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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

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
  MerchantOS. I do appreciate your passion, I would love if you would contact me through the contact form on our site https://bikeindex.org/contact_us https://bikeindex.org/contact_us I'll respond immediately, I feel like we might be able to figure out our disagreements if we just chatted together.

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
MerchantOS. I do appreciate your passion, I would love if you would contact me through the contact form on our site https://bikeindex.org/contact_us https://bikeindex.org/contact_us I'll respond immediately, I feel like we might be able to figure out our disagreements if we just chatted together.