>
> 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.
I've had several re***bents assembled and serviced by local bike shops.
I've never heard anything like this from any shop employee. The shops I
went to were trying to make a buck anyway they could. They would have
sold
me a beer from the shop 'fridge if I'd pay for it. They were more than
happy sell me any accessory for the re***bent and install in. They did
not
interupt the sale to tell me re***bents suck. If they had I would have
left
with my bike and my money, but happily that wasn't the situation. In fact
the shop employees were eager to assemble my Vanguard tandem. It gave
them
a break from building up some little pink girls bikes. They ran into a
few
problems with the tandem. There was a part or two that didn't fit that
had
to be researched and substituted for other parts. In the end they enjoyed
putting it together and getting it dialed in. They did tell me they were
glad the owner was out of town that week so he wouldn't know how much time
they actually spent on the bike.
Not many local shops have ever stocked re***bents. The few that did found
them to be slow sellers with fussy lookers with endless questions, some of
them unanswerable. They wanted to test ride a lot of re***bents, but the
dealers usually had one model on the floor. These customers often ended
up
buying some other brand direct. There are many lone re***bents that took
up
space on the sales floor for a year or more. I think the selling of
re***bents is best done by a separate department of the shop or preferbly
a
separate operation. Maybe selling direct with a send it back if you don't
like it is the best way to go. Bike Friday had an excellent sales group
for
direct selling. From what I know of Hostel Shoppe they also have a good
sales staff.
> 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.
I've got the feeling that selling these 7-800 re***bents takes up a lot
more
sales and shop time than selling 7-800 conventional bikes.
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.
Wait a minute, this is nuts The owner of a bike shop can't afford to
offend an employee who is offending customers because employees who offend
customers are harder to find than customers? Any owner of a business
would
have to be out of his mind to think this way.
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
>
>
Well Dick, I reckon this must be how come so many bike shops go out of
business every year. It seems their owners didn't have the required
business sense to make a go of it.
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