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Yeah yeah yeah, every customer's a twunt.
Change your model, react to the market. If you've got all these hardtail owners looking to rent a a full susser then maybe offer a bike rental service instead? Try and innovate instead of wasting your time asking about the new VAG diesel's MPG on STW.
Like this codswallop:
http://themetapicture.com/people-kept-complaining-this-restaurant-sucked-look-what-they-found-out/
Guess what, the world's changed!!! Find your USP and work it instead of giving up on life and complaining that people are stupid. If they're that stupid then surely it should be easy to make money off of them. Work it out Mr Businessman.
The only constant in the world is change. React to it.
Alright calm down. My point is we do fine selling bikes the way we do and most people are happy with paying when they are going to splash a few grand on a new bike. I have no interest in hiring bikes as it would have to be a lot more expensive than our demo bikes to make it work.
You don't need to adapt and change everything if you have a good business and customers that value that.
The only constant in the world is arseholes. React to it.
What sign am I making?
So after expecting to pay £1xx on demos, I got them all free over a period of 4 months.
I'm just not that patient! Literally struggling already waiting, it's like Christmas! I want a new bike!
[i]I've never had to pay for test rides on motorcycles or test drives in cars, we even got free test rides on mobility scooters for my father in law. What's different about the bicycle industry?[/i]
The damage/wear I'd imagine; could be wrong but not sure you can get a free demo on an MX bike?
Buy wise sell wise.
Currently 11? Months on my used 2011 SC Butcher frame. Cant see why anyone would buy a new SC etc bike.
The damage/wear I'd imagine; could be wrong but not sure you can get a free demo on an MX bike?
Currently demo'ing enduro bikes for 2015 [for free] both my son and me - proper enduro not bicycle enduro
On the whole motorbike demo vs MTB thing. The big difference is in the money made surely.
Yes they gave you a 12k bike for free but they would make a lot more profit from that if you buy one than an MTB and there are also less variations in sizes for particular models.
Maybe more money made but you can get free demos on £5k motorbikes, where I guess the markup up isn't far removed
Business model is surely also completely different.
[quote=Klunk ]I'm hoping Hora rides his bikes for more than an hour before he decides they are [s]crap[/s] not for him though I may be wrong.
I wouldn't put any money on it.
LOL MTBers gettin taken for a ride again! It's the mtb industry, what a racket! Tell gullible idiots they need a five grand bike to have fun. Then change something on it (wheel sizes maybe? Or steerer diameter!) a year later and tell em theyre five grand dream machine is out of date and they need to buy a new one. Then charge em 50 quid to test ride it! It's a push bike for gods sake, they're all pretty much the same. Use your common sense. You dont need to spend five grand on a bike to have fun. A motorbike costs five grand and that has an engine!
Njee, did you used to work with heather then?
My next bike will be from the lbs that organised the brilliant free demo days in the summer....
Or bring them back plastered in mud and it takes an hours cleaning to get it back in a condition where we can put it in the shop
so have a [i]refundable[/i] deposit, like you pay for items you hire to cover damage.
Never demo'ed a bike let alone paid for one. I dont think you get enough experience of a bike in a few hours ride to make a judgement. As Ive said in bike-specific threads I quickly grew to hate my Mk. 1 Nomad after the initial honeymoon period, which was longer than a demo day, and there's all the personal set up issues (bar width, stem length, suspension settings etc) that youd spend more than a day fine tuning on a bike you owned.
Begrudging (genuine) potential buyers* of an all-mountain bike taking them to wales is like me test riding a Fireblade and being told I can only ride it around the local 30mph village road. Unrealistic and pointless for the tester.
*someone doing it as a cheap big-bike rental for an uplift day is taking the p1ss and is akin to "showrooming" clothing, parts etc and then buying online and I can appreciate if I was in the business it would infuriate me.
You dont need to spend five grand on a bike to have fun.
Thanks David, I never saw it that way, guess I'll just cancel my demo!
EDIT: Ben Cooper summed it up perfectly below.
"People didn't want to buy a bike that other people had ridden."
Maybe more money made but you can get free demos on £5k motorbikes, where I guess the markup up isn't far removed
Motorbikes are made in much, much larger numbers than MTBs, especially £5k ones, and they don't become out of date every year. That's what used to really annoy me when I sold normal bikes, I couldn't have a proper demo fleet because they were obsolete every 12 months and I had to get rid and get new demonstrators. Couldn;t use them for stock either as people didn't want to buy a bike that other people had ridden.
Just for context, the two large shops I worked in, 5k mountain bikes represented a tiny fraction of overall sales. I hope there are boutique stores out there who do well from that sort of thing, but I don't know of any.
An average shop might sell 5 bikes like that, per year if they are lucky. Never at full price. The more boutique or exclusive the brand, generally, the shittier the margins are. If we assume most shops will carry 3 main mtb brands, and those brands might have 3 main models, and you've got 3 sizes.....there's 27 potential options for a demo bike to buy. Or, they have a 1 in 27 chance of buying in the correct demo bike for you. And if anyone so much as bimbles down a gravel path on that bike it'll be worth little more than cost price.
If you own a £5k bike, I wonder how much the cost per ride is. Wear and tear, depreciation, consumables etc. Hint: Don't actually work this out - it'll depress you. Anyhow, £50 per ride probably isn't far off that figure. So it's not a massively big deal. Besides, a lot of shops will allow you to take a bike out for a spin around the car park to check sizing etc.
Sit on them all and choose your favourite two for test rides?
"People didn't want to buy a bike that other people had ridden."
Utterly bizarre. First wet/dirty ride and it'll be in worse condition than a test ridden round the carpark one.
Demo bikes can also be misdescribed at selling onto time when really they are hire bikes .... depending on where they are kept/the seller is based. Hire bikes- kept solely to produce an income. Demo- are available if someone is thinking to buy...frequency and location of rides?
Utterly bizarre. First wet/dirty ride and it'll be in worse condition than a test ridden round the carpark one.
Agree completely, my Charge Cooker 2 I got for £425 instead of £850 as it had done 4 miles 🙂
I suppose the Ferrari driving LBS owner class take all these £50 fees for demo bikes and blow it on hookers and coke for the end of year party.
Alternatively, what I've observed is many shops used to have a few free demo options but have found over the years that it's unprofitable and have started charging.
"People didn't want to buy a bike that other people had ridden."
😆 wonder if the same people only date virgins?
Hey, at least you can get demo bikes in your size. Try being at the taller end of the population and needing XL/21" bikes, you can barely get one to sit on let alone demo ride one.
[quote=tomhoward ]
"People didn't want to buy a bike that other people had ridden."
wonder if the same people only date virgins?
[img] 
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I work in a 'brand store'.for 2015 we have 17 demo bikes split across mtn, road and men's/women's models.
We charge for demo bike use because we had to buy the bikes, albeit at a reduced rate from the distributor. At the end of next autumn we'll try to sell the bikes to claw back some of this money.
We also have to clean, service and repair the bikes to keep them serviceable. Last bike we lent out came back dirty and with a bent derailleur hanger / scratched rear mech .
If a customer buys a bike from us, the charge is refunded.
When I worked in 2 specialized concept stores we had access to 100+ bikes held by specialized UK. We were charged £40 for delivery and return shipping, and had to clean the bikes before return. Of course this cost was charged to the customer.
When I worked for Freeborn we did it differently taking customers on guided demo rides in Surrey hills, at no charge. Surprising how many time wasters this weeded out compared to when people wanted to take bikes away just to have something bling to thrash for a few days.
That BMW fake ad ^
It works for Aston Martin but BOY Beemers don't have the same visual appeal as that woman. By far. They're hideous.
I demo'd an Alpine 160 from the Hub at Glentress which cost me £35 and confirmed that it wasn't really the thing for me. Better than spending £2k+ on a bike to find I didn't like it.
I also demo'd a Rocket from 18bikes in Hope and even though I was expecting to pay they didn't charge me a penny. If I'd had the money right there I'd have got one and even though I'm 3hrs away I would have got it from them. By the time I'd gathered the funds, well there's a thread about that somewhere.
[quote=P-Jay ]On the other hand the much beleaguered LBS is holding a bit of stock worth £5000 retail, which might have cost them £4000 wholesale
...
go to any large city centre shopping centre, there's an Apple Shop, A Lego Shop, a Bose Shop, A Vans shop, a Nike Shop a Superdry Shop etc etc etc
... and bike sales are no different.
I think I can spot one obvious difference - I left an earlier bit of your post as a hint.
@hora, you do realise the BMW ad is genuine, and the Aston one was fake, though that wasn't the main reason I chose to post the BMW one, I wonder if you can work it out...
The problem for the cycle 'concept stores' and 'brand stores' is that they are not owned or operated by the cycle manufacturer or distributor for the country, but are franchises operated by independent retailers.
They still have to wash their face, or more favourably turn a profit, which is not as easy when selling a single bike brand. If that brand runs out of stock of a particular model, you have nothing to sell, this happens more than you'd think.
Specialized Kingston is owned by Sigma Sport, specialized Covent garden is different in that its part of cycle surgery.
The Giant brand stores (20 at last count) are run by independent retailers except for Swansea which is part of treads/wheelies.
A problem facing these stores is the understandable confusion from customers that these stores are brand owned, which I've repeatedly seen with customers showrooming product and then buying from local dealer (who may offer an aggressive discount when their payroll is looming and cash flow is tight), expecting warranty support for free (frame has cracked and customer wants warranty replacement rebuilt for free), trying to return goods purchased from other dealers, etc.
I understand the customers POV, you would not expect to pay for warranty help with an Apple tablet bought in PC world if you walked into the Apple store in Covent garden.