End of the road for independent bike distributors?
bicycleretailer.com
bicycleretailer.com
Even if assembly doesn't directly make a lot of profit, it's a great time to sell accessories and service plans.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
The hard part is getting the customer to go to the bike shop first, rather than the big box store.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
This artcle explains the pros/cons in detail: https://www.pinkbike.com/news/intense-announces-lower-retail...
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.
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.
Onza stuff was awesome. Was always insanely jealous of the bar ends and clipless pedals one of my friends had.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But yes: I would love to able to drop by and get my bike fixed by someone competent.
"Good customers make for good products"
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.