be seen as a good thing. As long as revenue holds.
Maybe. You’d have to explain to me though why there isn’t a major delivery service today that has a strategy to skim the delivery cream in dense urban areas. Not an expert in this market but I expect there are costs associated with urban delivery that offset the advantages of density to some degree.
I dont think this is new - a lot of bike shops are repair only now, with a few loyal customers.
I also think that bikes are getting more technical - electric shifters, the tolerance limits on gears means that its increasingly hard for people to repair their own bikes. So bike repair makes sense, and they can probably charge
At the higher end - lets say $1000+ bikes bike shops can still do a good trade as people new to the sport probably need a bike fit to ensure they are getting the best machine for them
My current bike I did buy at a local shop partly because I wanted to be able to test-ride before I made the purchase. And I'm glad a did. I tried a few different models, and have been pretty pleased with the choice I made. But most of the subsequent maintenance has been done by shops that are primarily service shops, and not dealers. They sell bits and supplies, of course, but their bread & butter is repair work. My experience is that I get better service from them than from dealers that just want to get your bike out of the shop as quickly as possible.
This is interesting on its face, but also as an analogy. My employer is a B2B reseller of computer hardware and software, and this sounds very much like your industry.
Cloud services are eating into hardware sales, and manufacturers (e.g., Adobe) are going direct, disintermediating us. There's no sense fighting back, but there's new opportunities for those helping with cloud services, and with managing software licensing and so forth.
I live in Edinburgh, and I've personally counted half a dozen of these little, one or two person IBS type shops open up round town in the last couple of years. They have a small retail space at the front, an open workshop at the back, and the mechanic stops working on a bike to have a chat with you when you come in to the shop. Edinburgh's pretty bike friendly, so given the number of these shops springing up, they must have a viable business model here.
Edinburgh is hilly and all those sets (cobbles) make those fat tired MTB's look a sensible choice
As bicycles prices start moving toward motorcycles and cars, I don't understand why the shops still feel like the margins can't/won't change. They say 20-30% profit is small, but compare that to buying a new car: 2-3% profit.
And to keep the car comparison going: during the summer, bike shops routinely book two weeks out, which is almost unheard of with car service.
I'm both surprised and not surprised to hear that clothing is not a big seller--I've never been a fan of getting clothing without trying it on. However, once I know how a brand fits, that's not as much of an issue. It is surprising to walk into a bike shop and want some shorts only to find they don't stock anything under $80--you really have to work hard to find $80 shorts at the mall. So maybe the problem is they need to do better at picking what their customers want.
Unfortunately, I don't have good ideas at what they should sell in addition to labor. Need it now items are great (tires) but it's hard to make all of your money just on mechanics.
> It is surprising to walk into a bike shop and want some shorts only to find they don't stock anything under $80--you really have to work hard to find $80 shorts at the mall. So maybe the problem is they need to do better at picking what their customers want.
Funny that you put it that way because I wouldn't buy any shorts under $100 (haven't found any at that price that will be comfy on a 100-mile ride). I suppose that's what bike shops are up against: customers whose wants and needs are all over the place, which is what suits big online retailers.
I'm surprised the bike manufacturers have not stepped up to create their own branded shops as a way to provide/control a more direct 'experience'. Imagine separate 'Specialized' stores, 'Cannondale' stores or "Gary Fisher' stores all with carefully crafted service and support.
It's similar to how the local generic electronics store (including CircuitCity and now BestBuy) got squeezed from the bottom by Target/Walmart on the low end and the high end by the Sony/Apple/Bose Store at your local luxury Westfield or Simon's mall. Even woman's fashion is trending way - Target/Walmart/Costco for the majority and direct 'experience' stores like Coach/Burberry/Tiffany with Macy's and Kohl's getting squeezed out.
Specialized and Giant already have single-brand stores in many markets. Giant have a handful of stores dedicated to Liv, their women's sub-brand.
There's a chain of Trek stores. And Trek owns Gary Fisher.
This has been an ongoing debate in the mountain bike world for a number of years now. Direct to consumer brands have clearly been making a dent in the traditional retail model. Intense just announced a hybrid model, where shops stock demos and consumers receive their new bike directly from Intense. Seems like a win-win - shops don't have to stock slow moving inventory and consumers get lower prices year round.
This artcle explains the pros/cons in detail: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/intense-announces-lower-retail...
Not about bikes specifically but I've been a bit surprised that formal showrooming hasn't become a bigger thing. My guess is that, if you're going to have storefronts, for a lot of things you might as well stock merchandise for impulse buyers or those who want to take something home right now.
There's a bike shop that opened near me but I've had the impression that most of their income comes from the coffee shop in the front and the bikes are more of a passion of the owners. They're nice folks, but their bikes start at $800 and go up very quickly from there.
I actually did give them a chance and tried out a couple of the bikes when I was looking to replace my tired out commuter bike but I just couldn't feel the $600 premium. The biggest surprise is that the shifters didn't even feel any better, it was the one area where I expected the better bike could really make a difference but they were no better at shifting quickly or under load than my old shifters.
That's about the sensible minimum for a decent long lasting bike I definitely noticed when I went from cheap MTB to one twice the price the stopping power was phenomenal I almost sent my self over the handlebars in a driving rain storm as I was used to the soggy breaks in the wet of my old bike.
I wonder how e-bikes are going to fit into all this, although I'm happy with mine the buying experience was awful.
What do you mean by this?
Where I live, there is an e-bike shop and the owner has the requisite opinions on "green living" and "sustainability" but knows FA about bikes.
From what I've seen the E-bikes have their own 'dealer network' independent of regular pedal bike shops. There used to be one next door but they moved a while ago, think the rent was getting too high since they've been steadily improving the neighborhood.
Quite a few of the shops in my area are stocking them but they all seem to be holding their nose when they talk about them.
Most of the large traditional manufacturers are into ebikes now and although a LBS might only have 0-2 in stock, they can all get you one within a week or so.
They're rather expensive to stock. 2x to 4x the price of a regular bike.
Hmmm. A lot of this rings true, but a couple of things seem to indicate to me that brick-and-mortar bike shops may continue to exist over time:
Bikes are an interesting confluence of both very personal (i.e. the style/"feel" of someone's new bike is important, or the "fit" if they're buying with a bit more experience), very expensive (relatively), and very physically large (and hard to assemble).
That means that people will want to try out bikes before they buy, since the investment is substantial. Bikes need to be assembled to try out. If a brick-and-mortar store went online-only, it might be a substantial outlay for them to ship bikes to people to try out, and a hassle for folks to assemble them before trying them (unless they were shipped assembled, which is a much larger container). It seems like that might be cost/difficulty preventative for moving a lot of merchandise compared with the benefits of a showroom. Sure, bike stores might have to become more showroom-only, but I don't think they're going away.
> "Dan Sotelo was the founder of Onza"
Onza stuff was awesome. Was always insanely jealous of the bar ends and clipless pedals one of my friends had.
This is generally correct, and certainly aligns with larger trends in commercial real estate. On-premise retail of easily-shipped items, with no value-added ties to online retail, is on its last legs. The strip mall of the future has coffee shops but no clothing stores. Bike shops are fortunate that they have this sort of transition to attempt. Lots of menswear shops have an in-house tailor, but it's not as though they can refocus the business around that.
Bike shops aren't the only party trying to hold back the sea, however. Some specialty equipment distributors are so proud of the "network of bike shops" (often with various goofy "badges" and "qualifications") they had to build 20 years ago that they won't ship outside that. As if it's to their advantage to erect barriers to potential customers! Someone should send e.g. Surly a link to TFA. The author has a better idea of how they ought to run their business than they seem to have.
I am baffled why the manufacturers aren't all offering direct B2B for the bike shops. There clearly isn't enough margin left for the average bike shop if they aren't moving the volume of bikes due to direct sales, but at the same time, all the supplies they need for servicing bikes are sold through some intermediary that's skimming a cut for the service of aggregating all the different manufacturers. https://www.ogc.ca/ and https://norco.com/ haven't substantially reduced their margins since I last worked in a bike shop 20 years ago.
And aggregation is not a service that would be required anymore if the shops could just go direct to Shimano, SRAM, Fox, Maxxis and DT-swiss (etc). That aggregation can be performed by the bike shop itself via a B2B solution.
A local bike shop closed business a few months ago. They had had a location on Downtown Main Street for years, but for some reason [I'm guessing rent] moved several blocks away from their old location -- and several blocks closer to where I live. I imagine that this negatively impacted their foot traffic, even though it was directly in line with my own walk-to-the-bus commute.
I shopped at both of their locations several times, but not routinely or regularly. When the "inventory sale!" signs started going up, I admit that a part of me literally saw the writing on the wall but I didn't want to believe it. I believed it when I walked by and saw the location empty and deserted, a lonely 8x11 explaining what was up.
I'm curious as to what happened, but suspect that I was part of the problem -- not shopping there more often, for product or maintenance service, even though I am just one person.
I buy bikes from local specialty shops because they know how to put the bikes together and service them properly. Other customers like to use them to try accessories before purchase.
The family-owned shop I use in the Boston area (https://farinas.com) has a pretty solid, all-season business model: Bikes on the second floor, lawn mowers and snow blowers on the first floor, and the repair shop on the first floor. I see they also sell generators and chainsaws - items that may not be easy to ship or service online.
Great article! I had a similar notion a while back for ski shops. Here are a couple of additional ideas from that thought experiment.
1.) Deeper web presence. For example, why not sell coupons for services on the stuff people buy on the web?
2.) Subscriptions. Basically an add-on support fee for your bike. This makes sense for anyone who commutes, especially if you can make it trivially easy to collect. That leads to...
3.) Additional services. Combine bike parking in cities with on-going maintenance . This already exists in some cities.
Even the service model is not that encouraging. I knew someone whose dad owned a bike service shop in Japan; it wasn't a vibrant model. I got the impression they scraped by, but by and large it was a labor of love--nothing wrong with that, but it does not have ample opportunity, except maybe for a franchiser.
Similar to that recent article posted here about how "experience retailers" are inverting the relationship of the vendor. (Where an experience retailer is actually a marketing arm of the manufacturer).
But yes: I would love to able to drop by and get my bike fixed by someone competent.
This brings to mind Moen's Law of Bicycles:
"Good customers make for good products"
I've recently become aware of Canyon Bikes as well as other direct-to-consumer manufacturers. In one video I watched, the buyer had a mobile bike shop come and setup their new bike. I think the mobile bike shop approach plays well with the direct-to-consumer model.
A whole mobile bike shop sounds expensive. More likely these companies will make deals with "freelance labor firms" to get someone there to assemble it.
IKEA has already signaled as much by buying TaskRabbit, but my guess is that there's a good opportunity for an independent middleman to sell services for companies that need a broad geographical coverage but don't have enough sales to keep dedicated teams everywhere.
Ikea sells a city bike with belt drive and a mount system for racks and a trailer for $400. It is a better-documented assembly process that the you-get-what-a-bike-shop-gets experience of ordering the cheapest online bike, but still a bit challenging on the Ikea scale of difficulty. It has a 25 year warranty on the frame and a 10 year warranty on the belt drive.
Tire Rack has done this to the tire retail business. You can get the tires you want from Tire Rack, and get referred to a shop that will mount and balance them. That's what should happen to bike sales.
Title should say independent bike dealer