Halfords also own Tredz, Wheelies etc
yep Halfords are also tredz & cycle republic. at least the staff will now be better trained like the Halfords own ones.....oh, wait.
Yup. The really demented thing is that the vulture capitalist companies bought a functional company, then instantly loaded that company with the debt that they used to buy the ****ing company, and charge massive interest rates (15%, in this case). They don’t risk their own capital, they borrow and then redistribute the borrowing. And this happened to Maplin three times. Eventually, by some hilarious quirk of late stage capitalism, it becomes more profitable to destroy a business that makes money so that you can reduce your exposure and go off and ruin another company, than it does to cut your “repayments” to a sane level and have it continue to operate.
Rutland bought Maplin for £85m with Maplin’s own money then extracted £42 million- 80% tax free- in interest from that deal, by lending money to themselves, then closed them down. It’s indefensible. I mean, it’s hard to even explain what happened, because it’s so fundamentally ridiculous you get halfway through your rant and you start to think you must have imagined it.
I don’t know what the cure is. Nooses, possibly, and lampposts.
Yep. I believe that the PE firm that bought Evans paid £80m, so you'd think that if they sell them at £10m it's a fire sale and they've lost £70m....errrrm, no......
Capitalism is most definitely broken
The cynic in me would say that Halfords looked at the Evans financials, [EDIT: and poached their head of retail] and then parked Cycle Republics on the doorstep of every Evans store they could and waited....
The cynic in me would say that Halfords looked at the Evans published financials, then parked Cycle Republics on the doorstep of every Evans store they could and waited…
They've certainly done that in Glasgow City centre
..and Bristol.
This was a interesting read on the demise of Maplin, I was suprised how profitable they were but were undone by debts loaded by management buyouts.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/26/a_story_of_m_a_failed_retailer/
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I struggle to see how that sort of thing is legal, especially when there are pension pots involved too.
Nottingham EvansCycles is about 150m from the Halfords cycle republic, not sure it makes sense for them to merge but which store would be the one to shut down??
... and EC3. Evans then pulled a switcheroo and moved to a much larger underground store an entire block away. It's never busy. The large, underground Evans store 10 minutes walk away in Spitalfields is much busier.
Now that IS interesting- didn't realise that Halfords owned so many other bike brands- I knew about Cycle Hut, but not Tredz- who seem to be a pretty competitive online operation (that I feel less guilty buying from than CRC or Wiggle).
Interestingly I think reading between the lines that what Evans is trying to do is sell off the retail estate in order to keep the business running. In essence they're moving out of retail to become online / brand owners a-la Chiggle.
I think they want to raise £20m to prevent the business from being crushed by its debts, of which £10m is thrown into the pot by the creditors (mostly the VC/Bank) to write down some debt in order to make the ongoing business viable, the other £10m gives them operational cash flow and probably pays off some other debts too, and the retail estate gets sold off for that. In doing that they'd slash non direct costs massively, improve the cash flow and make the business a lot leaner. Then you set about improving on your online business and growing your own brand products like Pinnacle.
Total speculation of course.
… and EC3. Evans then pulled a switcheroo and moved to a much larger underground store an entire block away. It’s never busy.
I quite like that there's hardly ever anybody in there and 2/3 staff + you can pop in at lunch time and get a kebab from the Skewered across the road 😛
Capitalism is most definitely broken
It'd be fine if human nature wasn't fundamentally unpleasant and greedy
I'd merrily pay a bit more to keep away from companies owned by PE/VC companies - how would I tell ?
(I don't have time to go to a bricks'n'mortar LBS so I'm online "only")
((does anybody know what Hargroves' business model is ? - they're my LOBS. What about Merlin ??))
It’d be fine if human nature wasn’t fundamentally unpleasant and greedy
it isn't, take away the capitalist motivation and people are co-operative and emphatic.
is Tredz the In Stock* webshop?
*Not here, we reckon our supplier has some, we'll check once you've ordered, and let you know if there's an issue. Maybe
people are co-operative and emphatic
NO, WE'RE NOT!!!!!
Just bought Garneau HCS 90 shoes from Evans for £45 down from £124 in Canary Wharf.
**my old Time shoes have been going for 21 years and are wrecked, thousands of miles on them!
What we should probably talk about is setting up an investment vehicle for 'keen cyclists' to purchase these brands and bring them together under 1 roof, reduce manufacture and supply chain costs by going web only from international distribution. Really bring a cyclists view of product forward across multiple domains.
I think there is a deal to be done.....!
Any news?
Just cancelled my order for a reverb (ordered last Saturday before reading this thread), had an email today to say delay to 28/10/2018 (was supposed to be 7-10 days)
Halfords have them for £180 plus BC discount
The Bell Super DH I had on order first went from 24/9 to 5/10 and today moved to 12/11. Cancelled and got one from CRC for £8 more
Just for balance, I've had stock alert emails telling me one or two of the items (one of them a bike) I wanted are now back in stock, so clearly it's not totally doom and gloom!
tires ordered yesterday are with royal mail today for delivery tomorrow, so its looking good.
Looks likes it’s now a two horse race between Halfords and Sports Direct
3 way ?
https://news.sky.com/story/high-street-sports-titans-ride-into-battle-for-evans-cycles-11515527
Well I got a bike last week from them with 1k off! Bargain.
...
Sports Direct International - FFS he is a complete ****.
Like Mike Ashley or loath him, the one thing he is not is a fool.
Like Mike Ashley or loath him, the one thing he is not is a fool.
And loved by all who encounter him.
No, wait...
And loved by all who work or have worked for him.....
No, wait....
And loved by all who’s Football team he owns ...
No, wait..
If it's Halfords, that surely means a lot of closures, Evans already seem to have too many stores in close proximity, add in all the Halfords/cycle republics ....
I imagine they close quite a few branches & just rebrand the rest as cycle republics.
Alternative is Bikes Direct , will you get an oversize soup mug with online orders tho ?
Evans has been on the slippery slope towards Sports Direct for a while. The own-brand FW Evans consumable parts it sells in store is garbage at convenience prices. At least with Bikes Direct you'd have garbage at garbage prices.
If Evans Sports Direct sold commuter clothing somewhere between the Endura stuff Evans stock and the Muddy Fox crap the Sports Direct sell I'd shop there.
I'd speculate on them merging Cycle Republic into Evans - the latter has more brand recognition in my humble opinion.
The history of non-specialist sports (or other) shops doing bikes in-store is not encouraging, at least not so far as the enthusiast market is concerned. Go Outdoors are making a better fist of it than most have as far as I can tell. They/. JD Sports may think that the Evans brand will help them make the push up-market?
Honestly, anyone but SD. As I fear that anything that Evans do to ‘give back’ (run events etc) would stop. Pinnacle would be reduced to BSOs for the sub £100 market, I reckon they’d stop doing any bike over the c2w £1000 threshold too, if they kept doing that... and all the brands they currently own would start doing a cycle range, cheap yes, but dogshit quality. Ashley’s business model is to pare everything down to the absolute minimum (inc employee rights etc) to maximise profit. He’s very good at that, but not the sort of person I’d want to give a penny to. Yes the business would be saved, but everyone but Ashley loses out.
the ‘cycling is too expensive’ mob would be happy though
If Evans gets sold to Sports Direct then they've lost a customer here.
I find everything about Sports Direct to be awful and sincve they've bought out House of Fraser I won't be using them anymore either!
If they do get hold of them it'll be the death of Evans.
If Evans gets sold to Sports Direct then they’ve lost a customer here.
I'd imagine if they became sports direct for bikes for every customer they lost here they'd pick up a 10x as many. In a world where people can and will spend an hour shopping around to save 10p on a £100 item, high end retail is and will continue to struggle because the customers who will actually choose to pay a price beyond the Ashley price is tiny.
This has suddenly become a lot more relevant to me after seeing that Norco Fluid on the front page. We can only get Norco from Evans in the UK can't we?
The own-brand FW Evans consumable parts it sells in store is garbage at convenience prices.
Not all of it. I have a brilliant pump and multi-tool with that name on it. Ok so they're badged, but still.
I’d imagine if they became sports direct for bikes for every customer they lost here they’d pick up a 10x as many. In a world where people can and will spend an hour shopping around to save 10p on a £100 item, high end retail is and will continue to struggle because the customers who will actually choose to pay a price beyond the Ashley price is tiny.
Question then becomes who will sell bikes to them, most bike companies will not want stuff being sent out to the sort of shit show that is a SD shop. It's not the brand they are and it's something that requires selling a lot of the time not just buying.
most bike companies will not want stuff being sent out to the sort of shit show that is a SD shop
I'd wager there are more Apollos or brown boxers in this world than Treks. I don't think they'd struggle for supply that suits their pricing model and target market.
SD wont buy Evans so I don't think you all need worry.
Sorry, I'd say that are already supplying evans.
Given how House of Fraiser is going I'd have to agree with you Ben, he doesn't have the cash floating around unless he can offload another big asset.....
Even if he sells NUFC its still not the sort of deal they'd do. I think its just fishing about to see if there's a cheap deal to be done but the competition is serious and can get it done so I'd be 99% sure SD are already oot.
Well I like to live life on the edge so I ordered some pedals from them today to replace the ones I bent the axle on 🙂
