Edward Dolan wrote:
> "ryancycles" <ryancycles@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:f84eb0e1-4b45-4a22-ac27-f50f6b9c1d49@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Edward Dolan wrote:
>
>>> 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
>
> I will take credit for drawing out Dick Ryan on this subject. It is
> extremely interesting to hear what one of the early and main
manufacturers
> of re***bents has to say about bike shops and their employees. I am
learning
> a quite a few things I never knew before.
>
> I suspect I may not have been your typical re***bent buyer. I fell in
love
> with reucmbents from the moment I first saw one. It was a picture of an
> Infinity that I saw advertised in the Nashbar catalog. No one ever had
to
> sell me on the virtues of a re***bent. I sold myself right off the bat.
>
> The one and only problem I ever had with re***bents were the high
prices.
> This has totally colored my view of the industry I must admit. I never
had
> much to do with bike shops, but I had quite a bit to do with the
> manufacturers themselves because I bought directly from them. I could
tell
> Mr. Ryan some real horror stories about how some ran their business. But
> most of them have gone the way of the Dodo Bird and it is all ancient
> history now in any event.
>
> Like Jim Reilly also of this newsgroup I loved the Ryan Vanguard and the
> only thing that prevented me from buying it was the high price. It
appears
> that Dick Ryan did the best he could to keep the price reasonable. I
would
> like to thank him for educating me and I suspect many others on this
> newsgroup on the problems involved in marketing a damn good re***bent
> bicycle.
>
> Viva Re***bency!
>
> Best Regards,
>
The is the best post I have ever seen from Ed Dolan - on topic,
positive, polite and reasonable.
--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
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