[Closed] Current bikes selling out

Transition have all but sold out of the Large Scout it seems'..
Got told in one place they where getting no more until 2016..

Yep, tis very common these days.
Several of our most popular models are sold out completely & some were sold out on pre orders alone-before anyone had even seen one!

Manufacturers not predicting the fashion for buying CX bikes as commuters?

Brand managers not wanting to get sacked for over ordering bikes and having to job them out discounted.

My mate had to wait 2 months from a Spesh Crave hardtail. Nothing fancy , but they just didn't have any. That was in December and delivered in February.

No business worth its salt, at least to its accountants, keeps more than its bare minimum stock.
Some may say that helps create demand and keep prices up.

ordered my roadie end of Nov. still not arrived....

starting to get itchy about it! 😆

It's not just CX bikes. There's little advantage in manufacturers/importers having more bikes than they can sell this model year. They just end up having to discount them all at the end of the year to move them on.

Of course, if they did away with the whole "model year" concept (like, say, Ibis) there would be no need for this.

It's the problem with getting stuff built in the far East and moving it around in boats I guess. Orders have to be placed well in advance and somebody has to try and predict what the demand will be (often before the model has even been launched or seen by the press). Err on the side of too many and you have excess stock that you have to dump at a loss. Err on the side of too few and you can sell them all at RRP. I know which way I'd go.

I know there is the risk of having stock leftover at year end and then having to reduce the price to shift the stock before the next years model is due, but in cases where you've sold out on pre-order just says to me you have under estimated your market. It's playing it safe but surely there's a case of missed sales?

I can understand that a brand does not want to get into the habit of overstocking, then discounting, and thus undermining their brand. Everyone would just wait until the sales and then buy the outgoing years models at a discount.

But still, it's March and there is limited stock?

It was quite a few years ago and I was looking at buying a Kona Five-O in 20" frame. It was sold out before the brochure was out. Palligap only imported three 20" bikes into the UK that year. 😕

i spoke to 3 specialized dealers about my xl enduro. all 3 told me that there was only 1 left in the country.
i found this hard to believe. i contacted specialized store in harrogate, who were the cheapest. they told me the same.

It's a bit of a joke, I was hoping to get a carbon Reign over the next few months but they are only importing 30 large bikes into the country. Why not just build to order, with a batch every quarter much like YT?

It means, come May or June that I will have to either buy a bike that I'm not happy with or wait until 2016.

Yay.

Is the MTB market contracting? Probably. Suppliers are nervous about not shifting stock.

a year or 2 ago they sold out of the annual allocation of the $$$ Venge S-works road bike by about this time. Difficult to predict demand many months in advance, a model or genre might suddenly take off.

Not all brands do it, just check out Pauls Cycles for 2 year old cannondales...

the buy direct model isn't any different, with the popular models having 5+ months waiting times. some of the current delivery dates are into 2016 release dates

More and more importers are relying (and incentivising with discount) on shops to do big staged drop pre-orders and then keeping very little in stock at their end.
It pretty much screws over the small guys who have neither the space or the money.
Where I used to work they used to do a massive pre order (waay more than they needed) to get the best discount and also tie up bikes so no other shop could get them and then just get them shipped one by one when they sold (and refuse to take the balance at the end of season).Last year the importer told them to do one (the owner ranted at the rep for a good 4 hours and then spent another 2 on the phone).

I suspect that the consumer is also partly to blame by refusing to pay any more than the bare minimum for anything. How many times do we hear a bike being criticised for being over-priced? It's not over-priced at all, of course, just more expensive than the offerings from somebody who has managed to aggressively trim costs from all parts of their supply chain. Of course you can shorten lead times, produce more smaller batches, hold more stock etc, but it all adds to your costs. You could even go crazy and manufacture things here in the UK, where you can match production to demand much better. But then you'll just get slagged off for being over-priced again.

Some Giant and Cannobndale prices dropped by 10% for 2015 whilst keeping the same margin for the shops.....they've got to make savings somewhere (some cheeky spec changes and a drop in build quality...especially wheels but mainly overheads).

Everyone knows the 2016 model year starts in April 2015 which means you only have a 2 week wait

Ha ha ! That means the June issue of What MBURK, will be out any day then .

i spoke to 3 specialized dealers about my xl enduro. all 3 told me that there was only 1 left in the country.
i found this hard to believe. i contacted specialized store in harrogate, who were the cheapest. they told me the same.

I know all the lads who work there and am on decent terms with the owner ton, they're straight up, if they can get something, theyll get it. Not just Spesh stuff either. Eg they currently have the only s works demo 8 (the asymmetric one) in Europe for a customer. As a result of this, a Spesh team rider has to wait for his. They've also just got in, and now delivered, one of the £16,000 mclaren venge ltd editions

don't for get people been left with "last year bikes" when SRAM/Shimano bring out a new groupset etc.
When 11spd 105 was launched it wiped £££ of any 10spd 105 spec bike! OH 11spd I wait till that model bike has that and not 10spd.

I suspect that the consumer is also partly to blame by refusing to pay any more than the bare minimum for anything.

something of a circular argument. Yearly product cycles means bikes become "old" quickly, as they are identifiably different from the new year (even if only minor changes) and then have to be discounted to sell. This then reflects on the perceived value of the new bike: why would I pay rrp for a bike that I know it will be 40% cheaper in a years time? The last 5 new whole bikes we've bought (mixture of road, CX, and FS) were new-old-stock and the "worst" was 35% off the rrp.

Yep. As I wrote away up there, the annual churn isn't doing anyone any favours. A stable range would be cheaper as development and tooling costs would be written off over more units, there would be no need to to mark down stuff that's only 9 months "old", dealers would be able to retain a few demo bikes knowing, again, that the costs would be written off over a longer period and the consumer would see less severe depreciation.

Yep. As I wrote away up there, the annual churn isn't doing anyone any favours.

yeah, most japanese motorbike manufacturers moved to 2+ year model cycles a few years ago when sales fell of a cliff.

But if you get the jump on your competitors by releasing your new 6.714% faster bike earlier than them.....you'll sell more bikes.And hence we end up with the snake swallowing it's own tail.