How’s Business, October 2014

This month our random selection of six bike shop owners around Australia were all upbeat about their sales in spring so far, but they were also unanimous in saying how much it contrasted with a tough winter.
As always, we asked a specific follow up question. This month, with the October long weekend having recently been observed in most States, we asked each shop owner if they closed their stores on public holidays or for other extra days on long weekends. We also asked how trade on long weekends compares to regular weekends.

Frank Conceicao of Albion Cycles in the inner eastern Sydney suburb of Waverley, said:

Business is good, yeah, it’s really good. We had about a month of bad weather when business slowed down as per normal, but as soon as it gets better, business picks up.
We decided to do one brand (one wholesale bike company) only. There’s a couple of reasons for that. One is the internet. We don’t have to compete with the internet, which is killing most (retail) businesses, in all walks of life. And our team knows the product much better.
So we’re pretty much Bontrager and Trek. We do Electra as well. We haven’t started yet. In November we’ll get our Electra’s. We’ll have about three bikes on the floor and then people will understand what they’re about. We’ll have an electric bike, a child’s bike, a commuter bike… maybe even four or five bikes. And then we’ll sell them off the catalogue.
I moved to this site in 2000 after the Olympic Games. I opened our first shop in 1979. I’ll be here as long as I’m alive! That’s pretty much it. It’s the only business I know that anyone that loves the sport and loves talking to people and enjoys people’s company… you know I went to Italy for the Pinarello show and old man Pinarello is still in there and he’s ninety-odd.
But I’m not doing Pinarello.
Competition was a big thing for us. Bike shops are closing because they carry all brands. Look, you can buy things like Shimano for example cheaper overseas on the net than I can buy from the wholesaler. We’re now carrying more SRAM, which is going to be a big hitter, sooner or later. I mean Campag you don’t see much of it around, and we specialise in Campag but it’s just not on the bikes. 90% of the bikes are pretty much Shimano.
(re public holidays) We opened Saturday (of the October long weekend) but we closed Sunday and Monday. Two reasons… staff need to have their time off as well. I think it’s important. You know city retail is pretty hard as it is. But also the amount of money we have to pay out in wages, it’s outrageous! (referring to penalty rates for holidays etc)
The business that you would lose by not opening vs the wages you have to pay, it wouldn’t be worth opening. It costs you money.
If there’s public holiday on a Friday, we open the Saturday and Sunday, but if it’s a Monday public holiday we don’t open. We normally trade seven days.

Clayton Wells of Cluster Cycles in Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula on the west coast of SA said:

It’s not too bad at the moment because it’s school holidays here. There’s a few tourists in town. But all I’m doing is selling a few tubes and a bit of oil.
People are starting to look to Christmas already. I’m just starting to do a few laybys. But that July August really hurt us. The weather over here was just so cold and wet. We’re trying to recover from that.
It seems to be steady with repairs and sales are just starting to pick up. It has got to pick up a lot more between now and Christmas.
Road bikes is the thing that has really been quiet for us over here. But those $550 to $600 mountain bikes, especially 29ers and things like that have been quite good.
Clothing… may as well friggin’ put it on a pile and burn it! I reckon it took the wholesalers too long to drop their prices. Once people start buying their clothing off the internet, they keep buying off the internet.
Before, we used sell a full zip jersey for $120. You can’t even give them away now. I’m down to $59 and things like that.
I do Giant, Apollo I’ve done for a long time especially with kids bikes but also adult bikes. I do Cube and the old CSG lines, Mongoose, GT, Cannondale.
The BMX side has really picked up the last month or so. I do the Radio bikes, of course Giant do a couple of BMX bikes and I do the Dave Mirra, plus the GT and Mongoose.
I do have quite a few brands but the thing in a small community (where Clayton’s is the only shop) is that I don’t want to be selling everyone the same bike.
In the city you could just do one brand and get away with it, but here in a regional area, for example a good model at the moment I’m selling is the Giant Talon. Luckily it comes in two colours, the red and the blue. But everyone seems to like the red one. Then after a while you see everyone on them and people will come in and say, ‘I like that bike, but have you got it in a different colour?’
I’ve really noticed that the colour range across the board, all the brands are cutting their colours down. Where before a Giant Boulder used to come in four different colours, it comes in two now, if that. A lot of the other models, ‘That’s the colour and that’s what you get!’
I’m the only bike shop in town now. Ross Challenger has retired. My biggest opposition here is Kmart with the kids bikes. It’s only a 30 minute flight to Adelaide (across the gulf, whereas it’s almost 650 km via road) and you can get cheap flights at certain times.
My main opposition would have to be the internet and Adelaide. With the internet I’ve found in the past 12 months what I’m up against was these Chinese carbon frames. People want to update their bike and they can buy a Chinese carbon frame for $600, then get a groupset from Wiggle or someone like that and it’s cost them $1,500 for an Ultegra carbon bike with some carbon wheels. You just can’t compete against that.
Because I don’t take many holidays and this is our 11th year, I generally will shut on public holidays.
Port Lincoln is usually pretty quiet on public holidays, because everyone comes here for the beaches and fishing and stuff like that. It’s pretty quite retail wise here. I don’t know how the Super Cheaps and all those who are open on Sundays and public holidays… even when I advertise in December that I’ll be open on Sundays, it’s hardly worthwhile.

Lynda McPherson of Tassie Cycles in New Town, an inner suburb of Hobart, Tasmania said:

It’s picking up. The weather’s getting better, so business is getting better too. It’s been five years on 11th September since we bought the shop. It’s been getting better every year, which we’re happy with. We bought the shop as a run down shop and we’re making it better. We’ve got new stock coming.
We’ve just started, only just got a couple in the other day, the GT brand.
We do the Sunday BMX bikes. We’ve been doing them for four years now. And also Wethepeople. We’ve been doing them for three. And for 2015 we’re doing Total BMX as well.
That’s probably biggest seller here in New Town, the BMX. We turn them over pretty quickly and the brighter the colours the better. It’s like the 1980’s are returning again.
The trans paint, translucent greens and reds seem to be a real hit this year too. And they still like the chrome. That’s doing really well.
A lot of people are buying new ‘old’ parts to do up the BMX’s they had in the 1980’s as well.
(re public holidays) We close on the public holiday itself but we’re open on the Saturday and the Sunday. Business is around about the same. I don’t think it makes any difference. But on the Monday (public holiday) because I’m usually here seven days a week I think, ‘Yes! I get a day off. That’s my day!’
I’ve got two mechanics now where I only had one for the previous four years, so I can leave the shop a bit more often, but I only disappear for a half day here or there. Or if we’ve got a mountain bike race on or something like that I’ll go away for a night.
But other than that I only get public holidays off. Ross, my husband, works at a different job, but he comes and helps when the mechanics are on holiday.
My plan was to get this place built up and thriving again. Tassie Cycles used to be ‘the’ store, everyone tells me. When I first came in here I thought, ‘Oh no! What have I done?’ It was the middle of winter too. Cold and horrible and I hardly saw any customers, but each year it’s getting better.

Glendon Crowe of Ashburton Cycles in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs said:

Really good at the moment. Last month was our highest month on record. September, yes. September builds up towards December. We get a massive increase in December, because we deal a lot with family style bikes.
We had quite a few bouts of nice warm weather in September, straight out of the cold and I think that’s what has brought people in.
I’ve had the store 10 years. I have got the store advertised on the market. The only reason I’m selling is because I want to move interstate. Otherwise, I love this little business. I’ve got it set up so that I deal with mainly family / recreational cyclists. No major stress type cyclists.
I’ve been in the bike business for about 18 years now. I’ve owned three different types of shops: one a large shop, one a road/triathlon shop and this shop which I’ve moulded around the family.
The road cyclists are very passionate about their riding. They buy magazines, read a lot on the internet, which has become very powerful. Now they know about prices. It’s become very price war orientated. Even here in Australia, everybody fights themselves for stupid reasons.
Prices overseas of course have been a major factor.
But because the road cyclists are passionate about their recreation or sport, they do read up then go and have a look at a lot of shops for who’s doing what, and looking at prices of course.
The family generally comes in, we guide them in the right direction, they’re happy for that. It is price orientated, but it’s only down to their budget. It’s not price orientated in the sense that they’re going to be checking online and going around a dozen shops to get the price. They generally go out our door very happy with the service and what they’ve bought, not going out happy that they’ve screwed us down to the last 10 cents.
I back Apollo a lot because they’re Australian and I like the profits to stay here in Australia. I also do a lot of beach cruisers.
(re public holidays) We close now. I used to open or stay open for certain hours, but this area, it quietens down considerably. A lot of people go away. And I like to look after my staff these days and look after myself even more (laughs). So we take some time off.

Sandy Dolley of iRide in Toowoomba, the regional city in south east Queensland said:

It’s been busy. The start of our school holidays which was two weeks ago was average, but then it’s just ramped up since then. But we’ve been bombarded ever since. It’s definitely picking up with the nicer weather now, because we have pretty cold winters up here.
We’re finding up this way that a fair few more families will take a portion of their first week off and go away for holidays. We’re noticing there’s a lot more of the camping and fishing type of holidays going on these days rather than just going to the beach all the time.
So they’re gone away and the town goes a little bit quiet for a while. But once they head back, everything livens up and it’s been cranking along ever since.
We’re pretty broad. We cover most markets. Road, mountain biking is really strong again in Toowoomba at the moment, but we also deal with the family market and little kids, so anything from a 12 inch bike, right through to Trek Project One bikes.
The triathlon market is strong up here as well. For an inland town, we’ve got a big triathlon following. We cover all markets.
We’re out of the Avanti. We’re an independent store again now. We’re not under any concept store program or anything. We’re predominantly Trek but we do Cannondale, Fuji, GT as well. We’ve got more options to get other products these days.
Then we have other brands for BMX and kids. We have three full time and two casual staff.
(re public holidays) We’re always open Saturdays. We don’t trade Sundays. For the last long weekend we had the Sunday and Monday off, but we still traded on the Saturday.
We found it quiet. But then (the Tuesday after the long weekend) we just got absolutely slammed with everything, so that’s the follow on from the long weekend. 

Michael Bryce, who has three Onya Bike stores in Woden, Belconnen and Civic ACT said:

Mate, the last month has been amazing. I think we’re on track to finish to the year quite strongly. Winter was definitely the worst winter I’ve had in eight years, so we had a bit of a lull, but it’s looking very promising, so I think we’ll be fine for the rest of the year.
I’ve been stuck in our Woden store (newest location) for the past three months. We have a different dynamic here. We’ve got a physio on board doing cycle fits and physio work. It’s got a nice little buzz about it. It has always been my dream to have that facility.
I think that’s definitely where all three stores are headed. It just adds something that I’ve never been able to offer. Especially with bike fits. We’ve got someone who can look into what limitations people have on the bike and off the bike. He can bring that over into a bike fit.
He’s got his own room, and he sets up on the shop floor, so he’s very interactive with the staff if needs something on hand like a stem or a set of bars, we’re there for him. He also does a bit a dry needling which is quite interesting as well. Dry needling is a little bit different as acupuncture. It’s not as intrusive, basically.
It’s just got a really good feel working with him. We’ve looked at all the bike fitting machines for the past year and it all comes down to a computer generating what it thinks should be right, where the computer can’t allow for… it can’t see your limitations.
He does an assessment to start with to see what your positives and what your negatives are and then he can help you work towards a better or more comfortable position.
It’s definitely a different feel.
Our Belconnen store refit was done when the GFC was kicking in and that let us hold quite strong. We didn’t see a big gain but we kept ticking at the same pace. But there’s been some good things at Belco - we’ve just had a new Trek store open up which has been great for us, because it brings more people to the area.
(re public holidays) We’ve just two public holidays in a row. We open every day, but for Canberra, being a massive public service area, everyone tends to disappear.
Everyone seems to get out of Canberra so it’s a bit frustrating having two in a row. We’d be 25% down without a doubt on a long weekend, so it definitely impacts us a lot, but we do some good things in that time, so it’s not all negative. We’ve still got people coming through the store, but it’s not as busy everywhere in Canberra. It’s seems a lot quieter on the street.