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Thanks for letting me know, Smudge.
Better grab that last 2020 C2 Norco optic!
That may perhaps be one of the very few good things to happen if Evans were to close up shop, You'd be able to get a Norco at one of your LBS if they change over to a different distributor instead of Evans being the sole distributor in the UK.
Quite a few times I've wanted to get a Norco, but the unknowledgeable staff and the reputation Evans has for after sales service has meant I always went with alternative options.
Feel bad for the staff here, that the people who are doing so much for customers who get caught out by process problems or supply delays etc are being put in this position. If you read Evans Trustpilot reviews the good ones in recent times are almost all praise for individual staff members for going out of their way to help out. I realise a company might have the same employment rules across the group but they need to retain good staff who have technical and customer service skills to make bike retail work.
Can't they have full contract hours for key shop staff and zero hours for the part time staff, if they must? People need security.
I should probably stay out of it as an ex-employee but I've no personal complaints or agenda here. I just know people affected by this and I know how good so many of the staff at Evans are. Much of the good results come from them being good people with the right attitude to start with and the extra stuff can come from being supported and motivated by a company. Chip away at that and what happens for staff retention or the overall experience of staff and customers? Could be a tough job for someone to replace/rebuild that motivation.
Ironic that so many on here seem to think they can advise an incredibly successful billionaire businessman where he’s going wrong
A successful businessman is not automatically right about everything as a consequence of their success, and self interest is not the same as the public interest. Amazing how many people forget that.
I imagine he's very good at doing what he does, which is make a lot of money for his business. Whether that's good for employees, customers or wider society seems to be the thing people are getting a bit exercised about.
“Ironic that so many on here seem to think they can advise an incredibly successful billionaire businessman where he’s going wrong”
The same was probably said about Phillip Green. He got rich but screwed everyone else and the businesses he’d owned.
Capitalism is very short term. Doing the right thing isn’t.
Its a real shame as I've had a few wheel rebuilds from different Evans' over the years, and they've all been spot on. Screwing down on staff costs means the competent specialist mechanics will likely go elsewhere, so no more decent wheel builds at reasonable prices... (IIRC £40 including new spokes and nipples),
Darn it...
"Is the winning the great capitalism game to be the one person standing alone on a mountain of money that rises from a dead planet?"*
*or something like that, read online.
I'm drifting OT as ever but 'Let My People Go Surfing' has some useful perspectives. Yvon Chouinard is a good example of a successful businessman, proves that businesses can be beneficial in more ways than most are. It suggests it's largely a choice about how you do things. Probably also about government influence, support of your customers and the developing scale/power/influence. Complex but not impossible, like any business objective.
That's cheap for a wheel build. No wonder the shops are struggling to make money !
Therein lies the problem. We all want cheap stuff and good service. But they don't really go together. You add in online and next day delivery to your demands and its a wonder why anyone would want to own a shop, let alone a chain of them.
I do think customers demand for cheap, easy and fast has helped to create a lot of the current problems. This is also compounded by rates being high, but people don't want taxes to go up.
I do think customers demand for cheap, easy and fast has helped to create a lot of the current problems.
True, though there's a balance and price within a certain range is less important to most of us than service or quality. Maybe some compromise one aspect too far. Evans situation may be creating opportunities for other smaller companies to grow. Cyclical?
Ironic that so many on here seem to think they can advise an incredibly successful billionaire businessman where he’s going wrong
Is it "ironic"?
Is it your contention that we should simply admire him, and believe in his superior judgement simply because he's wealthy?
He's a Retail gambler who's had more bets go his way than not over the course of about 35 years... That doesn't make him some kind of 4D chess wizard...
Anyway didn't his estimated worth drop by around £0.5B back in 2018/19? Funnily enough about the same time he bought Evans, as well as buying House of Fraser out of administration, at the same time as the Belgians went after Sports Direct for a big chunk of back tax.
Isn't he still stuck owning Newcastle despite repeatedly trying to flog it?
Not that I'm questioning his genius, I don't think I could deal with all that irony...
Isn’t he still stuck owning Newcastle despite repeatedly trying to flog it?
I'll start by saying I am/was a Newcastle fan, haven't watched a game for some time but to say I dislike the f** b*****d would be putting it mildly. Ashley 'loaned' NUFC around £130million after buying the club, apparently after not really looking through the clubs accounts prior to the sale going through, although the NUFC DIRECT web address was registered around a year before and now handles the clubs official merchandising revenues. While he is owed this money by NUFC, which basically means he owes himself the money as sole shareholder, he can use the debt to offset tax liabilities from his other companies profits, as well as milking NUFC for as much as he can get ( merchandising, player sales etc). He is not as desperate to sell as a lot of people seem to think he is, unless it's for a massive profit, as it would've been sold long ago if he really was
Ironic that so many on here seem to think they can advise an incredibly successful billionaire businessman where he’s going wrong
Behind a lot of these billionaire business people seems to be a string of failed/failing companies that have been bought on the cheap, asset stripped, debt-leveraged, run into the ground and then sold off or declared bankrupt.
Billionaire comes out of it with some extra profit. Everyone else gets screwed.
Philip Green mentioned above is a good example.
Popped into my old store in Milton Keynes today. It's looking more and more like a branch of Sports Direct. Dump bins full of back packs and cheap locks, window full of cheap Mongoose bikes. My old manager (who has been running Hendon) was back to do the redundancy meetings. The notes are being sent off so that someone can "grade" the staff on a cost/benefit scale and decide who to keep. There will be 4 full time staff left. There was 13 when I started there 7 years ago and it was one of the most profitable shops in the company. Now I doubt it will be there in a year. I just hope my old colleagues find something else soon
Edit: I might have accidentally ordered some 5:10 Kestral shoes as well. Oops