> In the early days of re***bency there were several small manufacturers
who
> built relatively cheap re***bents. They too never sold well which
convinced
> me there was no market for such bikes. Your Ryan re***bents were for a
niche
> market from the beginning and never had a chance in hell of ever gaining
a
> large market. There is nothing wrong with that but, please, do not blame
any
> of your woes on the lowly bike shop owners and employees.
>
> - Show quoted text -
Comments about re***bents that I've heard in bike shops.
You'll never see one on the floor of this shop!
They don't go up hills.
They are too heavy.
They are too low to the ground.
They're slow.
Sorry, can't help you, don't know anything about them.
Real men ride REAL bicycles!
They suck.
A friend of mine works at Wheel and Sprocket, probably the most
successful shop in the country. They sell about 5000 bikes a year and
about 7-800 re***bents. Trek is located not far from them, they have
an annual dealer meeting. According to my friend every year a dozen or
so dealers from around the country will stop by to shoot the breeze.
Most are astounded by the fact W&S has 50 or 60 re***bents on the
floor and often ask WHY. The very fact that they ask "why" should be a
good indication of the lack of intelligence on their part. For a few
years we had about a dozen dealers around the country. We had a couple
of high end very successful shops selling the bikes. Unfortunately
they all shared the same problem, they had one employee who was the
"re***bent guy" the rest of the employees refused to even discuss the
bikes with potential customers. I know this is true because I visited
a couple of these shops and didn't identify myself and when I asked
about re***bents was told I'd have to wait until the "re***bent guy"
was available. When I discussed this problem with the shop owners they
all gave me the same answer. Well, I'm sorry, but I can't afford to
offend the employees because they are so hard to find. I had quite a
few calls from potential customers who had driven many miles to look
at our bike and had made the mistake of not checking on the
availability of the "re***bent" guy. Of course this reaction from the
shop people didn't go over very well with the potential customer and
they would call us and complain. Eventually we stopped selling through
shops altogether, but not so much because of the problem that the
employees were such morons but because we couldn't afford to give the
shops their margin. The thing about bike shop employees is that just
about all of them are young males that are into bike racing. If it
isn't a full suspension mountain bike or a 15 lb drop bar road racing
bike it isn't a bike. My negative opinion of these people has been
reinforced many times. The best example I can give is the time I was
invited to a bike shop event, (featuring free beer, thereby
guaranteeing a good turnout) given by a well known shop employee in
the Boston area, (he is the re***bent guy) at the shop. He asked me to
bring a bike to the event. There were about fifty people there, all of
them were bike shop employees. And one re****ter for a local bike
publication. They had a tape of the tour de france playing on a
relatively small screen tv. These guys were so into racing they could
identify the individual racers on this small screen tv. I was there
for about three hours and not a single person asked about the
re***bent, it was sitting in the middle of the floor in everyone's
way. But as far as they were concerned it was invisible. The magazine
guy did ask me what the bike cost. We had a customer who wanted to buy
one of our $4500 tandems through a local shop. I happened to be there
when they were talking to the salesperson, another employee overheard
the conversation and interrupted the conversation with the comment
"you probably won't find that thing as comfortable as you think" and
walked away. I witnessed a similar thing at a dealer in Cambridge Ma.
they sold Linear re***bents. The salesperson was discussing the bike
with the customer, another sales person was standing near me talking
to another customer, he looked at the re***bent and more or less
whispered to the customer he was dealing with, "real men ride real
bikes" . All small businesses suffer from employee problems, but it
seems to me that the bike business is somewhat unique in having
employees who actively discourage customers. I know just about everone
in the re***bent business, they all have mentioned similar experiences
with shop people.
I don't think it's paranoia on my part in blaming the "lowly shop
employees" for at least some of the difficulties of getting re***bents
into the market place. I should also mention that I attended the
industry trade show many times and saw first hand the glazing over of
the eyes of shop employees on the rare occasion that there bosses had
some interest in the bikes and stopped at our booth to ask questions.
Dick Ryan
|
