How to local bike shops survive

currently having a look around for a new bike for commuting

halfords have the cx team for £900 and i believe it has been cheaper recenlty

I went into a large indy bike shop and asked if they had any CX / gravel style bikes with hydro brakes for under £1000 and they looked at me as if i wanted the moon on a stick

I would rather not buy from halfords but £900 with Sram hydro brakes and wide range 1×11 i cant justify getting a less capable bike just to help support a local shop

How do these bike shops stay in business? can a workshop be that profitable?

I used to have 2 lbs’s.  One sold bikes and clothes etc but the other was just a workshop that had a few spares for sale and he actually preferred it if you brought your own parts in. Lbs 1 is now shut and worship lbs is doing very well

maybe they’d figured out that the relatively niche sub-£1000 cx/gravel bike market wasn’t for them as they did quite well selling £500 commuting bikes?

Some people appreciate customer service and good quality advice over the latest widgets.

Maybe they have customers who realise that groupset spec is not the the most important thing when it comes to a bicycle purchasing decision?

Last road bike I bought I got from the LBS but the MTB is a Boardman and the best bike I have owned. And I have had expensive Kona’s and Seccy’s. I now use the lbs for service and repair mainly.

By doing jobs for free ‘cos I’ll definitely buy a bike from them next time’

Probably from customers who either don’t know enough to go to Halfords or know too much (ie. want something more fancy/niche).

FWIW I had a CX Team and thought it was crap off road (and on), I’d probably look at a Vitus from CRC or a Pinnacle for £1k instead.

By knowing the local market and stocking what they can sell.

Mine fed me mulled wine and mince pies until I bought a Giant TCX. It’s a blue one.

Yes, that said I had a CX and it was a lemon.

I’d not be surprised if many bike shops just didn’t put that much effort into the 1k cross commuter segment, assuming most would just buy a Boardman from Halfords because it has a shinier rear mech. They seem ubiquitous in corporate bike sheds.

The way that a smaller business takes on a larger business (with economies of scale) or online (with reduced overheads) is to either:

1:  Compete on service

Bike fits, coffee, fitting of parts, events, races, guiding, second hand trade, yadda yada

2: Be leaner and more agile.

Be into gravel bikes before Halfords get there, etc.  They should be pushing the curve on innovation with small suppliers offering the next thing before everyone has it.

3: Focus on quality.

Don’t compete on rubbish bikes at rubbish prices.  Selected quality brands at the right price.  Sell what Halfords don’t sell and sell what people want to sit on before they buy.

Easy to say, hard to do.  Being an independent retailer in any sector is a potential nightmare.

As Hugo says.  Like any good business stick to two things:

Do what your competitors can’t do.

If you do what your competitors do, then do it better.

Chase the revenue, not the costs.

OT: I think there’s a new large one on eBay for £725.

Friend cx races his and seems to think it’s not bad and a fair few get bought for the components and the frames sold/tipped.

British cycling membership also gets you 10% off at Halfords so if you go that way may be worth a punt.

I Use a gravel bike (Raliegh mustang) for commuting in winter and the summer days I want to go rougher ways where a road bike won’t cut it.  I reallly like it although I originally thought fad /niche  but on our shite roads with Schwalbe G-ones it’s great,

Being an independent retailer in any sector is a potential nightmare.

Yep I’m not quite sure how they can compete with the big boys and the direct to customer route seems to be getting more popular.

The only bricks and mortar bike shop I use specialise in triathlon stuff and are really good at getting weird spare parts and oddly enough were cheaper than internet when I got a road bike from them and also arsed about making sure the bike fitted.

My lbs survives on the repairs of bikes bought by folk from the internet etc.
+Lots of commuter &kids bikes & budget clothing & accessories.
They used to have two shops and sold high end road stuff in the shop that closed .

I don’t see how a workshop only lbs will survive either, imo people just won’t pay labour rates for work done that will provide a reasonable income.

Good workshops will be fine. There’s plenty of folk who are time poor, not mechanically minded or simply not interested in fixing their own bike and are happy to pay for labour.

In my opinion it is all about your local scene. If you have a good local MTB scene, road scene or  bmx scene or commuting well not scene but are well placed to deal with commuters, and serve them well you will be ok. But this does mean you can’t have a shop anywhere.

Local bike shops, days are numbered for selling bikes they will in future be called bike repair shops.

Few guys i know in the UK have gone workshop only. The big savings appear to be in stock overheads. Have the “standard” shimano commuter spec stuff on the shelf, anything else can be ordered in 24 hours (usually cheaper than the wholesale price). Then widgets, waterproofs, lights. Nothing too heavy duty, or hard to sell.

Moves your stock exposure from 100s of thousands, to thousands. Big savings in rent too. Can usually do the whole thing in one small shop front, no storage needed out back.

One of them has even started doing purchase advice. Sort of pre purchase advice on sizing, then assembly, PDI etc. And the ongoing service and maintenance once they’ve bought it online (or ordered it through the shop using these new direct sales set ups. Also gives advice when they bring in bikes for repair i.e. you need a front mech part number xxx.xxx, here it is on wiggle/CRC/merlin. You order it, i’ll fit it for a fixed price. Saves the customer getting the wrong thing, workshop gets an easy job.

Most of them are earning more now then they were with a full retail shop. And are busier with work rather than timewasters.

Sadly for many of us in the lbs our days are numbered.

When it’s cheaper to buy stuff from crc rather than the uk importer it’s always going to be hard.

On the plus side

Read this opinion piece with interest on Bikebiz the other day…

https://www.bikebiz.com/features/bike-shop-week

From an outsider’s POV it seems to me the biggest problem for the LBS is not CRC and Wiggle or Canyon and YT but their own suppliers refusing to help them stay competitive.

Would I be correct in thinking the distributors have largely maintained their margins and left their dealers with the shitty end of the stick in recent years?

@ghostlymachine How do they buy at less than wholesale prices ?

People are inately lazy and making a decision is taxing. Have you ever asked for advice in halfords?

Buying power

Read this opinion piece with interest on Bikebiz the other day…

Whoever wrote that has their head shoved firmly up their own arse.

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;”>How do they buy at less than wholesale prices ?</span>

Wiggle/CRC/Merlin/Bike24/Bike-discount all sell at less than a small shop can buy direct from the UK importer. Most will do (or attempt to do) 24 hour delivery.

That’s a remarkably sweeping statement . It is true that sometimes some products can be bought cheaper from the big mail order shops but the vast majority of stuff is cheaper from a wholesaler and also is your man in his workshop going to spend hours trying to find the best deal on the Internet and then when he orders the item he finds that it wasn’t actually held in stock and will be 2 weeks arriving and then it goes wrong and it has to go back to the shop it was bought from and then on to the uk supplier , assuming that it wasn’t a grey import . Then the accountant is going to be chasing his tail with the same products coming from whoever was cheapest at the time . Etc etc

In edinburgh we seem to have a bunch of thriving bike shops all with their own niche / slant on things.  What none of them do is aim at the STW type owners except ronde who are a coffee shop with a few overpriced bike bits.  The rest of them serve commuters plus their niche and survive on good service from what I can see.  Even my local halfords has really good staff and good service

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px;”>That’s a remarkably sweeping statement</span>

And remarkably accurate for the sort of kit most small workshops are buying.

We’re not talking XTR here, mostly it’s not even Deore level kit.

I think decline in bike shops is the fault of keen cyclists just like those of us who inhabit this site.  When you have a group of people (us) who understand the myriad new standards, can undertake the vast majority of mechanical tasks and are prepared to thoroughly research the options before buying a new bike, then the requirement for expert advice diminishes.  When I got my first MTB (in 1989, shudder) I was never out of the local shop, bugging them for advice or stroking the latest shiny stuff.  Now I know my passion inside out I only pop in occasionally and frankly the shop itself has moved on to a different customer base.

The more casual cyclist or commuter is in need of all the advice and mechanical know how a LBS can offer and it’s them who are keeping the shops alive.

I think decline in bike shops is the fault of keen cyclists just like those of us who inhabit this site

That probably accounts for 1% of the decline.  Vast majority of people who ride bikes are not that interested.

A friend of mine was looking to buy a bike with a max budget of £1200 and had found an ex demo model on sale at a German direct sell company. She visited her local bike shop to see if they had anything within budget and when she mentioned the online bike that she was looking at the guy at the lbs took a bad attitude and basically told her that she should just leave and shop online.

Had the lbs had any business sense they could have explained any pitfalls of buying online and offered a price for building and servicing the new bike (= some money in the till). Also advising her that the online bike doesn’t come with pedals, so ‘look at our range of pedals and we will also fit them for you’  would have generated some income as would talking about helmets, shoes etc.

Instead she was made to feel bad and has not been back – her friends do all the maintenance for her and help to order bits online.

No wander some businesses struggle.

A friend of mine was looking to buy a bike with a max budget of £1200 and had found an ex demo model on sale at a German direct sell company. She visited her local bike shop to see if they had anything within budget and when she mentioned the online bike that she was looking at the guy at the lbs took a bad attitude and basically told her that she should just leave and shop online.

That sounds a harsh and as you go onto say, may have cost them some sales of ancilliaries and accessories, but on the other hand I can understand how annoying it must be for shops being “showroomed” by people taking up their time (and accessing their expertise) while having no intention of spending any money. Heard a cracker from our local the other day, a “customer” genuinely asked

“Will you measure my shock and tell me what size bushes I need so I can order them online?”

so I can see why some LBS peeps might get a touch grumpy about online..

On that parts and servicing only model, Singletrack’s Bike Shop of the Year (Garage Bikes) is this – they don’t sell bikes.

The shops I have seen do well don’t compete with the internet on price. Some of the big guys are working to help too so Giant Australia will not allow any shop to sell online but help keep prices competitive with some of the onlines.

Also STW has the blind spot to the majority of the bike industry, plenty of people have no desire to order and swap a crank, or buy tools etc. tinkering in the shed is a chore and a pain for a lot of people who don’t have sheds or gardens. People are also time poor and cash rich in many areas – I can spend an hour chasing the best price on something to save a few quid or get one in and fitted for a price I’m happy to pay.

Post Brexit and a throttle on EU imports may throw things back in favour of the LBS, who knows what the import duty on a bike will be in the magic trade deal, certainly things like cheap forks will be a bit more expensive.

Finally one LBS I knew does well at many other things like selling pads/lids to skateboarders  etc. and a couple of hundred kids bikes for christmas. It’s a model that can work.

How many local shops survive in other markets, really? Local butchers and green grocers have been decimated by supermarkets, local book shops by Amazon and ebooks.

The question really isn’t how can the LBS survive, it’s how has it survived so long?

This made me think back some years ago now…. when I were a lad.
We had as far as I can remember (about 35 years ago to when I was 10) maybe 4 bike shops inc Halfords in the city (Milton Keynes). All of these were relatively small and independent.

Just had a rough count up and we now have the following:

7no independent bike shops (1 has actually amalgamated with giant now)

Cotswold outdoors (trek)

Go outdoors

Decathlon

2 Halfords

Evans cycles

Plus all major supermarkets and Argos, etc sell bikes

There may be more I’ve forgotten but just the number of outlets in the city now must put pressure on the smaller Lbs’s.

Judging by the numbers of B Twin and go outdoors (calibre?) bikes I see round the town I reckon this has taken a good part of the lower priced bike market away from Lbs.

As for the big onliners, I’m probably wrong but no one I know who doesn’t ride the more premium bike uses these or in many cases has heard of them?

There’s just so many more out of town centre outlets now offering mainly just competitive retail and very little advice or support that people are happy to dispense with the extra support and help they got from the original lbs’s. This is the same for the specialist climbing, hiking and outdoor small retailers.

As said, the ones who survive tend to angle toward the triathlon or new fad (road riding!!) sectors.

I have three local bike shops within a 5 minute walk, all seem to be doing ok.

And then there are another 10 or so in the town….

Cambridge Bike Shops by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr