Jun
13
Are Bike Shops Selling the Bikes New Bikers Want?
By Rich Kelly, Filed Under Deep Thoughts, Gear, Green Efforts, Interbike
Great new article (actually, a “Special Report”) in the latest BRAIN that came in a couple of days ago. Matt Wiebe’s story is titled “Alternative Retail Channels Cater to New Cyclists.” It’s a very well written article that brings up some great points for retailers – and manufacturers – some things to chew on. Make sure you read it when it arrives in the mail – it doesn’t seem to exist on BRAIN’s website.
Matt begins with an observation that is probably a very widely held assumption across the industry and biking community currently:
A perfect storm is building of people who cannot afford gas, who realize they have to change their lifestyle to save the planet and believe bikes are the answer.
We’ve all witnessed it: the train in the morning is overflowing with bikes, buses are turning bikers away because the Sportworks on the front is full, and retailers are seeing more people dusting off old bikes and bringing them in for service to start riding to work. More and more politicians and celebrities are being photographed on their bikes and Barack Obama just granted a private meeting with bike industry leaders last night. These are new riders from the proverbial 161 million non-riders we’ve all been trying to reach, right?
As Matt goes on to write, though, the “storm wind should be blowing these new consumers into the nation’s bike shops … but it’s not happening.”
Tim Parr of Swobo supports that statement early in the article by saying, “these new customers cannot find the product they want because it’s not an enthusiast’s bike.” Bicycle dealers are great at serving the needs of enthusiasts but not so much the needs of these new bikers.
I think we can all agree with Matt’s line that “the enthusiast market is not where the growth and excitement is now.”
In addition, alternative retailers and retail channels have sprung up to serve this new, market. These include surf and skate shops, apparel boutiques and – brace yourself – internet direct sales. That last one is a taste of a topic for a whole other post: how retailers are still not fully embracing the internet to grow their businesses and how certain manufacturers are “holding back” retailers from taking advantage of the internet. Talk about a hot button issue…
So what are these bikes that these “neo-bikers” are looking for? How about the urban fixie trend? We’ve all read enough BikeSnobNYC posts and have seen fixies turn up under suburban teens farther and farther away from the city centers where the category was born to know that these are huge. While a few manufacturers have stepped up with models to serve this market (and their dealers with product), for the most part, consumers are forced to look to alternative channels to get what they want. The fixie trend is also bringing with it an opportunity that the bike industry has longed for for eons: a lifestyle market, the likes of which the surf and skate industries have enjoyed since the dawn of their sports. Non-enthusiasts are not going to – or even thinking about – bike shops for this.
Another type of bike that the neo-biker is not finding is a $300-$500 “just-a-bike” bike. Many bike shops have been profiting from $8,000 custom road bike sales over the last 10 years or so and can’t serve the needs of the neo-biker. I can remember my dad balking at paying the $800 for a mountain bike that the shop salesperson proposed years ago when I convinced him to try cycling. He told me that $300 was about what he wanted to pay for a bike to ride around town. We enthusiasts and industry members would consider $800 about right for an entry-level bike. How many people are turned away by the higher than expected prices for bikes.
I don’t want to give away the whole article before you have a chance to read it, but I tend to agree with Matt on so many of these aspects that contribute to the challenge that bike shops apparently are facing in addressing this surge of new riders. From manufacturers increasingly encouraging dealers to make larger commitments to their brands that in turn causes the dealers to lose the ability to change quickly with the market place to non-cycling brands like RVCA (and here from a non-bike blog) and Paul Frank making inroads into the bike market through their networks of non-traditional bike retailers, there are some great points to think about.
What I have seen in my limited exposure to this market is that on the train every day that I commute, I see alot of inappropriate bikes being used. Obviously, they’re all bikes and it’s great that they are being ridden, but I think we can do better for these neo-bikers.
I don’t know, am I wrong?
Comments
14 Responses to “Are Bike Shops Selling the Bikes New Bikers Want?”
Ok, I’m still not sure what a neo-bikers is. But I do think that LBS’s need to really re-tool their way of thinking and selling.
Here is recent account with LBS’s in my area.
http://bikejax.blogspot.com/2008/05/style-over-speed.html
Hey, The Commuter Package!
http://googlemapsbikethere.org/2008/05/12/the-commuter-package/
thanks for the heads-up on the article, Rich.
Seattle recorded the highest number of bus user increase due to the increased cost of gas…this was just announced on the local news today
binny bin
Bike Jax – I wasn’t trying to be clever with the term “neo-biker”, but just wanted a term to refer to these,um, new bikers that have not ridden on a regular basis since they were kids. Maybe they have an entry level mtb hanging the garage or still have that 10 speed from the early 80’s lying around and want to start leaving the car behind for shorter trips or commuting to work because of the gas prices. Maybe they don’t own any bike and haven’t since they were 12. Shimano has invested a lot of effort (and $) into studying who these non-enthusiasts are and how to reach them – both with message and the right product design. I believe that Trek has a “Project 161″ named after the estimated 161 million Americans that are not considered active cyclists. The main point of these projects being that the current bikes and messaging of the bike industry are not speaking to the needs and wants of this audience.
Peter – I like the package idea to make getting into cycling easier. We need to be careful though to not overestimate what we (the industry) see as necessary to start riding. Helmet, shoes and gloves seem pretty reasonable to an enthusiast, but to the new biker who wants to just move around town, cost and a sense of style are very important potential roadblocks. Maybe just a bike and a lock to keep it simple and cheap.
binny bin – I guess this is turning into one of those proverbial “good problems to have.” I love the increased ridership of commuters with bikes on the train, but I’m also concerned that I’ll be forced to miss my train soon when the conductors finally refuse to let the 7th biker (me) on board since there are already 6 bikes bungee corded to the 2-bike rack. I know this is happening on buses already with their limited rack space.
It’s getting there. The problem is not having enough of those few bikes that just make sense – the DiamondBack Transporter is one. Great price, great spec.
After I picked up a ‘69 Raleigh Superbe for my 1/2 mile commute, I’ve had several customers give me carte blanche to find one for them too. Bikes need to be stripped down of all those unnecessary suspension seat posts, suspension forks and adjustable stems. Saves weight and money to boot.
Hello,
I am a female at 270 pounds, and would like to buy a bike that could transport me from home to work. Work is about 10 minutes from my house by car. I would have to do a lot of night driving, and I really don’t want to spend 100’s of dollars on a bike.
I live in a small town of about 30,000 people. We do have a cycling shop here in town. Along with all the major retailers. Can you suggest some buying options for me?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Oh, and I have not been on a bike since high school, and I am 58 years old.
Vee
I don’t know about the industry as a whole, but every shop I’ve worked for stays alive by the 300 to 400 dollar comfort/hybrid. High end stuff sits on the shelf and ends up being blown out during a sale. These bikes, with some accessories, are perfect for a commute.
VENITRA, take a look at some of these. Every shop has them. DO NOT get lured into a department store bike. As a big guy (230 lbs), I can tell you that you need something of the quality only sold at your local bike shop. If you need help with this, please post back up here and I will try to help. Check these out and see if you have a local dealer: http://www.electrabike.com/townie/
This has been looming for a while. QBP is on it with their new Civia line but they’re costly–I saw one of the Rohloff 14-speed sepc’d bikes for $3,200. I really like tbe Breezer Uptown 8s. Those internal geared hubs are what people need but it’s a tough sell against a better-sounding 24-speed. There are going to be a lot of unsuitable bikes, too-highly-geared 1970s 10-speeds, overly-suspended mountain bikes, badly maintained old bikes of all stripes, but the suitable machines are available. It’s just tough to find them unless you are a commuting enthusiast.
Tooting my own horn a bit, I wrote about gears in an article on my website at http://www.uscoles.com/threespeedgearing.pdf. It’s aimed at three-speed riders, but the page four graph compares three-speeds, the current Nexus 8-speed, a 1970s 10-speed and a current 27-speed’s gearing and shows how useful the 8-speed range is and how much exact or near-duplication derailleur bikes have. Clever Cycles out in Portland (who have some great Dutch city bikes, by the way) use this graph to help explain the appeal of the seemingly limited number of gears on the Nexus hubs.
In the meantime, have people gear those ten-speeds down, get those knobbies off the mountain bikes, add fenders, a rack, a bell and a kickstand and they’re good to go.
Final bit of tooting: I also wrote a commuting guide for a community class. It’s a PDF at http://www.uscoles.com/bicycle%20commuting%20handbook%20beta.pdf and will have little of note for the readers of this blog.
the link to the BRAIN article:
http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/1463.html
Shops only sell what is given to them by the manufacturers. The simple fact is that the large brands have always force fed us with what they think is cool. Add on top of that that new cyclists (and those who have been riding for years) feel intimidated going into some shops doesn’t help the cause.
Cycling is an incredibly fragmented industry but it is also that way at the user level. Each niche looks down on the next niche and that is played out in the shops.
Only 12% of the people in the US actually ride a bike with some regularity according to last years #’s (36 million). The upside is huge but we have to start working together on all levels before we can grow it
Our terrain is very hilly. No matter how much someone wants the simplicity of a one- or three-speed or other internally-geared hub, ones and threes require a lot of effort and more speeds in an internal hub usually come attached to a bike over $400. And there are still weight issues. People heft the bikes in the shop and like something lighter, even if it won’t ride as well for them as the heavier model.
We do sell mostly bikes in the $300-$400 range. Hybrids dominate. We also do road bikes at various prices, including some cyclocross models no one is buying to race.
Our biggest source of income right now is service. Our service department kept us alive during the go-go death and destruction of the mountain bike boom. Hopefully it will see us through the present craze as well. People can buy stuff on line, but who is going to assemble and maintain it for them?
I have said before that bike lines from big companies are poorly thought out. http://citizenrider.blogspot.com/2008/06/anyone-want-to-finance-bike-company.html
I like that Trek is “targeting” the 161 million, like any good hunter. For the industry, it’s all about separating prey from their money. The half-assed attempts to do that killed the boom in the 1990s and left us with the shops full of “variety” that we have today. I have every confidence that they’ll butcher it again in their eagerness to profit.
This is a ridiculous discussion. As manufacturers and retailers, we are all in the business of selling stuff. But, as I’ve said on my blog before (click here), this is not about stuff. It is not the stuff that gets people on bikes. We’ve had great bike stuff for years, and only recently have we experienced an appreciable surge in people actually using bikes to get from one place to another in this country.
People will not ride bikes more, because there are more bikes to ride (except in the developing world). People will not commute more, because manufacturers are making more “commuter bikes” (what is a commuter bike, anyway?). People will ride more if we can create a bike culture.
How is bike culture created? One place it is created is in bike shops, and this is where we, as retailers, can exercise a bit of control over our destinies. If a person like the commenter named Vee, above, walks into your shop, it is an opportunity for you to support a new cyclist in her quest. Don’t miss that opportunity.
Even within the enthusiast market that the industry currently caters to they don’t address everyone. Our company works a lot in the women’s triathlon area. We meet lots of older women…..women with MONEY. We hear things like “Oh I HATE bike shops!” And, “We have money. Why don’t these guys want any of it?” They’re ignored, condescended to or dismissed in many of the shops they walk into. And these women aren’t looking for a “just-a-bike”; many have fat checkbooks and want a performance road bike. What they do is search and search for a shop that respects them, then they send all their friends there. I myself often conduct “Middle-aged woman walks into a bike shop…..” experiments now and then just to see if anything’s changed from when I left the bike industry. The last time I did this a kid returned my bike to me with the stem raised and the handlebars tilted up because he knew better than I did the riding position I should be using. He did this after I specifically told him not to during the service intake process. I so much wish I’d said, “Junior, I was racing bikes before you were born. You leave my bike alone.” But instead I took my business elsewhere. Now in these days of high gas prices, which the bike industry should be tripping all over itself to exploit, how many normal Americans will be discouraged from bicycling by the attitude they’ll encounter in a bike shop? It’s too sad to think about. Because most guys aren’t in the bike business to make money; they’re in it to be around bikes all day. If they were in it to make money, a lot more Americans would be riding bikes.
I agree with Justyna that people will ride more if we can create a bike culture, but only if it is a bikes-as-transportation culture rather than the largely bikes-as-toys attitude that prevails in shops and society at large. If bikes were viewed as a legitimate part of the transportation mix, recreational cycling would continue to thrive and probably grow and improve. It doesn’t work the other way around, as is evidenced by the ubiquitous “For Your Own Safety Bikes Should Ride On The Sidewalks Because Only Cars And Trucks Belong On The Road” letters to the editor that appear in newspapers all over the country.
The velorution won’t happen until that changes.
ABSOLUTELY! I’m in the market right now, and what I really want is a bike that is as stripped-down and barebones as a fixies, but is a ten-speed (with brakes
). Unfortunately, the only time I’ve ever seen this is custom jobs, and bike shops are pretty much completely lacking in 10-speeds that are under $1000. I’d even settle for a 3 or 5 speed bike, but generally the 3/5 speeders are giant bloopy overloaded novelty bikes that would look more at home on a beach boardwalk than on the streets of NYC. If anyone knows of where to find such a bike I’d be eternally grateful.