Tryouts for bike components, club idea

Challenge for you, invent some kind of scheme to solve this.

Johnny is interested in a thing, let’s say it costs anywhere from £50 to £1000 – tyre, brakes, saddle, fork etc. But he’s not sure if he’d like it, and isn’t really fancying being lumped with it trying to sell it second hand. So the choice is to buy it and then keep it or try to sell it, or to do nothing at all. Is there a better way?

First idea, feel free to rip it to pieces. There’s some kind of club where MTBers register who wants to try what stuff at what price. Somehow a chain is established and committed for how it’ll get handed down if the earlier people don’t like it. Say person A would be willing to buy a fork at full price if they know person B would buy it from them for some percent less if they didn’t like it, and so on. I might register in the chain as the 3rd or 4th person knowing it might never come down that far. Result is people at all price points and level of keenness get to buy or try nearly new stuff with less risk (of being stuck trying to sell it) and lower cost. Obvious problems are trust to stick to the commitment, and dealing with wear/damage.

Would you join, would it work, what might work better?

I like it for things like tyres, brakes, bars, saddles. For things like wheels, drivetrain etc I wouldn’t care, but I know others would be the opposite to me.

I think it’s a brilliant plan but no idea on how it’d work.

Just read the latest on the thread about your boy. Your enthusiasm for this makes extra sense now!

This sort of thing has been raised before, mostly over saddles as they’re so often ‘not right’.  Not quite the same idea though, more that there’s a virtual ‘pool’ of available gear for anyone to try out, sale it return ( I think suggestion usually was that the tryer paid postage both ways if no sale and that was probably the main problem)

I’ve lent out gear to forum members before now (tyres, saddle) on a waaaaay less formal basis and that’s fine but the idea of some sort of guarantee that you’ll buy my fork for £xxx if I don’t like it seems a bit of a long shot ( what if a PSA pops up and you can get brand new cheaper, for example?

I can’t really imagine a world in which it would fly. In a way eBay already sort of works; buy second hand, try it, sell it again if it doesn’t work for you, certainly for saddles.  It’s not really that much more hassle than boxing something up and returning it anyway unless you’re terminally lazy. These days you can even get eBay’s AI thing to write the admittedly dreadful ad for you.

There are so many potential failure points in your idea: lost in transit, damaged in use, outright theft etc. Sure you can work your way round them, but it then becomes more and more complicated to run and participate in, plus someone has to run this thing, presumably out of charity and get caught up in resolving any disputes. And then there’s the cost of carriage there and back. By the time you’ve received and returned a fork you didn’t like, you’re a fair whack out of pocket.

It’s be far more likely to work either run by a bike shop formally or semi-formally or informally via a local riding group where you have actual face-to-face contact with people you know who’ll lend you something on a sort of sale or return basis, which happens anyway.

But basically, nice idea, hard to see it working. It’s basically a sort of glorified ‘sale or return’ gig, with all the accompanying downsides. ‘The fork worked fine when I posted it to you, now it leaks oil and has a creaking CSU etc’.

Perhaps it would work between mountain biking angels 🙂

Would you join, would it work, what might work better?

My main concern would be around compatibility.

Yes I’ll buy those forks.

Oh but wait – wrong offset, wrong axle, the steerer has been chopped down too much…

No, sorry, I won’t buy those forks.

You could probably repeat that scenario for almost every part on a bike!

Here in Vancouver, Andrew Major at MeatEngines was operating a saddle library. Unsure if it’s still going, but it’s a great idea.

https://meatengines.com/f/the-saddle-library—launch-inventory-publ-1602-upd-1602

I would be concerned about compatibility and about damage (not just wear and tear).

“Yes, I agreed to buy those tyres from you in a fortnight. So, how did the fortnight riding in Morzine go on those tyres?’

I think in reality your chains will be too numerous, many start points but each one will be very be short and liability and supply contract side will be complex.

As soon as anyone says MTB and club in the same sentence I’m thinking low numbers. Buy–>ebay if no go works due to the reach of ebay and its ability to find market value fast.

I’m thinking of the regular “does anybody know where the shockwiz is?” messages on our club whatsapp

It’s a great idea in theory.

Yeah so it doesn’t work for the issues I mentioned and others. Basically that people are self interested and sometimes dicks. Thinking it through below, but still doesn’t make it viable.

There needs to be incentives for people to make commitments, and consequences for breaking them. Difficult stuff.

There’s some stuff in financial markets that might help in principle, but not in practice. The second person needs to sell the first person a “put option” which is the right to sell on the item at a given price. The first person can then keep it, sell it on eBay, or sell it to the second person at the agreed price.

For example, weeksy wants to try a £500 brake set. He pays me £50 now, and for that I commit to buying the brakes for £450 if he wants to sell me them. If he likes them, he’s spent £550 and keeps them. If he doesn’t like them, he can sell them to me for £450 (so he’s down £100 total) or sell them on eBay if he thinks he can get more – I’m still up the £50 he paid me for the “option to sell”. It’s a really hard problem where to set these price levels.

There’s no problem with theft by a participant as the item is owned at every stage. If the item is stolen by someone else then the owner just ends up without it and doesn’t exercise the right to sell it to the next person in the chain.

Lost or damaged in transit, maybe PayPal buyer protection or put it through eBay. It’s just a sale to a specific person.

Damaged in use, well they own it so it’s their problem. If they sell it on damaged then again it’s a buyer-seller dispute issue like in any normal sale.

Postage costs, nothing different to ordinary sales. Person receiving it pays.

The difficult bits I think are enforcing commitment on the next person to buy, setting the prices, and dealing with fair wear and tear. And explaining the damn scheme to anyone. And finding enough participants for the overall thing not to mention specific items.

Oh and also establishing the chain of more than two people up front. Pay me £50 for the right to sell me your brakes for £450, ok. I then need to find someone else I can pay say £30 for the right to sell them the brakes for £400, knowing that I might not even get the damn brakes from the first person.

Yeah, so no.

Sounds like you need to find a better bike shop! We loan stuff to our customers to try quite often. At the moment I have tyres and shocks out on loan with customers who are free to return them or order it when they’ve tested it… and demo bikes of course but that doesn’t count.

By the end of the month we’ll also have testable lights.

Any Mavens lying about Ben

(Yes, I’m kidding ?)

Sounds like you need to find a better bike shop!

I honestly would never have thought to ask.

Maybe looking to upgrade the Deluxe Ultimate on my Aether 9 before spring, while preserving bottle space. So DBAir IL G2 I think, if anything at all.

So DBAir IL G2 I think, if anything at all.

If I had a used one you’d be welcome, but I’m pretty sure we sold the only one we had as a demo when we stopped selling them.

I only just found out about this yesterday.

https://fatllama.com/uk

https://fatllama.com/uk its like ebay for renting out stuff.

the difficulty is then if someones uses it and then breaks it – or worse breaks them selves.

Llama has rented out Shockwiz’s for years and years… i didn’t know he did other stuff too 🙂

Well I just searched for “fork”, not expecting anything, and found someone offering a kitchen fork for 57p per day.