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.

Please confirm your email/phone/other visible field

Am I the only one who is frustrated by the idiots who think that asking people to enter their email address twice will improve the quality of the data in their databases?  The "re-enter your password" pattern exists because when people enter their password, its not visible, so you have no way of knowing if you've made a typo or not.  Applying this pattern to email address, or vehicle registration numbers as Citylink do, makes absolutely no sense!

Rant over.

Women in the workforce

An unpublished letter to The Age:

Stephanie Peatling reports on more claims of the need for more women in the workforce (Tax breaks for childcare including nannies).  I'd like to point out two parts of the discussion that are missing.

The first is that the issue of higher rates of workforce participation is misleading.  One of the many reasons for childcare costs going up in the last 30 years is the lack of volunteers.  At primary schools the notion of parents running the canteen is fading.  Both of these are symptoms of our communities dying; they are dying because government policy is killing them.  We are being encouraged to pursue careers at the expense of all other needs.  In this case its at the expense of time with our families.  On Tuesday we were told we needed to be able to move around to suit our careers (dump costly stamp duty).  Overall there is a trend of ignoring community needs where they are in the way of a larger economy.  At the same time we wonder why we have increased rates of crime, homelessness, and more disputes among neighbours.  I say to the policy makers that we have a society that is out of balance; our policies are to blame for this, and we should start thinking about more than just the size of the economy.

Secondly, this is not purely a feminist issue.  As an involved father, I also have the same needs that many mothers do when returning to the workforce.  Yet thanks to the flexibility of my manager, I am able to be home for dinner with my childcare aged children at 6pm each night, including collecting them from childcare when my wife is travelling for work.  To Ms Hutchinson - having your employees leave work at 7 is creating a time bomb.  If you are wondering why there aren't more parents in the workforce, perhaps you should look closer to home for the reasons.

Dmitri Colebatch

Father, Husband

Child care volunteer

Career minded professional

Governance, and dangerous dogs

I have a dog, who I love dearly, so when the issue of dangerous dogs came up in the press last month, I took an interest.  I should say that I have two interests in this, firstly I'm interested in the policy, and secondly in the governance process (legislation was rushed through parliament).  To get some facts, I wrote the following email to the minister (peter.walsh@parliament.vic.gov.au):

Hi Peter,

I see myself as a balanced dog-lover.  I'm not writing this email claiming that the current focus on reducing the damage done by dogs is a bad thing, however I am concerned to learn that our state is about to embark on a campaign of killing people's pets.  Rather than a long winded diatribe, I have a few simple questions:

1. Is the proposed legislation available for public review?

2. Why is there a need to rush through the legislation?

3. Is the intent to kill dogs, or to force owners to comply with legislation?  Today's Herald Sun article suggests that as long as a dog is registered, it's safe from this legislation, however I've heard from others that this isn't the case.

4. Has the department done any investigation into the proportion of dangerous breeds, and the proportion of un-registered dogs, that are involved in serious dog attacks?

5. Will the new legislation also consider mandatory training of dangerous breeds?  

I'd welcome a response to the above.

Cheers,

Dim

Not surprisingly, I didn't get a personal response from the minister.  However I was surprised by the response I did get:

Am I on the only one who thinks that the minister shouldn't need to get advice from the department in order to answer the first two points?

What are we discounting?

Have you flown recently?  Who did you fly with?  How did you choose your flights?

Jetstar are currently in the news for all the wrong reasons - they dismissed a pilot for speaking out about what he describes as the airline's cost cutting activities.

Whilst you can argue about whether the sacking was justified, and whether the way Joseph Eakins raised his concerns was constructive, something you can't argue with is the market's appetite for cost cutting.  It doesn't matter whether its airline tickets or underwear, people continue to decide which product to purchase based primarily on price.

Do you remember the Pacific Brands story?  How surprising is it that after suffering losses in the hundreds of millions the company was forced to cut costs.  Sue Morphett said that the cost of making underwear in Australia was approximately $15 more than the cost of making it in China.  So ask yourself - when the Pacific Brands story was breaking, were you complaining that this Australian brand was to be manufactured overseas?  Next ask yourself if you look at where something is made when purchasing it.  You can buy Australian made underwear.

Back in the old days of Ansett and Qantas all was good in the airline industry.  Sure, it would cost you and me an arm and a leg to fly anywhere, but all airline employees were on a similar (and pretty good) wicket.  Then Ansett went bust, opening the way for new airlines to enter the market on different cost structures.  Qantas couldn't compete on price so created Jetstar in order to have a fighting chance.  As airfare prices continue to decline, Jetstar (and Virgin Blue, and Tiger) will continue to be forced to find ways to cut their costs.  Why?  Because when you are shopping for air travel, you buy the cheapest flight available - not the one with the most responsible employment policies.

So next time you're shopping for something, think about what it is you want to buy.  Remember the "buy your kids a job" campaign back run by Australian Made a while back (80s?  90s?).  If you genuinely want jobs to stay in Australia, then pay little bit extra to get an Australian made product.  If you can't find it, www.australianmade.com.au can help.

The hardest thing about hearing loss so far

Shortly after our first son, Sam, was born, I purchased some hearing aids.  I've always had poor hearing, but through an interesting chain of events found myself at an audiologist (read "Hearing Aid Salesman").  That was almost 3 years ago, and whilst I've adjusted to the fact that I need hearing aids for many conversations, I still try to not wear them all the time so I don't become completely reliant on them.  However something happened the other night that made me stand up and take notice of the impact my hearing was having.

I was putting Sam to bed, which unfortunately requires sitting by his bed while he falls asleep.  There are generally a number of conversations that take place while this is happening, and this night was no exception.  One such conversation went along the lines of:

Sam: What's that noise Daddy?
Me: I'm sorry Sam, I can't hear it.
Sam: What's that noise Daddy?
Me: [Cuddling Sam] I'm sorry Sam, I can't hear it.

I now put my hearing aids on first thing in the morning, something I never used to do.  The reason being that the early hours of the day are are big chunk of my time with Sam and Ruby.  Not understanding what Sam is saying often leads to a lot of frustration on his part, and sadness on mine.

Smoked.... or burnt?

Last night I took my wife out to dinner, to a nice place with one hat, to make up for the fact that she wasn't seeing her family at Christmas this year.  We shared a starter of grilled prawns and calamari with eggplant, it arrived and I dived in, partially due to the fact that we have become accustomed to eating at "kiddie time" (6pm), and partly because since moving from Sydney to Melbourne the one thing I've missed has been good seafood.  I immediately tasted what I describe as a burnt taste, the taste that goes through the entire dish after something has been burnt, and remains long after you remove the offending burnt pieces.  I tried another mouthful in the hope I was mistaken but got the same result.  I looked at my wife and could see she was wondering the same thing.  My nose was telling the same story.  Neither of us ate the dish, and when the waitress came over to ask how it was I explained that I thought it tasted and smelled burnt.  To the restaurant's credit, they did the "right thing" and removed the dish from our bill.

Later in our meal the waitress came back to explain that the dish wasn't burnt, but that the eggplant was smoked over the grill, and what I was tasting was the smoked eggplant flavour. Whilst I'm sceptical of this explanation and intend on taking a butane torch to an eggplant to see what the taste is, my real issue is that a taste that strong, like anchovies and olives, should be mentioned in the description on the menu.

Stay tuned for an update of my burnt eggplant testing!