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| The new logo on the store front. |
It's true. It's no joke. It is probably worse than you realize it is. I've seen shop mechanics on a forum I follow saying their stores are going to stop selling tubes over the counter because they need them for tune-ups. That's right- inner tubes are harder to get now. That's not even the tip of the ice berg. All kinds of stuff is unavailable, or in very limited supply now. Examples include kid's trailers, mirrors, and handle bar tape- like hen's teeth. Hard to get and what you can get is maybe one- maybe two choices- if you are lucky.
Why? Well, it's not easy to pinpoint, but the biggest factor is that sales for the first quarter of 2020 went off the charts, and probably because of the pandemic, so no one was ready for this. Added in to that is the fact that several Chinese factories were closed longer than just for the Chinese New Year, and well.....things got worse.
I see some poo-pooing the idea about the factories shutting down, and they are saying things related to that are well in hand, but there is no denying that things got started off on the wrong foot, then the pandemic jump started sales to these crazy levels and well.....here we are. How it happened is, perhaps, less important than where it is going to lead us.
People want to know how we're going to "keep all these new riders". Ah.......well, that one is easy. We aren't. It's an easy question to answer because of two reasons- One: Once things are relaxed in terms of restrictions on movements and gatherings, people will, are going to, and already have returned to driving cars everywhere. It's happened here in Iowa where I live already. Those cars are taking them to places they could not go to for three months. You know.......like bars. There is one I pass on my commute home and the first day they could be open, at 4:30pm, the place was bonkers. Packed. You couldn't get another car on the property, and cars were lined up down the street for two blocks.
And no one had ridden a bicycle there.
Two: There are no safe places to ride, just like there weren't at the beginning of 2020. If you don't provide safe infrastructure, and get it in place, like.........yesterday, well, then you've lost a lot of the new riders. When the social distancing was at its height, in April, I could ride down the highway in town and not fear getting hit. Cars were a scarcity. Now? Pfffft! I would get killed. There is no way a new cyclist can ride on the side street, the main drags, or get to bike paths that we have without dealing with the average driver, who, by the way, is as entitled and distracted as ever.
And bike shops, well.....who knows? We will either still be getting slammed with repairs all Summer, or the tide will go out to sea and we will be left twiddling spanners as we will have no bikes to sell. Or....maybe.....Things will get back to a more normal rhythm. Suppliers will catch up, and business will settle into a post-pandemic hangover. I'm betting on the latter. The demand front loaded in 2020 and the rest of the year will be slower.
2 comments:
Yes, sir. Craigslist and ebay are already seeing recent bought bikes for quick sales. Here in NE, the fall season CL will be a sweet grab as snowbirds and campers leave. Now the other thing I noticed is in the last couple of days since this news came out prices of components and tools have been creeping up. I have been keeping screen shots day to day. An example: a single plus sized inner tube being sold by a popular vendor was $7 just 5 days ago. The following day it became $8. The next day the auction/ Buy it Now said $7, but added a "select size" with still only one choice...... which seems to be a new trend. Once you select the size the price became $10. Yesterday, same auction listed the inner tube at $11. This morning- $12. What is more amusing is locally bike shops are price gouging (sp. cause I do not use spell check) as well. I went around the other day trying to collect parts to build a bike up, as I left my bike which I was going to ride during the COG event out west when the shutdowns started happening, to ride south. I ran into prices for the standard Shimano BB UN55 68x110 ranging from $35-48. I am no idiot. When I optioned them to serve me a crank and Shimano hollow bb.... by the way, totally a frustrating time dealing with people who do not know how to assist in sales, I was met with them have one but not the other. Also bottom bracket tools were out of stock. Again, my tools are out west with my travel rig. Then I had a discussion with a fella wearing a DirtRag tee who worked in one of the stores. He told me they had the tools but were not selling them and offered me one from his tool bench. I turned it down based on seeing a seasoned customer walk up and retrieve an item someone else just asked for for much less money.
I urge consumer to be aware, knowledgeable, and stand your ground. Do not be taken advantage of. Go home and look around in your bins or install a patch again. If you run out of patches, just cut up an inner tube and make new ones. The local hardware store has rubber cement in multiple sizes.
The problem is trying to predict anything at this point Mark - the point of a lockdown is to buy time to implement a Test, Track and Isolate regime; that's not in place here in the UK and I don't believe it is in the US either. Since the virus has not changed pathologically, and there's no TTI regime in place, the reason for the original lockdown hasn't gone away either.
In population-dense areas in particular, its inevitable it will spring back; there's still no 'cure' or vaccine so the virus will continue to affect us for months to come. That means lockdown or not, people will be fearful of doing anything that will increase their risk of infection, which will continue to drag the economy. When this penny drops, people might limit their travel to essential travel only and increase bike use for their fitness and sanity.
In the UK there's money to build out infra to get people off public transport and onto bikes, but it's tightly time limited and only available for serious efforts - most of our local authorities have no idea what to do (the exceptions being some enlightened towns/cities who have grasped the impact of people not using public transport and relying on cars).
We'll have to see where it goes; our car use is rapidly on the rise too, but for some of these smarter cities we are seeing the beginnings of real change. Without the infra, like you, I think most of these new cyclists will not so much melt away as be forced away...
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