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?
End of the road for independent bike distributors?
11–20 of 91 posts
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#12Spent 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 c…
>>>> 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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#13 > "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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#14Spent 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 c…
> 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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#15Spent 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 c…
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 w…
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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#16Even 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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#18This 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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#19I 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?
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.
Re: End of the road for independent bike distributors?
#20I 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 th…
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.