As the big two companies, Specialized and Trek, continue to pull in large independents and chain shops in major market areas, the black hole of corporate accounting continues to pull away chunks of what had been a workable system of distribution at all levels of population density. The latest casualty is Quality Bicycle Products, which recently announced layoffs even as it expanded its warehouse locations, and has now begun to offer some of its house brand products direct to consumer.
Currently, the QBP plan will share profits with dealers enrolled in their Dealer's Choice program, but it indicates that QBP's status as the top distributor of parts and accessories has suffered inroads from the vertical integration pursued by Spec and Trek, pushing their own lines of parts and accessories through their controlled network to consumers with less and less choice.
You don't have to build a better mousetrap. You just have to market yours more effectively, or otherwise gain control of the market so that no other mousetrap gets enough visibility to compete. Consumers can only vote with their wallets a limited number of times. Usually, once we own a product, we have to put up with it because that portion of our budget has been expended.
The bike industry faces a peculiar challenge because of the strange niche bikes occupy. From their first emergence they have been controversial. Their haters hate them and their lovers love them passionately. The great neutral middle blobs toward use and neglect in response to forces as hard to calculate as the actual parameters that make bikes work at all. So when money started pouring in during the mountain bike boom of the 1990s, no one in the business knew how to keep it going. The power players only knew that they were finally earning like real capitalists, so they'd better start acting like it. Partly due to their own technological and financial decisions, and partly due to the inevitable public swing away from any boom activity, the wave broke by the turn of the century, leaving the industry leaders trying to figure out how to hold onto what they'd gained.
Small brands have vanished, folded outright, or folded into a larger consolidation, and perhaps sold online, "ready to ride out of the box." Small shops have gone under. And now, the major supplier to the independents dips a toe into direct consumer sales. They're strong enough to become a dominant force in direct consumer sales. One hopes that they will continue to supply the kind of durable, simple stuff that allows a truly independent rider-mechanic to build and maintain the kind of bikes we used to have in the second half of the last century. In any case, it's always a good idea to stockpile parts if you can. I'd rather be on foot than ride some gimcrack marvel of flashy technofashion.
With virtually no hoopla, a small independent shop in my area (having 1 store in my town, and a 2nd location in a college town about 30 miles away) was 'acquired' by one of the 2 big brands you mentioned. I only heard about it from one of their employees during a group ride shortly before it happened. So a store that sold multiple brands before will henceforth sell only one. It remains to be seen how capable their service department will be in working on brands other than that of the mothership (assuming they will do so at all). I'm glad I can do whatever is needed to 6 of the 7 bikes in my household's stable. The exception is one of my wife's bikes...she must be a more trusting soul than I.
ReplyDeleteIn my home city in the UK, several small LBS have closed in the last year and another one turned into a Trek store (so it only stocks Trek's own-brand stuff and a small selection of non-Trek stuff, mainly Bontrager - is Trek linked to Bontrager? Hmm). To the internet it is, then! (which I would rather not do - I like seeing and feeling stuff before buying it).
ReplyDeleteBontrager sold his name to Trek in the 1990s. That's been their house brand of parts and accessories ever since.
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