A new model for bike shops?

It's hardly a surprise to anyone in cycling to see that bike shops are closing, and that links are being drawn between the price difference between shopping online vs in store.  However unlike the Borders & Dymocks vs Amazon and Book Depository, the argument is about more than price.

Where most people who used to shop and Borders and now shop at Amazon had no relationship with the people in their Borders shop, the bike shop situation is different. Those who use the acronym LBS do so with passion, LBS stands for Local Bike Shop but means the relationship you have with the people who give you advice, and the loyalty you give them in return.  Cycling forums are full of warnings about buying online and going into a bike shop to ask for help with something that didn't quite go to plan.  This seems pretty obvious, so why is there a problem?

Firstly, this isn't as much a problem in the difference between retail and online, the problem is elsewhere.  Want evidence?  Compare the Cell Bikes, once of Australia's leading online stores, price for a Shimano Ultegra cassette $165 with the equivalent offering from Wiggle of $75.  Sure, Wiggle is much bigger than Cell so has the economies of scale, but that doesn't explain a price that is twice as expensive.  The answer to this is the distributors; I've been told by numerous people that Australian companies (shops and online sales alike) pay more to the wholesaler than the likes of Wiggle sell for.  In order words, Cell Bikes are probably paying $100 to start with for the above cassette - no wonder they can't compete.

Taking the above into consideration, is it any wonder that cycling enthusiasts abandon the LBS and purchase online, buying the tools they need to do their own maintenance at the same time?  So what does the future of the Australian bike shop look like?  Something needs to change, and I think it's the business model.

My suggestion is that bike shops augment their current revenue stream with a paid for subscription service.  As a subscriber, I would be entitled to chew the fat with the bike shop mechanic, ask for his/her opinion on something I was looking at online, and even bring my part into the shop to ask for advice.  If I wanted them to work on my bike, I'd still pay for the labour, as I do now - but without the stigma of asking them to work on something I didn't buy from them.  I'd picture a subscription range from $10, $25, and $50 per month, with a minimum commitment of 12 to 24 months.  The difference in value would be represented by whether this enabled you to talk to the person on the shop floor, or all the way back to the mechanic in the shop, and of course how much you spoke to them.  If I chose to, I could buy from one of the many online shops, or even from eBay, and have the part (or bike) delivered directly to my LBS.

Distributors of course would be horrified at the above, and so they should.  However as a consumer, I am already horrified at the way the market operates.

Roads are not for inconsiderate people, regardless of whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists

In yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, Miranda Divine writes that Roads are for cars, not Lycra louts. She claims that as a result of last Friday's road rage attack by a cyclist on a bus driver, it is clear that the road is not there to share, but is there exclusively for motorists. She claims that the roads were built for motorists, forgetting that many of Sydney's roads were built for horses and carts. Perhaps we should ban all the cars as well as cyclists from using those roads to ensure that the horses and carts don't have to share them! And if one road rage attack by a cyclist means Miranda claims there is no room for cyclists on the roads, does that mean next time we see a road rage attack by a motorist Miranda will call for all motorists to be banned? Of course not. Why can't we recognise that there are bad road users in all groups, pedestrians, cyclists, motorists.

Having spent a number of years commuting by bike in Sydney I think I'm in a fair position to comment on cycling on Sydney's roads. My experience includes commuting in and around Sydney's inner west and North shore, as well as training on roads in Sydney's North and South. I think that cyclists in Sydney have a particularly bad name, a situation created by a number of factors including:

1. Sydney's cycling couriers give cyclists in Sydney a bad name. I'm sure other cities see similar cycling behaviour, however Melbourne is not one of them. Generally speaking, Sydney's cycling couriers flaunt road rules, riding through red lights, going the wrong way down one way streets, hopping kerbs as they see fit, just to mention a handful of indiscretions I've observed time and time again. Unfortunately this leads to many motorists thinking that all cyclists ride like that, and should be treated with a corresponding level of respect.
2. Critical mass is not a productive activity. It is often justified as a protest, but in reality the actions carried out by it give more weight to the arguments of the anti-cycling lobby. Whilst my knowledge of Sydney's critical mass activities dates back several years, I'm sure I'm not alone when suggesting that riding across Sydney harbour bridge, and in doing so causing massive delays to thousands of motorists, does nothing but antagonise the very group of people that cyclists need to work to get along with.

In the particular road rage incident referred to, there are a few points to consider:

• The cyclist is clearly riding on a road where they are not allowed to. Had he been following the road rules, he would not have been in the dangerous position he found himself in. I liken this to a cyclist riding the wrong way down a one-way street, and complaining that cars were coming at him (or her) on both sides of the road.
• Was the bus too close to the cyclist? I don't believe so, I think the issue was how quickly the bus moved over as passing. At the 33 second mark in the video, its clear that there is a 1m gap between the bus and the cyclist. However as the bus passes, it moves closer to the cyclist, by the time the bus has passed the cyclist, the gap appears to have halved. There is a genuine question of whether this is an intentional act of aggression by the driver, or similar an error in judgement, possibly caused by mis-judging the speed the cyclist was going.
• In no way can anyone condone the cyclists actions in escalating the issue to a physical altercation.

Should cyclists be banned? No way. Should idiots of all persuasions be banned? Absolutely. Its a shame the human race includes all sorts.