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Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. The demand was huge, but due to side-effects of the

Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. The demand was huge, but due to side-effects of the corona pandemic, bike production in Asia was running on at most 80% capacity. Some assembly lines were stopped for several weeks, and distancing rules means reduced throughput. The problem: all orders with the big manufacturers are placed a year in advance. This means that if you were too late to place your orders in 2020, you will not get any inventory for 2021. Any by "too late" I mean "the same time as in 2019". People want to buy, but stock is depleted and production reduced, and many small dealers won't survive 2021 for lack of inventory.

Manfred 6y ago
Do you mean they only got 80% of what they ordered in 2019 for 2020?
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  No, 2020 is unaffected. 2021 will be problematic.
enriquto 6y ago
So true. I went to a local bike shop in november and they had no bikes to sell. The guy, almost in tears, desperately showed me the waiting list on the provider website: next bikes expected by April 2021. He had sold all his stock a couple of months before, and had a lot of people willing to buy him bikes, yet he had to close the shop at the end.
FreshFries 6y ago
Here in Switzerland it has been a good yeah however. During the Lockdown the sales have increased by 25%. People use their bikes more too. And the both the in and export of e-bikes has increased. Sorry, all in German: https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-schweiz-wegen-corona-krise-news-der-woche-ld.1559393 https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-sc... https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-grosser-dynamik/ https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-gr...
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  The year 2020 was good in terms of sales. But its effects in 2021 will lead to vendor consolidation.
- disabled 6y ago
  True. In Switzerland, it is expensive to even hold a driver’s license. Driving in general is expensive. While public transportation is phenomenal, clean, and can be relied on, it’s a pandemic. So, it makes sense that people are riding their bikes.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    I disagree, driving is cheap in Switzerland. It's cheaper than public transports unless you really want to drive that Porsche Cayenne in Geneva and your employer pays for your GA.
fredley 6y ago
By extension: it seems to have been a great year for bike thieves, in the UK at least. Anecdotally, bike theft is through the roof.
- KraftKacke 6y ago
  Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.
  - fredley 6y ago
    > not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
      - usrusr 6y ago
        > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
walrus01 6y ago
For some news on this from the perspective of the individual bicycle retail stores, there's a vertical/trade journal for them: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ If you go through the past news articles there, lots of info about import data, sales boom and sell out of in stock inventory during 2020, etc.
learnstats2 6y ago
Do bike dealers not also make money from increased demand for services?
- notesinthefield 6y ago
  Ive experience with three shops, given the lowish margins, transaction costs of stock and sometimes reduction in mechanics - its not nearly enough to make up the deficit. The most lucrative services, fittings, are not something every shop does or is equipped for. Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. Many will let you order parts through the shop but prices are almost always more expensive than going to the vendor site.
  - learnstats2 6y ago
    > Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. As another commenter has said - why don't shops charge according to the increased demand? This situation benefits them.
    - notesinthefield 6y ago
      If youve only so many mechanics, who do you really benefit increasing the price when most people will end up on the wait list anyway? Then you run the risk of losing them to the next shop.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Supplies of spare parts have been constrained as well. It took two months to get some replacement tyres for my bike.
- dfgdghdf 6y ago
  Servicing (except perhaps puncture repairs) is a very low margin business. This is why online retail has hurt the bike industry so hard: the servicing was subsidized by bike and component sales. Now, local bike shops are expected to service bikes purchased online.
whalesalad 6y ago
I emailed 7 shops in my state of Michigan recently about a fat bike. All but one emailed me back with a sad face and said everyone is screwed until summer due to no supply. I got really lucky and found one a 2 hour drive away. Now it’s an appreciating asset in my garage if you can believe it. I ride it of course but ever have I seen this kind of demand for bikes in my entire life. I hope this is going to serve as a global correction on our need to be more self sufficient. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we took two steps forward with globalization and tech and we probably need to take one step back. Pretty much every bike and bike part is made in Taiwan or China. I’d love to have a made in the USA bike just as much as I’d imagine folks in the UK, South America, etc... feel the same.
- busterarm 6y ago
  You got emails back!? Here, in NYC of all places, I have 0 returned emails and even having cast a wider net. Of course there's plenty of cheap e-bikes with junky components.
  - whalesalad 6y ago
    It took a while for some of them. I actually just got one reply yesterday and this all happened before Xmas.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      My problem is mainly with looking for specific components. I want a decent commuter with belt drive and higher end components. Disc brakes. I can get the cheap versions of this all day but not really the best stuff unless I possibly order it built by Maxx or get a Riese & Müller e-bike. Still looks like waiting until at least April though.
      - Filligree 6y ago
        I got the Riese & Müller, and I don't regret it. Just make sure you get the high-speed version. 25 km/h is not very fast.
KraftKacke 6y ago
In my yard I can see about 6-10 bikes rotting away. Shop owners could make upcycling a business. Anyway, I think it's getting really cold the next months, so demand will probably go down a bit.
- kasey_junk 6y ago
  No they can’t because they can’t get parts. Even things like patch kits were hard to find for a big chunk of the year.
ubermonkey 6y ago
"Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. " Well, that depends on who you ask. Several local stores here saw it coming, and places enormous orders with their distributors when there was still inventory. My local did WELL -- they were aggressive and basically maxed their credit buying bikes from $400 to about $1200 (ie the sweet spot for casual riders), and sold every single one they could get their hands on. They're now the go-to joint in inner Houston for e-bikes, too. So there was a play to be made, and a way to surf this thing, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that this shop in particular was one of the few to really do it right.
- jacurtis 6y ago
  Well my experience talking to all the local bike shops in my area is that they actually have less inventory to sell than previous years, compounded with the problem of increased demand. My local shop that is a Trek Dealer said last October that they were only just starting to get the bikes that they ordered back in February (pre-pandemic). Meaning that their standard inventory for summer never arrived. I just talked to this shop again this weekend because I was in there for ski service (like many bike shops in the Rocky Mountains, they are ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer), and the guy showed me their list of pending orders. They are expecting an order of bikes from Trek by the end of January that will complete the order they placed LAST APRIL. So at least for Trek, that is how far behind they are. I have also visited 2 different dealers that sell Specialized ("Specialized" is the brand name). One of them (the smaller one) told me that they have $100,000 worth of bikes and accessories on order and have been waiting for over 5 months on them to arrive with no update on any changes. The other Specialized Dealer is a big dealer in this area and they only have one bike in stock, a Peter Sagan edition Race Bike priced around $10k and 2 child sized bikes. They said they are still waiting for their orders from April to arrive. One good sign was from a local shop that sells Santa Cruz Mountain Bikes. They apparently are only about 2 months behind. But that shop has still struggled to keep bikes in stock. So their demo fleet for people to take up to the ski resort (for downhill mountain biking) last summer was all previous model-year bikes because they couldn't set aside bikes for their demo fleet because they were selling as fast as they arrived. In fact he told me that they have been selling bikes off a waiting list for people 4-5 states away who are driving 12-24 straight hours to pick up bikes because this shop has been able to keep some in stock.
Symbiote 6y ago
There's probably a gap in the market for bike shops in Denmark (and the Netherlands too). Everyone here already owns at least one bicycle, so there was no need to purchase another. The shops still have plenty of stock, and a quick look a the website shows 10-15% "January" discounts. However, none of the four online shops I tried deliver outside Denmark.
trentnix 6y ago
Former bike dealer here (I've written about it briefly for anyone who might by be interested: http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-beginnings http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-begin...). You are correct that dealers have been unable to capitalize on the boom to realize big profits. There's plenty of service business but the labor part isn't really profitable (in my experience). The ability to sell parts with service can be profitable, but the distributors and manufacturers don't have any parts to sell. One positive is that those dealers drowning in older, unsold stock have been able to turn a lot of that into cash. That's allowed a few of them to restore some financial health to their business and get out from under some of their debt to vendors and other creditors. But even so, the bike business is so commoditized and the supply chain is so lose that bike shops (and manufacturers as well) have a pretty low ceiling of profitability. Even in the midst of a boom, the economics of the bike business restrict it to a lifestyle business at best. For some shops, this (likely temporary) boom probably presents the best window of opportunity to close their doors.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Bike shops absolutely need to turn themselves into workshops, in other words increase hourly rates until repairs become a worthwhile business on their own. Even if only because internet. The idea "I could do some bike work on my own, so bike work can't be expensive" has to die, simple as that. People can pop open a beer at home just fine, nobody expects bars to sell beer at a similar price. If shops insist on offering workshop services at a loss for bikes bought at the establishment, they are free to offer huge rebates as a hardware sales argument.
  - trentnix 6y ago
    Some in the bike industry have been asking for that very thing for years. The most common answer is, "you first".
    - usrusr 6y ago
      I really don't get what they would be missing though: "foreign" (e.g. internet) brands would usually be rejected before that price hike anyways (unless workshop capacity is desperately idle) and preferred customers (qualified by bike purchase) could still be offered arbitrary service discounts. Is it really just the old bait and switch of offering to service a clunker for the price of a hamburger and then suddenly realizing that the bike is impossible to salvage if the customer happens to be not utterly wrong size for that unloved bike that has been clogging inventory for three years?
mauvehaus 6y ago
It might be a lousy year for sales, but it should be an absolutely killer year for repair and tuneup work. The required bits for most tuneups are limited to lube, tubes, cable, and housing. Those four things will get you a long way with most bikes that "ran when parked" 10-20 years ago. There is a vast number of bikes in the US that meet basically that description. Source: was a volunteer bike mechanic at the Ohio City Bike Co-op. They got a lot of donations in that were at most 60 minutes of work from being rideable. https://ohiocitycycles.org/ https://ohiocitycycles.org/
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Brake pads aren't on that list? That's the other obvious consumable I can think of. And for what it's worth my mechanic ran low on chains and sprockets at some point. I don't know if that was just him or larger supply chain issues though.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    Brake pads wear out after thousands of miles. Most of the neglected bikes in the US got parked long before they accumulated enough miles to wear out brake pads. I've got maybe 4000 miles of mostly urban commuting (i.e. much harder on brake pads than rides in the country) on my nice road bike and I haven't changed them yet. For casual cyclists, brake pads are a lifetime part. Possible exception: glazed brake pads, but still relatively uncommon. Cables and housing are much bigger wear items for most bikes. Mostly because they aren't stainless at the low end and rust. Chains will also rust, but it's pretty hard to end up with an unsalvageable chain unless a bike has been left outside for a long time. Source: left my beater road bike outside at the curb for 9 years in Boston, including winters. Lubed the chain a couple times a year. It still runs.
    - midnightclubbed 6y ago
      Maybe on road bikes but MTB brake pads are definitely a non lifetime part. Replaced my rear pads at the weekend, maybe 0.2mm remaining after around 800 miles or so of riding. Getting oil on pads is also fairly easy to (accidentally) do. Learnt to be less liberal with the spray oil the hard way! Unfortunately for bike shops replacing disk brake pads is trivial. Bleeding the Hydraulic system not so much, if it wasn't for the stopping power I'd trade back to brake cables any day.
usrusr 6y ago
But the reduced availability surely enabled dealers to sell a far bigger fraction (likely very close to all!) of what they sold at list price or reasonably close, whereas a typical season will see a considerable part of inventory being pushed out at wild discounts. The entire pricing structure is built for a high margin/high discount pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if some would be able to earn more than usually even on less than half the inventory, and the upstream availability surely didn't collapse that hard.
ogre_codes 6y ago
In a moment of inspired genius, one of the local bike shop owners stuffed a big chunk of savings into bike inventory back in March/ April. He had bikes stuffed into every corner of the shop and was pretty much the only shop with decent inventory for most of the year. But now even his inventory is bare. Maybe I should sell one of my bikes to help relieve the pressure. Hmm Nah.
Triv888 6y ago
Around here, even Walmart has no bicycle inventory... had to go to the flea market and buy a used one.

Manfred 6y ago

Do you mean they only got 80% of what they ordered in 2019 for 2020?

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
No, 2020 is unaffected. 2021 will be problematic.

enriquto 6y ago

So true. I went to a local bike shop in november and they had no bikes to sell. The guy, almost in tears, desperately showed me the waiting list on the provider website: next bikes expected by April 2021. He had sold all his stock a couple of months before, and had a lot of people willing to buy him bikes, yet he had to close the shop at the end.

FreshFries 6y ago

Here in Switzerland it has been a good yeah however. During the Lockdown the sales have increased by 25%. People use their bikes more too. And the both the in and export of e-bikes has increased. Sorry, all in German: https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-schweiz-wegen-corona-krise-news-der-woche-ld.1559393 https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-sc... https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-grosser-dynamik/ https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-gr...

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
The year 2020 was good in terms of sales. But its effects in 2021 will lead to vendor consolidation.
disabled 6y ago
True. In Switzerland, it is expensive to even hold a driver’s license. Driving in general is expensive. While public transportation is phenomenal, clean, and can be relied on, it’s a pandemic. So, it makes sense that people are riding their bikes.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  I disagree, driving is cheap in Switzerland. It's cheaper than public transports unless you really want to drive that Porsche Cayenne in Geneva and your employer pays for your GA.

fredley 6y ago

By extension: it seems to have been a great year for bike thieves, in the UK at least. Anecdotally, bike theft is through the roof.

KraftKacke 6y ago
Business idea: Make something like the iPhone's snitching low power bluetooth thingy for bikes. I am sure bike owners will glad run an app which monitors the surrounding for stolen bluetooth beacons. Make it work so it can be barricaded in the seat tube or integrated into the frame, not easily removed or destroyed. Make stealing cheap bikes risky and troublesome. Nothing will protect a 5k$ sports bike.
- fredley 6y ago
  > not easily removed or destroyed So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all). Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    No, a lock is easy to remove/destroy. It's at most a minute with the right tool (angle grinder), and the bike itself is left unaffected. A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      > The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike. Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?). What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.

walrus01 6y ago

For some news on this from the perspective of the individual bicycle retail stores, there's a vertical/trade journal for them: https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ https://www.bicycleretailer.com/ If you go through the past news articles there, lots of info about import data, sales boom and sell out of in stock inventory during 2020, etc.

learnstats2 6y ago

Do bike dealers not also make money from increased demand for services?

notesinthefield 6y ago
Ive experience with three shops, given the lowish margins, transaction costs of stock and sometimes reduction in mechanics - its not nearly enough to make up the deficit. The most lucrative services, fittings, are not something every shop does or is equipped for. Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. Many will let you order parts through the shop but prices are almost always more expensive than going to the vendor site.
- learnstats2 6y ago
  > Maintenance is relatively cheap and 2020 waiting lists were sometimes months long given the spike in riders forcing many to DIY. As another commenter has said - why don't shops charge according to the increased demand? This situation benefits them.
  - notesinthefield 6y ago
    If youve only so many mechanics, who do you really benefit increasing the price when most people will end up on the wait list anyway? Then you run the risk of losing them to the next shop.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Supplies of spare parts have been constrained as well. It took two months to get some replacement tyres for my bike.
dfgdghdf 6y ago
Servicing (except perhaps puncture repairs) is a very low margin business. This is why online retail has hurt the bike industry so hard: the servicing was subsidized by bike and component sales. Now, local bike shops are expected to service bikes purchased online.

whalesalad 6y ago

I emailed 7 shops in my state of Michigan recently about a fat bike. All but one emailed me back with a sad face and said everyone is screwed until summer due to no supply. I got really lucky and found one a 2 hour drive away. Now it’s an appreciating asset in my garage if you can believe it. I ride it of course but ever have I seen this kind of demand for bikes in my entire life. I hope this is going to serve as a global correction on our need to be more self sufficient. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we took two steps forward with globalization and tech and we probably need to take one step back. Pretty much every bike and bike part is made in Taiwan or China. I’d love to have a made in the USA bike just as much as I’d imagine folks in the UK, South America, etc... feel the same.

busterarm 6y ago
You got emails back!? Here, in NYC of all places, I have 0 returned emails and even having cast a wider net. Of course there's plenty of cheap e-bikes with junky components.
- whalesalad 6y ago
  It took a while for some of them. I actually just got one reply yesterday and this all happened before Xmas.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    My problem is mainly with looking for specific components. I want a decent commuter with belt drive and higher end components. Disc brakes. I can get the cheap versions of this all day but not really the best stuff unless I possibly order it built by Maxx or get a Riese & Müller e-bike. Still looks like waiting until at least April though.
    - Filligree 6y ago
      I got the Riese & Müller, and I don't regret it. Just make sure you get the high-speed version. 25 km/h is not very fast.

KraftKacke 6y ago

In my yard I can see about 6-10 bikes rotting away. Shop owners could make upcycling a business. Anyway, I think it's getting really cold the next months, so demand will probably go down a bit.

kasey_junk 6y ago
No they can’t because they can’t get parts. Even things like patch kits were hard to find for a big chunk of the year.

ubermonkey 6y ago

"Contrary to what people might think, 2020 has not been a good year for bike dealers, especially small ones. " Well, that depends on who you ask. Several local stores here saw it coming, and places enormous orders with their distributors when there was still inventory. My local did WELL -- they were aggressive and basically maxed their credit buying bikes from $400 to about $1200 (ie the sweet spot for casual riders), and sold every single one they could get their hands on. They're now the go-to joint in inner Houston for e-bikes, too. So there was a play to be made, and a way to surf this thing, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that this shop in particular was one of the few to really do it right.

jacurtis 6y ago
Well my experience talking to all the local bike shops in my area is that they actually have less inventory to sell than previous years, compounded with the problem of increased demand. My local shop that is a Trek Dealer said last October that they were only just starting to get the bikes that they ordered back in February (pre-pandemic). Meaning that their standard inventory for summer never arrived. I just talked to this shop again this weekend because I was in there for ski service (like many bike shops in the Rocky Mountains, they are ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer), and the guy showed me their list of pending orders. They are expecting an order of bikes from Trek by the end of January that will complete the order they placed LAST APRIL. So at least for Trek, that is how far behind they are. I have also visited 2 different dealers that sell Specialized ("Specialized" is the brand name). One of them (the smaller one) told me that they have $100,000 worth of bikes and accessories on order and have been waiting for over 5 months on them to arrive with no update on any changes. The other Specialized Dealer is a big dealer in this area and they only have one bike in stock, a Peter Sagan edition Race Bike priced around $10k and 2 child sized bikes. They said they are still waiting for their orders from April to arrive. One good sign was from a local shop that sells Santa Cruz Mountain Bikes. They apparently are only about 2 months behind. But that shop has still struggled to keep bikes in stock. So their demo fleet for people to take up to the ski resort (for downhill mountain biking) last summer was all previous model-year bikes because they couldn't set aside bikes for their demo fleet because they were selling as fast as they arrived. In fact he told me that they have been selling bikes off a waiting list for people 4-5 states away who are driving 12-24 straight hours to pick up bikes because this shop has been able to keep some in stock.

Symbiote 6y ago

There's probably a gap in the market for bike shops in Denmark (and the Netherlands too). Everyone here already owns at least one bicycle, so there was no need to purchase another. The shops still have plenty of stock, and a quick look a the website shows 10-15% "January" discounts. However, none of the four online shops I tried deliver outside Denmark.

trentnix 6y ago

Former bike dealer here (I've written about it briefly for anyone who might by be interested: http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-beginnings http://www.sciencerocketry.com/blog/great-work-and-new-begin...). You are correct that dealers have been unable to capitalize on the boom to realize big profits. There's plenty of service business but the labor part isn't really profitable (in my experience). The ability to sell parts with service can be profitable, but the distributors and manufacturers don't have any parts to sell. One positive is that those dealers drowning in older, unsold stock have been able to turn a lot of that into cash. That's allowed a few of them to restore some financial health to their business and get out from under some of their debt to vendors and other creditors. But even so, the bike business is so commoditized and the supply chain is so lose that bike shops (and manufacturers as well) have a pretty low ceiling of profitability. Even in the midst of a boom, the economics of the bike business restrict it to a lifestyle business at best. For some shops, this (likely temporary) boom probably presents the best window of opportunity to close their doors.

usrusr 6y ago
Bike shops absolutely need to turn themselves into workshops, in other words increase hourly rates until repairs become a worthwhile business on their own. Even if only because internet. The idea "I could do some bike work on my own, so bike work can't be expensive" has to die, simple as that. People can pop open a beer at home just fine, nobody expects bars to sell beer at a similar price. If shops insist on offering workshop services at a loss for bikes bought at the establishment, they are free to offer huge rebates as a hardware sales argument.
- trentnix 6y ago
  Some in the bike industry have been asking for that very thing for years. The most common answer is, "you first".
  - usrusr 6y ago
    I really don't get what they would be missing though: "foreign" (e.g. internet) brands would usually be rejected before that price hike anyways (unless workshop capacity is desperately idle) and preferred customers (qualified by bike purchase) could still be offered arbitrary service discounts. Is it really just the old bait and switch of offering to service a clunker for the price of a hamburger and then suddenly realizing that the bike is impossible to salvage if the customer happens to be not utterly wrong size for that unloved bike that has been clogging inventory for three years?

mauvehaus 6y ago

It might be a lousy year for sales, but it should be an absolutely killer year for repair and tuneup work. The required bits for most tuneups are limited to lube, tubes, cable, and housing. Those four things will get you a long way with most bikes that "ran when parked" 10-20 years ago. There is a vast number of bikes in the US that meet basically that description. Source: was a volunteer bike mechanic at the Ohio City Bike Co-op. They got a lot of donations in that were at most 60 minutes of work from being rideable. https://ohiocitycycles.org/ https://ohiocitycycles.org/

CydeWeys 6y ago
Brake pads aren't on that list? That's the other obvious consumable I can think of. And for what it's worth my mechanic ran low on chains and sprockets at some point. I don't know if that was just him or larger supply chain issues though.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  Brake pads wear out after thousands of miles. Most of the neglected bikes in the US got parked long before they accumulated enough miles to wear out brake pads. I've got maybe 4000 miles of mostly urban commuting (i.e. much harder on brake pads than rides in the country) on my nice road bike and I haven't changed them yet. For casual cyclists, brake pads are a lifetime part. Possible exception: glazed brake pads, but still relatively uncommon. Cables and housing are much bigger wear items for most bikes. Mostly because they aren't stainless at the low end and rust. Chains will also rust, but it's pretty hard to end up with an unsalvageable chain unless a bike has been left outside for a long time. Source: left my beater road bike outside at the curb for 9 years in Boston, including winters. Lubed the chain a couple times a year. It still runs.
  - midnightclubbed 6y ago
    Maybe on road bikes but MTB brake pads are definitely a non lifetime part. Replaced my rear pads at the weekend, maybe 0.2mm remaining after around 800 miles or so of riding. Getting oil on pads is also fairly easy to (accidentally) do. Learnt to be less liberal with the spray oil the hard way! Unfortunately for bike shops replacing disk brake pads is trivial. Bleeding the Hydraulic system not so much, if it wasn't for the stopping power I'd trade back to brake cables any day.

usrusr 6y ago

But the reduced availability surely enabled dealers to sell a far bigger fraction (likely very close to all!) of what they sold at list price or reasonably close, whereas a typical season will see a considerable part of inventory being pushed out at wild discounts. The entire pricing structure is built for a high margin/high discount pattern. I wouldn't be surprised if some would be able to earn more than usually even on less than half the inventory, and the upstream availability surely didn't collapse that hard.

ogre_codes 6y ago

In a moment of inspired genius, one of the local bike shop owners stuffed a big chunk of savings into bike inventory back in March/ April. He had bikes stuffed into every corner of the shop and was pretty much the only shop with decent inventory for most of the year. But now even his inventory is bare. Maybe I should sell one of my bikes to help relieve the pressure. Hmm Nah.

Triv888 6y ago

Around here, even Walmart has no bicycle inventory... had to go to the flea market and buy a used one.