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I have spent a few years working on and off in the cycle trade in the UK, as mechanic, in sales and at the distributor/importer level. I have had just the one b

I have spent a few years working on and off in the cycle trade in the UK, as mechanic, in sales and at the distributor/importer level. I have had just the one bicycle stolen however I have helped plenty of customers that have lost their steed(s). The cycle trade is seasonal - May to September. There used to be a Christmas season but nowadays big box retailers have that business. During the season it is hard work making the sales. Even though customers are highly available, converting them to sales and then getting the upsells (helmets), bike for the wife, big D-lock etc. is hard work. There is no time to hang about and a lot to get right (the bike has to be road safe with lights and other accessories, adjusted to them with not a scratch on the paintwork or even a greasy thumbprint). Typically customers haggle for discounts so it is not a simple checkout operation. By the time that the customer hands over the credit/debit card all concerned have had enough. They want to go home and the shop wants to move onto the customer behind them that has been waiting patiently for service. At this stage the bike has typically been registered on the EPOS system complete with frame number. This frame number can be looked up for the purposes of an insurance claim, such an insurance claim guarantees repeat business for the shop so there is incentive for it to be recorded. I don't see how realistic it is at this busy Saturday stage of a bike sale for sales staff to present your service to customers. It may be in some bike shops but it is not realistic for the pressured sales environments I have known, particularly if sales targets are being made from £300 bikes (where profit is not a lot when you have to pay a mechanic to assemble it and staff to provide personal sales service including things like a test ride). You need to catch the customer when they get home. With the bike there is invariably a manual, one that is probably quite dated and poorly printed. In this there will be a manufacturer guarantee form to complete and send off. I have seen what happens to these - they end up in a box at the distributor with some vague plans for the details to be entered into some system some day for marketing purposes. 'What if they get their bike stolen?' is not even thought about. Similarly, with the Police, if they find a bike (which always has a serial number) then they do not think to call the distributor to 'just check who this belongs to'. Hence, for your scheme to work, you need to ignore the shops and the importer/distributors. You need to have a quality bit of documentation in that manual that comes with the bike. When the customer gets home and does what they do with their new toy, that is the time to get them to register it, not in the shop. There is significant lead time on bikes being designed, prototyped, tweaked, accepted, sent to manufacturing, sent back in a big container box, put in a warehouse by the docks, put in the retailers warehouse and finally making it to the customer via the shop. Bike designers are working on the 2016 range as we speak - that is the lead time. You can try to convince 1000's of shops that your scheme is something they want to go with to find that in reality it isn't that simple. Or you can convince the small handful of bike designers to amend their manuals to include details of your scheme. Right now there is no clear information from the top of the bike food chain about who the customers are and whether they are that happy with the product. I am sure that some brands are onto this but the one I know are a bit behind the times. They certainly don't contact the customers via email as far as I know. All of them would do well to look after the customers they have got rather than be forever looking for new ones - simple marketing sense. With your scheme and some enhanced manuals you could do this for them and help them build up a useful customer database. Every bike workshop has a cardboard box in it full of manuals that should have been attached to bikes but somehow got lost behind. If those manuals had some customer friendly, no work for the shop needed wording to cover the theft angle then it would make it more likely that those manuals would go out the shop door with their respective steeds. Manufacturers want the manuals to go with the bikes, not end up in a box in some workshop. So you could help solve this problem for them. Finally, the URL. It is not very good, is it? 'mybikehasbeenstolen.com' took me as long to think up as to write and I am sure that with a few more thought iterations I could come up with something that conveys they same sentiment more concisely. You need to put some more work into the URL, because at the moment it describes your code and not the predicament the customer gets into when the bike is stolen. You also need to do a lot of work on the UI. Look at how second hand car sites work and how you can search by make and model with a few easy and intuitive steps. I don't think an omni search box is the way to go. From the off it is wrong - you need three calls to action, 'my bike has been stolen', 'I want to register my bike in case it does get stolen' and 'I want to check if this bike is stolen'. You haven't got that clear, it is far too 'Don't make me think!'. If one of my bikes was stolen right now then I would not know the serial number, but I do know my email address. So I definitely see the value of what you are trying to do. In the bike industry everyone knows everyone and it is a small world. There are trade associations, events, trade magazines and much else that you need to tap into. If you can get the trade body (I am from the UK so I don't know what it is in the USA) to back your scheme then you will be onto a winner. You wouldn't even need to go to Kickstarter for some miserly funds - with the right scheme they will give you more than chicken feed (but a lot less than what Lance Armstrong was paid to essentially sell bikes). Theft puts customers off buying big ticket bikes and everyone in the industry knows that is a problem that needs to be sorted out. If you get this right and approach the right people and get the right introductions at the trade body level you will push at an open door. They all just need to have a mention of the scheme in their respective manuals, the manuals that go out with all bikes.

sethherr 13y ago
I worked as mechanic for quite a few years - the whole reason that I built the service was because I wished that I could do this for customers. We've had shops in Chicago registering all the bikes they sell all summer long. I do agree though - things get hectic, and we want to make it easier - which is why we're working on integrating with point of sale systems, so bikes are automatically registered at checkout if a box is checked. And while we started the Bike Index to fight theft, we really don't think that it's the only use of the system - and we are focusing on registering bikes before they are stolen. So a name that highlights theft isn't our goal. Honestly, all the nice bikes I've sold had beautiful up-to-date manuals (Specialized even includes a DVD), but no one read them anyway, so I don't think that's the solution. Especially when shops already have the serial number and manufacturer in their checkout system. We do want to partner with manufacturers, but we want to make sure it continues to be a service for the biking community rather than a trick to get more marketing information for manufacturers. And to achieve that we need to approach manufacturers after already having a base - hence our Kickstarter project.
- Theodores 13y ago
  Just how many of these shops are there that have been registering your bikes and how many bikes have they registered for you? Do you have any idea about POS systems? Because of how the industry for POS has developed (fragmented) you cannot guarantee that a POS system is online - it talks to a server in the back office and that code was written aeons before the acronym API came into parlance. Shops stick with legacy POS systems because they have a database of customers and stock on there. To migrate to the all singing and all dancing POS system that will work with your system is not at all as straightforward or as likely to happen as you imagine. Staff training, hardware (to open the drawer and get the scanner working), cost of new software - it is just not going to happen, no matter how clumsy and visual-basic-y it is. There are even small bike shops that don't have POS!!! You are in cloud cuckoo land if you think for one moment that you are ever going to get POS systems in bike shops to talk to your web service. Sure one or two hipster-shops in Chicago run by your mate who wrote his own POS system in Ruby on Rails with loads of angular.js one weekend, but I think you haven't any option but to completely forget about it for the majority of bike shops - even large chains with decent IT departments - it is so not realistic what you are talking about. I haven't bought a Specialized for a while, however, historically, their manuals have been out of date. This goes for every other brand going and this has been the case for the last 25 years - yes I was mechanic 25 years ago so I know these things. Nobody watches DVD's by the way, do they? People do read the manuals, not always and not cover to cover. With a bicycle what else do you do when you get home with a new one and it is gone dark - read the manual! Maybe not in Chicago, but, enthusiastic owners with a new pride and joy certainly do give the manual some attention. If it was spruced up with some online registration thingamy in there then think how much easier it could be. So I think you are being deliberately irksome by flippantly saying that nobody reads the manual - that is not a certainty. If the manual included a cheque for a million dollars in the back then I am sure that even people that cannot read would read the manual. If, like the UK brands I know, the manual is not exactly scintillating then it gets picked over and cast aside. With the manual approach you get two bites at the cherry - in the shop by your mates in Chicago and, for everywhere else, something people can be prompted to do from the comfort of their own home. You are being cynical thinking customers don't want to be marketed to. In an age when people put so much cr4p about themselves on Facebook etc. The guarantee/warranty form as means of building up a customer database has worked for at least a century. It is a trick but then it isn't perceived as a trick by people outside your bit of Chicago. If there is something in it for the customer - an actual warranty - they don't hesitate to sign up. It is that simple. Just make it online. For any scheme such as yours to work it really does need to work for all stakeholders and involve all stakeholders. That means the customer, law enforcement, the retailers, the distributors, the manufacturers and the trade organisations (at retail and manufacturer level). What credibility does your scheme have if it is 'just a kickstarter project' rather than something that the important stakeholders have committed to? I have read other comments on this thread and the dupe and I don't hear anyone saying this is just what the world needs. Sure my comments are unvarnished but I am trying to share with you my better ideas gained from practical experience dealing with the problem in hand. The Bike Index name is not doing it for me. Have you seen just how good (or bad) the UK bikeregister.com site is? https://www.bikeregister.com/stolen-bikes https://www.bikeregister.com/stolen-bikes I can look at what has recently been stolen in my area. The top navigation is clear and it Google paid-search-results to the top of stolen bikes. The police have their logo on it. There is a lot I would want to change about the site but it is getting there without any off-putting web design. It has a team keen on what they do with IT support, some sales potential for security products and it looks like they are going to stay around for a while. It works to the extent that it does without a lot of support from shops but with a lot of support from the Police. They have stakeholders. In the UK you would have to be a fool to go up against them or provide a new angle with some other service that is the same but more open-source-designed-on-a-mac-with-web-2.0-stuff. It has to be one place people go, not one of many (for a given country). The people behind bikeregister.com sell marker products. These are the slowest sellers ever in a bike shop, even worse selling than those face masks or arcane BMX trinkets (BMXers have to get mum to pay, don't they...). So they haven't got the right 'in' at the retail level. However, I have seen their leaflets around - in shops - so they have tried what you have been trying. Maybe you should talk to them rather than go off thinking you knows bestest... People wanting to show off their bikes already have forums for that, forums that have online community whom you would want to share things with. I know a small amount of people that do such things because they have an angle - retro, weight or niche brand being the 'why'. Those into the sport have a passing interest in the kit, it is results that matter to them, hence showing off their latest steed is not their gig, if it is then 'weight weenies' forum it is. Sure 'weight weenies' (popular over here) may be some dated bulletin board thing but it works and you aren't USP enough to that crowd for them to shift over to 'bike index'. So this showing off one's bike thing is doomed, it dilutes the main purpose. Sorry to be harshly negative, but you did post on here to get advice and sometimes people aren't honest when they say 'yeah babes fab!'. I hope for your sake that you don't take $50K of people's hard earned cash for this - you need a better plan and to come back later when you have got it. Don't stop the coding, the testing, the user experience testing and what you are doing in the bike shop already. Go bigger, just pick up the phone and talk to some other people who can help you - the UK bikeregister people could help you with ideas. Get involved at the industry level - go to a big trade show and speak to the top bods, bash their heads together and get an industry solution. Please give up on any dreams of POS systems magically doing it all, or at least visit a dozen bike shops and see what rubbish POS systems they actually use.

sethherr 13y ago

I worked as mechanic for quite a few years - the whole reason that I built the service was because I wished that I could do this for customers. We've had shops in Chicago registering all the bikes they sell all summer long. I do agree though - things get hectic, and we want to make it easier - which is why we're working on integrating with point of sale systems, so bikes are automatically registered at checkout if a box is checked. And while we started the Bike Index to fight theft, we really don't think that it's the only use of the system - and we are focusing on registering bikes before they are stolen. So a name that highlights theft isn't our goal. Honestly, all the nice bikes I've sold had beautiful up-to-date manuals (Specialized even includes a DVD), but no one read them anyway, so I don't think that's the solution. Especially when shops already have the serial number and manufacturer in their checkout system. We do want to partner with manufacturers, but we want to make sure it continues to be a service for the biking community rather than a trick to get more marketing information for manufacturers. And to achieve that we need to approach manufacturers after already having a base - hence our Kickstarter project.

Theodores 13y ago
Just how many of these shops are there that have been registering your bikes and how many bikes have they registered for you? Do you have any idea about POS systems? Because of how the industry for POS has developed (fragmented) you cannot guarantee that a POS system is online - it talks to a server in the back office and that code was written aeons before the acronym API came into parlance. Shops stick with legacy POS systems because they have a database of customers and stock on there. To migrate to the all singing and all dancing POS system that will work with your system is not at all as straightforward or as likely to happen as you imagine. Staff training, hardware (to open the drawer and get the scanner working), cost of new software - it is just not going to happen, no matter how clumsy and visual-basic-y it is. There are even small bike shops that don't have POS!!! You are in cloud cuckoo land if you think for one moment that you are ever going to get POS systems in bike shops to talk to your web service. Sure one or two hipster-shops in Chicago run by your mate who wrote his own POS system in Ruby on Rails with loads of angular.js one weekend, but I think you haven't any option but to completely forget about it for the majority of bike shops - even large chains with decent IT departments - it is so not realistic what you are talking about. I haven't bought a Specialized for a while, however, historically, their manuals have been out of date. This goes for every other brand going and this has been the case for the last 25 years - yes I was mechanic 25 years ago so I know these things. Nobody watches DVD's by the way, do they? People do read the manuals, not always and not cover to cover. With a bicycle what else do you do when you get home with a new one and it is gone dark - read the manual! Maybe not in Chicago, but, enthusiastic owners with a new pride and joy certainly do give the manual some attention. If it was spruced up with some online registration thingamy in there then think how much easier it could be. So I think you are being deliberately irksome by flippantly saying that nobody reads the manual - that is not a certainty. If the manual included a cheque for a million dollars in the back then I am sure that even people that cannot read would read the manual. If, like the UK brands I know, the manual is not exactly scintillating then it gets picked over and cast aside. With the manual approach you get two bites at the cherry - in the shop by your mates in Chicago and, for everywhere else, something people can be prompted to do from the comfort of their own home. You are being cynical thinking customers don't want to be marketed to. In an age when people put so much cr4p about themselves on Facebook etc. The guarantee/warranty form as means of building up a customer database has worked for at least a century. It is a trick but then it isn't perceived as a trick by people outside your bit of Chicago. If there is something in it for the customer - an actual warranty - they don't hesitate to sign up. It is that simple. Just make it online. For any scheme such as yours to work it really does need to work for all stakeholders and involve all stakeholders. That means the customer, law enforcement, the retailers, the distributors, the manufacturers and the trade organisations (at retail and manufacturer level). What credibility does your scheme have if it is 'just a kickstarter project' rather than something that the important stakeholders have committed to? I have read other comments on this thread and the dupe and I don't hear anyone saying this is just what the world needs. Sure my comments are unvarnished but I am trying to share with you my better ideas gained from practical experience dealing with the problem in hand. The Bike Index name is not doing it for me. Have you seen just how good (or bad) the UK bikeregister.com site is? https://www.bikeregister.com/stolen-bikes https://www.bikeregister.com/stolen-bikes I can look at what has recently been stolen in my area. The top navigation is clear and it Google paid-search-results to the top of stolen bikes. The police have their logo on it. There is a lot I would want to change about the site but it is getting there without any off-putting web design. It has a team keen on what they do with IT support, some sales potential for security products and it looks like they are going to stay around for a while. It works to the extent that it does without a lot of support from shops but with a lot of support from the Police. They have stakeholders. In the UK you would have to be a fool to go up against them or provide a new angle with some other service that is the same but more open-source-designed-on-a-mac-with-web-2.0-stuff. It has to be one place people go, not one of many (for a given country). The people behind bikeregister.com sell marker products. These are the slowest sellers ever in a bike shop, even worse selling than those face masks or arcane BMX trinkets (BMXers have to get mum to pay, don't they...). So they haven't got the right 'in' at the retail level. However, I have seen their leaflets around - in shops - so they have tried what you have been trying. Maybe you should talk to them rather than go off thinking you knows bestest... People wanting to show off their bikes already have forums for that, forums that have online community whom you would want to share things with. I know a small amount of people that do such things because they have an angle - retro, weight or niche brand being the 'why'. Those into the sport have a passing interest in the kit, it is results that matter to them, hence showing off their latest steed is not their gig, if it is then 'weight weenies' forum it is. Sure 'weight weenies' (popular over here) may be some dated bulletin board thing but it works and you aren't USP enough to that crowd for them to shift over to 'bike index'. So this showing off one's bike thing is doomed, it dilutes the main purpose. Sorry to be harshly negative, but you did post on here to get advice and sometimes people aren't honest when they say 'yeah babes fab!'. I hope for your sake that you don't take $50K of people's hard earned cash for this - you need a better plan and to come back later when you have got it. Don't stop the coding, the testing, the user experience testing and what you are doing in the bike shop already. Go bigger, just pick up the phone and talk to some other people who can help you - the UK bikeregister people could help you with ideas. Get involved at the industry level - go to a big trade show and speak to the top bods, bash their heads together and get an industry solution. Please give up on any dreams of POS systems magically doing it all, or at least visit a dozen bike shops and see what rubbish POS systems they actually use.