[HN Gopher] A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie...
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A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shops instead
Author : nabilhat
Score : 632 points
Date : 2021-08-23 17:51 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| tomaszs wrote:
| I was considering to use Amazon Fulfillment for Summon The JSON
| decks. However, it occurred to be very expensive. My customers
| are fine to wait a couple of days. They can also choose fast
| manufacturing, to get decks faster. I don't fell I miss anything
| by not selling or fulfilling by Amazon.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| This doenst surprise me at all. There are more and more sellers
| that are frustrated with how amazon deals with them.
|
| Amazons top priority is the customer, and thats how they got to
| this point, but everyone else suffers, from their 3rd party
| sellers to their suppliers to their own employees.
|
| Here is a list of stuff Amazon does:
|
| -Anti competitive behaviour on the buy box (Amazon doesnt have
| the product in stock. You have it, but your offer is still not
| shown)
|
| -Banning sellers for no good reason, and you cant contact anyone
| helpful
|
| -Screwing over their suppliers with Vendor Central, where they
| buy from you wholesale. They dont pay, they just say the goods
| were never delivered and dont accept your proof of delivery. I
| know sellers who are owed over 30k from amazon.
|
| -Customers are able to send back items 1 year later. If you dont
| agree, they can file an "AZ claim". If you get too manu claims,
| they ban you.
|
| -Support for sellers is the worst combination of overseas call
| centers using some cookie cutter templates to answer questions.
| Often you are just copy pasting your question 5 times, until you
| get somebody with have a brain
|
| -Use data from their sellers to create their own products and
| then force them out of the market
|
| -creating huge incentives for chinese sellers which flood and
| undercut the local sellers
|
| Its just a huge behemoth were nobody knows whats going on.
|
| In my opinion this company needs to be split up by gov and
| reigned in.
|
| But who knows, maybe more sellers will follow suit and the
| pressure will be increasing to change things.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>> -creating huge incentives for chinese sellers which flood
| and undercut the local sellers
|
| In my view, another way of looking at it is that selling on
| Amazon favors sellers who can figure out how to manage those
| risks, and one way of doing it is to be basically a "fly by
| night" business. If you can spin up multiple sellers, make your
| nut on the first sale, and pull the plug on the seller if
| anything goes wrong, you've got what it takes.
|
| Or, if your margins are high enough that you can afford to eat
| the bad sales.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> Banning sellers for no good reason, and you cant contact
| anyone helpful.
|
| I must be getting old.
|
| How did these companies get so massive without any meaningful
| customer service departments? Amazon, Google, Facebook and
| many, many others where customer service is not even bothered
| with, yet people continue to use their products and services.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| You do sound like my parents. They were mainframe programmers
| in the 70s and still every time I complain about wierd issues
| I'm having with programming, they'll keep asking me if I've
| called tech support.
|
| They can't wrap their head around how you can have useful-ish
| software with shitty incomplete out of date documentation and
| tech support via people competing to get noticed on
| StackOverflow for their resume.
|
| The more time goes on, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around
| it either...
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _How did these companies get so massive without any
| meaningful customer service departments? Amazon, Google,
| Facebook and many, many others where customer service is not
| even bothered with, yet people continue to use their products
| and services._
|
| As a customer, I've had no trouble reaching Amazon customer
| service when I need help, and they've always been helpful -
| refunding or replacing the defective product.
| JohnFen wrote:
| As a customer, I only needed customer service from them
| once (in the over 10 years I've been buying from them). My
| experience was truly terrible, and I ended up losing my
| money.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| It's because they make it super easy for the customer, but
| use dark patterns for the sellers. Amazon can afford to lose
| sellers since more are popping up everyday and willing to
| sell items for a loss to gain market share.
|
| The parent also didn't mention that Amazon has a policy of
| not allowing sellers to sell their products for a lower price
| on their own website. If only customers knew how much Amazon
| is screwing over sellers, they would be wary. Many sellers I
| know themselves don't shop on Amazon themselves due to this.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Amazon has a policy of not allowing sellers to sell their
| products for a lower price on their own website.
|
| This is why, when I decided to ditch Amazon, I also decided
| to avoid buying from companies that sell on Amazon.
| andromeduck wrote:
| I'd buy from vendor sites if it weren't always such a pita
| between checkouts, shipping and refunds.
| bushbaba wrote:
| As a customer why should I care about the seller
| experience. As a customer I've only ever cared about the
| customer buying experience
| fossuser wrote:
| Agreed - Amazon knows who their real customers are and
| they have leverage over the sellers.
|
| It does surprise me though that given that there's a lot
| of counterfeit junk and scam-like sellers on the site
| (which is a pretty bad customer experience). You'd think
| they'd shut that down.
|
| In practice it doesn't matter because prime shipping is
| so much better than any non-amazon option I just deal
| with that risk (with some exceptions where I'll buy
| directly from the creator of the product).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In practice it doesn't matter because prime shipping is
| so much better than any non-amazon option I just deal
| with that risk
|
| Really? I'm strongly considering canceling my prime
| subscription specifically because shipping has gotten so
| awful. Amazon won't even _allow_ you to select a shipping
| speed anymore. Pretty much everywhere else on the
| internet is better.
| fossuser wrote:
| My recent experience with non-amazon shipping:
|
| - Ordered a blanket directly from the blanket maker's
| website, order details were delayed, no shipping notice,
| no out of stock notice, order took 4 months to arrive (it
| was supposed to be a gift).
|
| - Ordered some flatware from MOMA was charged and no
| shipping details updated, I waited six weeks before
| emailing them - they said the system 'lost the order' I
| had to have paypal reverse the charges.
|
| There are other examples, but generally non-amazon sucks
| - even in the best of cases it's twice as long and
| usually expensive.
|
| With Amazon I often get two day, next day, or even same
| day shipping for free. Packages arrive typically well
| packaged and undamaged and the tracking is really good.
| If there are any issues they are quick to resolve it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| None of that is like my most recent interactions with
| Amazon.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Packages arrive typically well packaged and undamaged
|
| That's another thing. Amazon used to ship things in boxes
| with appropriate padding. Now they're shipping books in
| manila envelopes, with predictable damage to the book
| from the tightness of the envelope.
| fossuser wrote:
| I wonder if there's regional variation depending on
| warehouses? I'm in SF and have had pretty good
| experiences.
|
| It's mostly a comparison I'm making to alternatives which
| I've found to be worse (usually the non-amazon packaging
| is terrible).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > prime shipping is so much better than any non-amazon
| option
|
| This isn't as true as it used to be, and it's getting
| less true as time goes on.
| pengaru wrote:
| Short-term convenience wins every time.
| kelvin0 wrote:
| The retail customers who end up buying the stuff are lavishly
| treated. The small businesses which sell their products on
| Amazon are not really 'customers' and are treated like 5th
| class citizens. Proof and burden rests on these suppliers
| shoulders.
| lazyjones wrote:
| As a long-time customer (since the late 90's) I am also
| frustrated with Amazon these days because it's now impossible
| to judge the quality of the products as the website is swamped
| with cheap asian knock-off products, fake brands and fake
| reviews. It feels like 2/3 of all items are Aliexpress offers,
| just more expensive. It's probably a good window of opportunity
| for a competitor with some minimum quality guarantees and
| otherwise similar functionality.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| >In my opinion this company needs to be split up by gov and
| reigned in.
|
| I think there are a lot of things Amazon can do better, but
| your solution is interesting.
|
| "I am not happy with Amazon. The company should be broken up by
| the government."
|
| If everything you stated is absolutely true and systemic
| issues, IMO let the market and consumers punish Amazon.
|
| It sounds like you're saying Amazon is good enough that it's
| impossible to take away their customer base. On the other hand,
| you're describing what seems to be a completely broken company
| not worth a minute of my time.
|
| Which is it?
| Qi_ wrote:
| Another one: inventory pooling. When a product is "fulfilled by
| Amazon," it comes from warehouse stock. However this stock can
| be contributed to by all sorts of sellers, legit or
| counterfeit. So sometimes buyers will receive a knockoff when
| they purchased a legitimate product. I have a relative who
| designs and sells electronics accessories, and he said this is
| a serious problem he runs into when selling on Amazon.
| bisby wrote:
| This is one of the things they do that could be spun as "pro
| seller". As a consumer, I don't like buying from vendors that
| I can't verify how much I trust them. So "fulfilled by
| Amazon" convinces consumers to buy with confidence, and even
| a no-name seller can get sales without having to compete on
| reputation. This means that consumers actually can't trust
| where they are buying from.
|
| I very much don't like this as a consumer.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| It's also pro-consumer since it means that you get your
| order faster. Instead of sending you the widget that was
| warehoused across the country by your seller, they can sell
| you the one that was warehoused near your house by a
| different seller.
|
| (in theory they could always just ship it across the
| country, but then they'll have to raise shipping prices)
|
| Mingling counterfeit products with genuine products is a
| problem, but since I rarely know Amazon merchants, I'm not
| sure that's considerably worse than not mingling at all, I
| could just as likely try to buy from a merchant that's
| selling counterfeits.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| Inventory commingling is a choice that can be made by the
| seller.
| withinrafael wrote:
| Sellers can opt in/out of the inventory commingling you
| describe. But perhaps there are restrictions/conditions that
| make this harder than it sounds.
| freeopinion wrote:
| > Amazons top priority is the customer
|
| This is not and should not be true. If it were true, Amazon
| would operate completely differently. It should be more true
| than it is.
| munk-a wrote:
| For at least one specific example - Amazon does an extremely
| poor job vetting products posted on its site which causes a
| lot of defective items to end up getting piped through it to
| consumers. Prioritizing your customer over everything else
| means delivering a high quality consistent product - which it
| fails to do with regular listings and fails spectacularly to
| do with Amazon Basics.
| dangus wrote:
| IMO you're misunderstanding the customer.
|
| The customer wants cheap. They WANT Amazon to be AliExpress
| with fast shipping.
|
| That's why Amazon has free returns and they offer returns
| in a million different ways.
|
| Amazon doesn't care that it's inefficient on resources and
| that these items end up in a landfill. The manufacturing
| cost of cheap items is so low that it's no big deal. As
| long as the customer has no friction in buying or returning
| they are happy.
|
| I think there are certain categories of products where many
| customers would actually prefer counterfeit items as long
| as the quality is acceptable. Just walk down a cereal
| aisle.
| munk-a wrote:
| IMO you're misunderstanding _this_ customer. The returns
| are pretty friction-less but they 're still a burden that
| I'd rather not deal with - and I specifically don't want
| to order an electrical device off amazon and have it fail
| in a spectacular way that damages my other equipment.
|
| The most luxurious thing you can tell me as a seller is
| that you're minimizing the longest potential time until I
| have a correctly functioning product - shipping is a big
| part of that, but not having to go through the hassle of
| getting it shipped out twice and returning one of them is
| another component.
|
| Also I think AliExpress is a pretty terrible comparison -
| Amazon does beat it hand over fist. I think Amazon wants
| to be NewEgg but with less shipping time (and maybe the
| reputation it had a decade ago - it seems to be
| struggling lately). And it wants to be every other
| specialist store as well. I _think_ it 's possible for
| them to do this, but the thing they're lacking right now
| is the budget or motivation to actually vet products -
| they rely on peer reviews and manufacturer statements to
| try and suggest products.
| dangus wrote:
| I fully believe that your choices are logical for your
| own tastes. I myself don't prefer Amazon for most things
| I buy for similar reasons to yours.
|
| At the same time, I have absolutely heard multiple people
| say the words "if it sucks you can always return it."
|
| Low-friction returns are like business school 101 for
| retail.
|
| I think the _typical_ Amazon customer doesn't shop on
| quality for many product categories, they are price
| sensitive. They don't want to pay $50 for the Apple-
| certified power brick and cable.
|
| I don't think _anyone_ wants to be NewEgg, if you ask me
| :-)
| ilamont wrote:
| _Amazon follows a core set of Leadership Principles (LPs)
| that we Amazonians aspire to every day. They are ingrained in
| our culture, and they guide the behaviors we value. It's very
| telling that the first LP is Customer Obsession--leaders
| start with the customer and work backwards. They work
| vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders
| pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers._
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/industries/an-inside-look-at-
| th...
| jorblumesea wrote:
| haaaaah
|
| Anyone who knows Amazon knows there's tons of politics and
| leeway in those LPs, and they get twisted for nefarious
| purposes.
| ruddct wrote:
| Would love to hear how a catalog riddled with counterfeits,
| fake reviews and listing-hijacking is a Customer Obsession.
|
| Not trolling, Ex-Amazon so I'm curious how current
| Amazonians rationalize these things.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because you're focusing on small but visible details that
| are hard unsolved problems for a company that's Amazon's
| size.
|
| If you have the solution to any of these problems you
| would have a genuinely game-changing business and would
| be a 100M company selling it to every online marketplace.
| freeopinion wrote:
| There you go. You just prioritized size over solving
| those problems. It is more important to be big than to
| get it right.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| Alternatively, you can try to do both. If this issue was
| systemic, I imagine it would pose a systemic risk to
| Amazons business? Presumably it isn't a systemic issue.
|
| (I don't work in Amazon retail so I don't know, but I'm
| trying to frame this logically from a business sense).
| travoc wrote:
| These are not small details to be dismissed flippantly.
| Counterfeits and tainted listings are dangerous,
| especially considering how many health-related products
| are sold on Amazon.
| bityard wrote:
| You're taking this to mean something different than the
| parent intended. The intended meaning is more along the lines
| of the old trope, "the customer is always right." This means
| that in any dispute between the seller and the buyer, Amazon
| favors the buyer 99% of the time. To the point that it's
| incredibly easy (and common) to be a hobbyist Amazon scammer
| as long as you stick to scamming marketplace sellers instead
| of Amazon itself.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| It's so interesting to see how the pandemic hits different
| countries in different ways. This article talks about struggling
| bike shops. The truth couldn't be any more different in Germany.
| Bike shops were run over by customers because so many more people
| wanted to either go to work by bike instead of public
| transportation, or they had no work to do so they decided to go
| biking in their new spare time. Repair shops are super busy, but
| now there's a shortage in bike parts, too...
| analog31 wrote:
| There was a huge run on bikes in the US. I think a number of
| factors were involved. Because cycling in the US is mostly
| recreational, the bike business is seasonal, and retailers lay
| in their entire years stock for delivery in the springtime. If
| there's a big change in demand, it can take them a year to
| react.
|
| Then those bikes didn't show up because of shipping delays.
|
| Then there was a big spike in demand, as people realized a
| couple of things: 1) Cycling is an outdoor activity that seems
| like it carries a minimal COVID risk. 2) It's a way of getting
| to work if you're still working but public transit is shut
| down. These things, together, ramped up demand for both cheap
| and expensive bikes simultaneously.
|
| Shops ran out of bikes, and then it became very hard to stay in
| business, even if there was still demand for repairs and parts.
|
| Bike parts have always been a problem in the US. There's too
| much variety for any shop to be able to maintain a decent
| stock, so a lot of things have to be ordered. In my own case,
| since I ride older bikes, it's highly tempting to order stuff
| from Amazon or even (preferably) eBay because of the selection.
| Some stuff, such as Sturmey Archer hub parts, have to be
| sourced from overseas.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm surprised about the inventory thing. I ride an 03
| Cannondale road bike that uses all standard stuff-- screw-in
| bottom bracket, band-on front derailleur, 9-speed shifters.
| I've always been able to get parts for it off the shelf at
| multiple shops, to the point that basically nothing on it is
| original other than the frame.
|
| But this has even been the case with my much-weirder winter
| bike, my kids' bikes that have off-brand shifters, etc.
|
| I know Sheldon Brown (RIP) catalogues a true nightmare
| history of incompatibilities that have built up over the
| years, but I think in reality, most of that stuff is
| pre-1990. If you have a non-imported bike purchased in the
| last three decades, it's going to either be Shimano or be
| knockoff parts that are Shimano-compatible.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > 2) It's a way of getting to work if you're still working
| but public transit is shut down.
|
| Did much of public transit actually shut down? In my local
| city it was deemed an essential service and everyone kept
| working with transit still running, with a mask requirement
| of course.
| analog31 wrote:
| Either it shut down or people were afraid to ride. They cut
| service drastically in my locale, still have not restored
| it fully. My spouse switched to her bike.
| aix1 wrote:
| I am not sure about the frequency of service, but buses
| here in London ran at a significantly reduced capacity for
| a while (IIRC 20 or 30 passengers per double-decker). For
| social distancing reasons.
| zwieback wrote:
| I think that's basically the same situation here in the US,
| bike shops are super busy but the supply chain can't keep up. I
| also have to say that most bike shops I've visited aren't that
| good. They seem to have an over-supply of awkward young sales
| staff giving middling advice while facing an undersupply of
| bikes and parts. Also, the constant churn in componentry is not
| helping.
| jetrink wrote:
| It sounds like the bike shops were struggling due to low
| inventory, not low demand. Anecdotally, that was the case at
| the bike shops near me in Chicago, which had empty shelves, but
| also months-long wait lists for their tuneup and repair
| services. Unfortunately, bike sales are a large part of their
| revenue.
| lmm wrote:
| There's long been a mismatch in the bike shop revenue model,
| where most of the value they add comes from labour but they
| charge a lot of that via markup on parts rather than
| directly.
| jwagenet wrote:
| > By the start of 2021, Kerson heard of bike shops on the brink
| of closing down due to such high demand and low inventory.
|
| It sounds like shops should have done well, but we're subject
| to shortages which lead to purchases at online retailers
| instead.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Demand was high in 2020, but bike shops (in the US) generally
| have poor cash flow overall. Dealers were able to clear their
| inventory, but there was no supply to replenish it, leaving
| them with empty showrooms. Even today, inventory is spotty and
| the wait for certain models of bikes is well into 2022.
| yardie wrote:
| Bike shops in the US have been struggling since the beginning
| of the pandemic. Some got a slight bump with increased sales.
| And riders that couldn't buy new brought in old bikes for
| repair. Eventually, supply chain issues surfaced and you can't
| sell what you can't buy.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I love this trend. I stopped using Amazon last year, and I'm very
| interested in doing business with companies who chose likewise.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| It's a start.
|
| See also "Parallel Polis":
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Polis
|
| And, Havel's _The Power of the Powerless_ :
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless
| a-dub wrote:
| amusingly there's nothing particularly new here in terms of the
| alternatives they're exploring. i used to work in a local bike
| shop and thought about even doing bike parts e-commerce in the
| 90s. bicycles and parts have always been a high touch business.
| manufacturers treat local bike shops like customers, assign reps
| who visit to ensure merchandising standards and have strict rules
| regarding pricing to ensure all the shops can survive.
|
| it amuses me to read that they're setting that up now as if it's
| new, as it is how it used to work for a very long time.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Love it!
| [deleted]
| mariushn wrote:
| Related trivia: Jeff Bezos's father was a local bike shop owner:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP80jo1_UgU
| greenie_beans wrote:
| wow! the irony is rich. i wonder how amazon impacted his small
| business?
| dkhenry wrote:
| I am happy the parts company is ditching Amazon, but its so much
| more important for us consumers to ditch amazon. I have cut my
| amazon purchases down to only 16 total items this year so far (
| down from ~50 in 2020 ) and I am now only ordering from Amazon as
| a last option when I cant find what I want anywhere else. That
| brief glimpse of the Amazon future where all stores are shut
| down, and we can only ever buy things online, and everyone is an
| amazon serf was such a wakeup call as to what we were heading
| towards. I just hope enough people can jump ship to keep a
| functioning non amazon centric supply chain.
| curryst wrote:
| I keep telling myself I'm going to do this, but it becomes a
| huge pain in the ass. First I half to find a half dozen vendors
| to buy stuff from, because I like multifaceted projects, but no
| one else stocks all the pieces I need. Then I have to manage
| accounts across 6 different vendors, and put my credit card
| info in 6 different places.
|
| Then once I've ordered, I have to track 6 different packages.
| If anything goes wrong, I have to track down which vendor, and
| how to contact them, and hope that they have a good policy of
| fixing things like this.
|
| What we need is a replacement for Amazon. Federation could
| solve a lot of my pain points. Just give me an interface like
| Amazon that is connecting to hundreds or thousands of stores,
| where the orders are just dispatched to the store you ordered
| from. It doesn't fix shipping speeds, but it does give me:
|
| a) a sane way to order from multiple stores
|
| b) an easy means of tracking what I've ordered from all the
| stores
|
| c) an easy way of tracking the shipping for packages I've
| ordered
|
| d) a single point of entry when I know I want to buy something
|
| Amazon cornered the market, not on prices, but on convenience.
| If we want them to stop being so dominant, that's where you
| want to kick them.
| ohples wrote:
| I to have also been avoiding Amazon, and mostly just ordering
| stuff directly from companies.
|
| Most of whom use Shopify, it doesn't do all of what your
| suggesting but shopifys "Shop" app seems to handle the
| tracking part pretty okay.
| kernoble wrote:
| Ebay is somewhat like this. Though I don't think it meets all
| your requirements.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| My hatred of amazon came from the way they treat their
| employees (including developers), but especially warehouse
| employees!! I saw a glimpse of that on PBS documentary Timing
| your bathroom breaks is super fucked up! I've used them exactly
| 4 times this year, maybe less than 10 times last year.. Before
| 2020, I was spending a large part of money on this evil
| company! I will not use them anymore!!
| Krustopolis wrote:
| You have every right not to shop there. Employees also have
| every right not to work there. As you will see stated here
| time and time again, private businesses can run their
| operations any way they wish as long as they are not
| discriminating against legally protected classes.
| rocqua wrote:
| And yet, we have a minimum wage, maximum hours allowed to
| work, accident insurance, mandated sick days, mandated
| vacation days and other things.
|
| If we did not mandate them by law, people could "choose"
| not to work at places that did not offer the above.
| However, that choice would probably entail "not having a
| job at all" which tends to be rather shitty.
|
| My point being "it is voluntary" is not a reasonable excuse
| for treating lower class workers inhumanely.
|
| That should be followed by a long discussion of what counts
| as "inhumane treatment". Where there is much room for
| disagreement still. But I don't think it is defensible to
| claim "they could quit" when someone else says "these
| conditions are inhumane and should be stopped".
| jamincan wrote:
| That's not true. We have regulations for a reasons, and
| businesses have to abide by them.
| Krustopolis wrote:
| Which regulations does Amazon violate in their
| warehouses?
| rocqua wrote:
| The question OP suggested was "given that sometimes we
| regulate, should we also regulate against some amazom
| practices we deem bad".
| r00fus wrote:
| My wakeup moment was when I realized that Fulfill by Amazon +
| co-mingling means you had no idea what you got - whether it was
| a return, fake product of random Chinese dropship, or random
| other item (miscategorized).
|
| At that point, you might as well buy from Aliexpress and cut
| out the middleman (for stuff you want from China).
|
| Or drastically cut down purchases (which is what I chose).
| bootlooped wrote:
| As somebody who has purchased a lot of things from both Ali
| Express, there is a massive difference between Ali Express
| and Amazon.
|
| To me, Ali Express is great for simple items that are
| practically fungible commodities, where workmanship and build
| quality aren't that impactful, and you can afford to wait a
| long time for it to arrive, and you can afford to receive
| some nontrivial percentages of those things and they turn out
| to be substandard or broken or substantially different than
| what was pictured. No matter the co-mingling issue, the same
| cannot be said of Amazon.
| incongruity wrote:
| Amazon is turning into the fast shipping version of Ali
| Express. More and more fake / manipulated reviews and a sea
| of pseudo-English garbled brand names slapped on what looks
| like identical goods are making it exactly the experience
| you described, just shipped quicker. Ordering from Amazon
| is now a definite risk, and commingling is only a small
| part of that.
| Spivak wrote:
| I feel like we have very different buying strategies on
| Amazon which is what leads to our differing opinion. I
| never use Amazon for product discovery. It's ... not
| great. I always research what I want independently and
| then go to Amazon to make the final purchase knowing
| exactly what I want. They're basically just a delivery
| network for me and on that front they're so far ahead of
| everyone else it's not even funny.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I like Amazon and online shopping; won't ditch any time soon
| and don't think it's important for people to do so.
|
| The local businesses I was worried about going under were
| restaurants and others in the food/service industry(would lump
| experience in there as well; the zoo, botanical garden,
| museums, and etc).
| jungturk wrote:
| > don't think it's important for people to do so
|
| Is that because you don't believe in the negative
| externalities or because you think they're worth the
| convenience?
| Rapzid wrote:
| It depends on the negative externalities. I will
| specifically address destroying jobs though.
|
| In general, there is no standing in the way of progress
| that improves efficiency and gives consumers what they
| want. Interestingly, there seems to be an overlap between
| the crowd that says we need to hold business accountable
| for packaging waste and those who believe if they virtue
| signal hard enough Amazon will disappear and everyone will
| flock back to inconvenient, higher priced shopping.. Going
| against the general consumer demand grain typically ends up
| niche. But I digress.
|
| Amazon(and other online retailers) are destroying lots of
| low skill jobs, but that's true for most major gains in the
| efficiency of producing a product. Usually this is
| associated with automation, but this shift touches many
| aspects of the logistics providing a shopping experience to
| consumers. This is a good thing to me as it will ultimately
| increase our GDP and standard of living. Resources,
| particular labor, are freed up to work on other stuff. Over
| 600k small businesses are created every year. There are
| millions more small business than there were a decade ago.
| These efficiency gains create a TON of potential.
|
| I think that's good, so what of the net negative in raw job
| numbers? People without jobs. Well, weren't we at "full
| employment" pre-pandemic? In any case, I'm a big fan of
| tackling that with job re-training. We do a really poor job
| of that in the USA compared to other countries.
|
| But there are a number of solutions to different negative
| externalities that aren't swimming upstream against
| consumer trends. Unionization failed but it could happen.
| That could help address some of the workplace issues. The
| government can trust bust.
|
| I don't view this as a binary choice. Different people seem
| to have different pet grievances with Amazon. Some of them
| I agree with, some I don't(like Amazon doesn't pay taxes,
| which is a sound bite to me; ya basic), but generally I
| believe boycotting Amazon(and other online retailers) isn't
| really going to affect real change.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| The narrative I hear is that Amazon is destroying
| businesses. The issue I have is that this isn't really
| true. Here's an anecdote.
|
| I drive 20 minutes to the mall. After finding parking and
| getting into a shoe store, there's no one really there to
| help me. Once they get around to me, they don't have my
| size. And it's also apparent the person working there has
| no interest in helping. Whether they have my size or
| whether I found what I was looking for is basically not
| their problem. So I drive at least 40 minutes round trip,
| plus the hassle of parking, finding the store in the mall,
| and waiting on someone to help me.
|
| Now my time is valuable. I lost my time. I paid for gas. I
| also put miles on my car. And depending on the day, I also
| had to deal with traffic.
|
| IMO businesses refuse to compete. If Amazon is doing it
| better than them, then hats off to Amazon. If a business is
| doing better than Amazon, then I'll go with that business.
|
| IMO the "negative externalities" puts blame on Amazon while
| pretending like these other stores even try to compete.
|
| Btw this binary view of the world where Amazon is bad and
| others are good (or vice versa) seems to be a very American
| thing.
| wiether wrote:
| > Btw this binary view of the world where Amazon is bad
| and others are good (or vice versa) seems to be a very
| American thing.
|
| It's not.
|
| In France it's the same thing. But the "Amazon is bad" is
| not really about destroying businesses (since it was done
| decades ago by malls, now cities are just banks,
| insurances and clothing crapshops like Zara) but about
| the fact that they are not paying taxes and they provide
| awful work conditions to people.
|
| So you tend to be considered as someone who doesn't care
| if you buy at Amazon. (But we're still waiting for proof
| that companies trying to compete with Amazon don't act
| the same way).
| cutthegrass2 wrote:
| Similar story in the UK.
|
| People are sick and tired of Amazon deriving huge profits
| out of the UK market ($17.5 billion in 2019) and paying
| just a minuscule amount of tax on those UK sales (PS6.3
| million in 2019) using a mixture of clever accounting
| techniques (not available to other businesses) and
| funnelling profit out via subsidiaries in low tax
| jurisdictions (Luxembourg).
| belval wrote:
| I don't know about you but I am also not bound to Amazon,
| a few years ago some stores actually started putting some
| work into their website, offered free shipping on order
| over 50$, etc... and I went back almost naturally.
|
| These threads of Amazon-bashing always read like
| something out of parallel universe, I should go have a
| worse shopping experience because of some "greater"
| objective of opposing Amazon?
| Spivak wrote:
| For me the sticking point is returns. Amazon makes it so
| easy to return stuff when other companies make you pay
| for your own shipping back that I'm way more willing to
| take a risk on something when it's on Amazon.
| rocqua wrote:
| Interesting example, because shoes are one of the few
| things I will not order on-line.
|
| Shoes fall in the category "things I want to physically
| try before buying". And that category of things does not
| work with on-line shopping.
| Spivak wrote:
| I just buy a few sizes and return the ones that don't
| fit. Obviously this means I have to shop at places that
| offer to ship returns back for free or have a local store
| close I could drive to but I like the experience better
| than going to a store honestly.
| dkhenry wrote:
| And I believe its exploitive of everyone in the supply chain,
| from manufacturers to delivery drivers, and has led to the
| vast centralization of an overwhelmingly large portion of our
| economy into the hands of corporation with no accountability.
|
| Furthermore I am very convinced it makes the lives of
| everyone, except the tiny minority that are actively
| exploiting everyone else, much worse. Good jobs are lost,
| supply chains are made fragile, and monopolistic tendencies
| are encouraged. I would rather the inconvenience of shopping
| around than encourage a world with a private entity as the
| sole source of all consumer goods.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, but we are never going to stop that behavior by
| individuals choosing not to shop at Amazon. As an
| individual, my only two choices are to shop at Amazon and
| get the benefits and Amazon still exists, or don't shop
| there and don't get the benefits and Amazon still exists.
| Amazon is not going to care if they lose my business. The
| only person who suffers is me.
|
| If we think Amazon business practices are immoral, we need
| to make them illegal.
| dkhenry wrote:
| I believe thats exactly how we stop that, by choosing not
| to shop at Amazon. The government is ( theoretically ) an
| expression of the will of the people, if the will of the
| people is to exploit others for their own benefit, the
| government will reflect that. Until we individually
| decide that our neighbors are important enough to us that
| we are willing to suffer a little inconvenience nothing
| will change, but if we are willing to individually suffer
| a little inconvenience we absolutely can effect any
| company even one as big as Amazon.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > The government is ( theoretically ) an expression of
| the will of the people, if the will of the people is to
| exploit others for their own benefit, the government will
| reflect that
|
| There is a fundamental difference between stopping an
| abusive business practice with a vote verse with your
| wallet. With a vote, your choice is to allow the bad
| business practice and get the benefit of shopping there,
| or don't allow the business practice and don't get
| benefit of shopping there. The choice goes together with
| the consequences, good or bad.
|
| On the other hand, choosing with your wallet doesn't
| couple the choice with the consequence. Even if I don't
| shop there, it is very likely the business will continue.
| Me losing the benefit of shopping there doesn't cause the
| business practice to stop necessarily.
|
| Lots of people would be willing to give up shopping there
| if it meant the business stopped, but not if it doesn't.
| methodin wrote:
| And therein lies the main problem with that line of
| thinking in today's political landscape - when
| politicians are effectively funded by the large companies
| that have seemingly unlimited money and power, that will
| never happen, so where exactly will this new law come
| from?
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > I am happy the parts company is ditching Amazon, but its so
| much more important for us consumers to ditch amazon.
|
| Conversely, maybe it's important for both big and small
| businesses to realize that investing in your online presence
| and building out a high-quality local delivery network is
| _much_ more important than the high-rent place on Main Street?
|
| A lot of the reasons I buy on Amazon are that it offers a much
| more _pleasant_ experience. In fact, if you go to the
| manufacturers ' sites for a lot of the products Amazon sells,
| they have a slow checkout process, scammy discount codes and
| email signup incentives, and generally optimize for consumer
| lock-in rather than getting the product to the consumer
| quickly. Imagine Google if it had popped up a discount code for
| "Get 200 searches at 15% off!" every time you searched for
| something, and think of how successful they would be if they
| did that.
|
| As for a lot of small-time local shops I know, they seem to
| place an unduly high value on prime real estate, and their
| websites are at the level of "My nephew says he knows
| Dreamweaver".
|
| In summary, I am not super surprised they are being beaten out
| by Amazon, and it is unclear to me as to why _I_ should
| subsidize their bad web design and reluctance to invest in
| building a consumer-friendly online experience.
| dkhenry wrote:
| Thankfully you are not the only person to realize this and a
| multi-billion dollar industry sprung up to help independent
| retailers compete. A Shopify website has a customer
| experience similar to Amazon. The real issue is Amazon has so
| much market capture that most people don't even look for
| independent retailers. In fact even suggesting that you can
| go other places online gets a bunch of push back from people
| insisting that nothing can compete, and that somehow it's
| moral to ignore all externalities in the name of pure market
| efficiency.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Maybe I am looking in the wrong places, but precisely zero
| of my local retailers have anything that looks like a
| Shopify storefront. And it's about the tools (Shopify is a
| great one), but also about the _attitude_. Amazon has the
| attitude of "get the thing to the customer, immediately".
| Most of the other places have an attitude of "we want to
| build a long-lasting relationship with you, the consumer".
| Hence they ignore fast deliveries and push coupons and
| loyalty programs and crowded stores.
|
| Ironically, this leads to a place where the only long-
| lasting relationship the customer ends up having is with
| Amazon, which is a pretty shitty company.
|
| > somehow it's moral to ignore all externalities in the
| name of pure market efficiency
|
| I am not saying that, or I don't think I am anyway. I think
| the retailers are not taking the externality of reduced
| attention span in a serious way like Google or Amazon. The
| technology totally exists for a local retailer to get my
| location, and deliver a product to me with 3 clicks in
| under an hour.
|
| And yet, apart from food delivery startups (that are not
| local, and simulate such an experience via a layer), few
| actual goods retailers (say, my local hardware store) have
| invested in building such an experience. I can't recall any
| of them having the courage to at least test out a _pilot_
| program with such an experience.
|
| Either way, I do try to support my local retailers as much
| as I can; and my usage of Amazon has seen a slow but steady
| drop-off over the last 3 years. But that's mainly due to
| the fact that Amazon makes
| jamincan wrote:
| > Amazon has the attitude of "get the thing to the
| customer, immediately". Most of the other places have an
| attitude of "we want to build a long-lasting relationship
| with you, the consumer".
|
| Sometimes that long-lasting relationship is what ends up
| paying dividends in better service, though. I'm by no
| means unwilling to shop around, but I have been a long-
| time customer at my LBS and will always look to them
| first. I crashed in a weekend cross race two years ago
| and bent my rear brake rotor when the rider behind me
| rode over it. My LBS didn't have my rotor in stock, but
| they called around and found when at another shop in the
| US and had it shipped up before the weekly Tues night
| series. That's for a lowly low-category masters racer.
|
| When you have a personal relationship with a business, it
| is possible for them to pull out all the stops when it
| matters.
| incongruity wrote:
| At its peak point of customer experience value (which
| Amazon has definitely past), Amazon was great because it
| was generally easy to find a good set of options for
| whatever you were looking to buy, in one place/one search.
|
| Now, it's full of fake/cheap crap with manipulated reviews
| and "sponsored" search results. Before it was good about
| exposing useful data (e.g.: "others who searched for x
| eventually bought y" and other similar features. That's all
| but gone now. You only see what is useful to Amazon for you
| to see.
|
| So, my question is, where do I go to find that same general
| search function for shopping? It's not google. I'm not sure
| it exists but it's needed. (Or anyone have a link?)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| My hope is that because Amazon sell everything, they sell
| everything really badly. You get better product descriptions,
| choice, help etc. on specialist stores, is my experience in
| Australia, although admittedly the US Amazon is probably a lot
| better.
| iso1210 wrote:
| In the UK we had shops that sold everything -- Argos has done
| catalogue shopping for decades. Sainsburys, a major
| supermarket, owns them, and does delivery.
|
| Amazon makes it trivial to buy pretty much anything I want and
| get it the next day. Sainsburys sells the same stuff between
| themselves and argos, yet they failed miserably at competing.
| They could have worked with companies like royal mail and
| leverage their logistics expertise to compete, but they failed
| miserably to even realise why I shop at amazon.
|
| I'm not some 1970s afficiando going out to a high street to buy
| something in person, it's very unlikely I _need_ something
| right then and can 't wait for 24 hours for someone to bring it
| to me. I have better things to do with my time.
| dkhenry wrote:
| It's not the mega conglomerates they are putting out of
| business. It's the bike stores, the hobby shops, the clothing
| boutiques. In the US with the purchase of Whole Foods, they
| are also moving more into groceries and everything else.
| After experiencing not being able at all to go to a high
| street and buy things and forcing everything to be online, I
| realized just how bad the experience is, and decided if I had
| to choose between the two I would choose the physical
| experience.
|
| Once you do that you start to realize just how much of the
| consumer goods world Amazon has already put out of business.
| I live in silicon valley and there is no where I can go for
| electronics any more. My last amazon purchase was getting
| some 2.5A fuses because every store that would sell them
| locally has closed ( either before the pandemic, or because
| of it ). I tried to buy a video card, and the local computer
| equipment retailer literally couldn't get allocated any stock
| from the manufacturers, somehow Amazon managed to get first
| dibs on supply. I don't like that world, and I don't want to
| live in it.
| wyre wrote:
| An auto parts store or Ace Hardware should stock fuses.
| dkhenry wrote:
| They should, but they weren't auto fuses, and Ace
| Hardware didn't sell them either. They were really small
| and specific to small electronics ( in this case a
| Honeywell desk fan that had a fuse in the plug ) Fry's
| would have had them, but Fry's is no more, and there
| isn't any other store like that anymore.
| jfim wrote:
| There's always DigiKey if you need something like that,
| which also happens to have a parametric search that's
| actually useful.
|
| For your example, from the fuses search page
| (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/fuses/139)
| you can apply the 2.5A, fuse type "Cartridge, Glass",
| mounting type "Holder" and still have a wide variety of
| options starting at $0.25 per fuse. No free shipping
| though.
| jamincan wrote:
| But fast delivery on par with or better than Amazon in
| most cases.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| This is really a bad example. What value do electronics
| shops add to a neighborhood? Maybe if you need something
| asap. Remember Radio Shack selling you phone chargers for
| $40? Do you miss them too?
|
| I love local businesses in my neighborhood but only if they
| add value. Theaters, cafes, grocery shops, restaurants,
| book stores with cafe/events, places for kids, etc. Not an
| expensive electronics shop that I might visit once a year.
| iso1210 wrote:
| What there should be is a local store that stocks
| everything (rather than having to choose between one of
| 50 different specialised stores), and rather than self
| service from walking around the store, you simply ask the
| shopkeep to bring you what you want.
|
| And then instead of having to go to that store, the
| shopkeep could even send someone to bring you the goods.
| It would be like the olden days.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > After experiencing not being able at all to go to a high
| street and buy things and forcing everything to be online,
| I realized just how bad the experience is
|
| I have rarely been to a high street to buy stuff (rather
| than say a cafe or haircut) for 10 years. Imagine having to
| traipse somewhere, then actually walk around looking at
| random things on shelves hoping to find what you want?
|
| I have been to large out of town shops like B&Q on
| occasion, the experience is better than a local hardware
| store, but still massively inferior to shopping online.
| monodot wrote:
| It took them a while to wake up, but I think Argos is better
| now. You can collect from stores, get it delivered, sometimes
| even same-day delivery. I value having a store nearby. I
| trust them far more for commodity products (chargers,
| accessories, etc) than venturing into the Wild West of Amazon
| sellers and reviews. I also feel I have more recourse if
| something goes wrong.
|
| (And no I don't work for Argos!)
| sefrost wrote:
| I was at Argos between 2012 and 2013. Fresh out of
| university. At one point during my time there, for around
| five or six weeks, me and another graduate were the only
| front end developers on the entire Argos website. At that
| stage I don't think I knew the difference between margin and
| padding in CSS just to give you an idea of our level.
|
| It was truly chaotic. The amount of money they wasted on
| Accenture consultants should be criminal. I know it's a
| cliche to say money is wasted on consultants, but really, no
| work happened. A lot of energy was expended but nothing was
| built or created.
|
| I was in a newly formed "innovation hub" which had a lot of
| very talented people but we were blocked from doing anything
| by internal and external staff at every turn.
|
| One time we tried to have a QA environment set up so that we
| could demo and test our work. We were told it would take _9
| months_ to provision a server for us. We were a team of about
| 20 in expensive central London office space and we didn't
| have an environment to test our work. It took about 8 hours
| to do a deploy to production, so if something was broken the
| BEST CASE scenario was it would take 8 hours to fix. I never
| saw the best case scenario.
|
| The most talented and motivated staff in the innovation hub
| slowly left after we were told that the pace of change had to
| be "glacial".
|
| Argos never stood a chance of competing against Amazon.
| austinjp wrote:
| I've installed the apps for Argos, Curry's, Cex, John Lewis,
| and a few others on my phone including food, clothing and
| toiletries suppliers. If they don't have what I'm after then
| I may revert to Amazon if necessary. I'm also trying to ditch
| the "must buy now" impulse that Amazon has thrived on, and
| going to local physical shops instead.
|
| Amazon's supply and logistics are way superior to their
| competitors, and their app usually is too. This does
| introduce a bit of friction when making the switch, including
| a slightly higher price sometimes. However, all in all, it's
| still worth doing.
| eevilspock wrote:
| > it's very unlikely I need something right then and can't
| wait for 24 hours for someone to bring it to me.
|
| Interesting how quickly things we did fine without become
| _needs_.
|
| This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma. No one wants to defect
| (boycott). In the end we all lose.
| iso1210 wrote:
| 20 years ago I used to spend 2 hours a week walking round a
| supermarket. I haven't done that for 15 years. That's 100
| hours a year and 1000 miles of driving that I don't need to
| do.
|
| If a lightbulb blows, I could get in the car, drive to the
| local shop, find one which will do (but probably not the
| right one), and drive home, or I could just go click-clikc
| and get on with the gardening safe in the knowlege that
| someone else will bring a replacement to me tomorrow.
|
| These are good things. I would like an alternative to
| amazon (like argos or whatever), but they just don't get
| it. Royal mail has had an amazing delivery network
| throughout the UK for decades, delivering mail and parcels
| next day from Lerwick to Hugh Town, from a random shack on
| a road 30 miles from Inverness to a central London office.
| It's such a shame that this wasn't utilised to provide
| competition to amazon, because old people like the idea of
| a "high street" and living like the 1950s.
| bovermyer wrote:
| You know, I imagine the big problem that Amazon purportedly
| solves is discoverability for producers.
|
| I wonder if there's value in creating a website that is just a
| directory of online stores in various categories.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| If these are the growing pains of a "bike economy" this would be
| a good thing. In large parts of the world bikes could and should
| become the first choice for mobility and there needs to be a
| healthy ecosystem to support this transition. From (more) local
| manufacturing, to distribution, servicing, upgrading and
| eventually recycling(pun).
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Good. PNW bikes (and treefort and some others) do good stuff.
|
| At this point selling on amazon makes me trust you less -- i've
| gotten way too many fake parts accidentally over the years to
| trust them with.
| SevenSigs wrote:
| nice that they can afford this.
| jrd259 wrote:
| > After leaving his job in global business development at Amazon,
| Aaron Kerson used his knowledge of the platform's sales
| algorithms to power up his new business.
|
| Don't corporations typically have non-compete clauses to prevent
| an employee from exploiting proprietary knowledge they gained
| while working for the firm? Would we be supportive of someone who
| left (e.g.) a small bicycle parts company to help Amazon rule
| that market?
| tkahnoski wrote:
| Yes... (not a lawyer so grain of salt here) There are three
| basic tools for IP protection:
|
| 1) Copyright - protects outright copying of an IP asset 2)
| Patent - protects against the reimplementation of the same IP
| 3) Trade Secret - Similar to patent, but enforcement is
| trickier especially for software as you have to demonstrate a
| benefit to it being secret as well as your efforts to keep it
| secret.
|
| Non-competes are more of a blunt instrument and a controversial
| topic. Amazon is infamous for having them. Typically only hear
| of companies trying to enforce these at executive level as any
| enforcement at a lower level can impact recruiting heavily.
| OliverJones wrote:
| In the bike-parts and other speciality manufacturing
| businesses, there's a fourth barrier to entry for new
| competitors: reputation for quality.
|
| Quality matters a whole lot for the kind of products PNW
| makes. Not every cyclist has the ability to figure out
| whether a part was manufactured correctly (no cracks or voids
| in castings, etc etc).
|
| Maybe they outsource them. But finding contract manufacturers
| who do a good job is a highly skilled business.
|
| And cyclists depend on stuff like this to work. I once had
| the top of a cheapo seatpost break off on a road bike, in the
| late fall, far from home. Cheezy metal manufacturing. Cold
| couple of hours waiting for a rescue. Happily I didn't crash.
|
| I learned my lesson. Now I buy stuff from my local bike shop,
| or sometimes REI if I'm far from home. The possibility of
| counterfeit parts is frightening. I know I can trust the
| local bike shop to source decent parts.
| fossuser wrote:
| In California non-competes are [edit: unenforceable] (it's
| arguably one of the reasons for Silicon Valley's success).
|
| It varies by state though, so not sure about Washington and
| elsewhere.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Nit: They are unenforcable, but not illegal in themselves:
| https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-
| in...
| fossuser wrote:
| Yep - you're right, edited and fixed.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| When he started the company in 2015, presumably he wasn't
| competing with Amazon (by selling products on their platform
| that they don't have their own brand of). By now, I'd assume
| any non-compete that might cover "don't sell products that
| compete with us" have expired.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Probably smart; anything you put on Amazon nowadays that gets
| reasonably successful will get competed out of the market by
| either other sellers or Amazon itself.
|
| The main challenge is discoverability; for a lot of people,
| websites like Amazon is the first port of call, and people are
| willing to pay the convenience fee just so they don't have to
| scour the internet for an alternative.
|
| That said, they now have to scour Amazon to find a decent product
| instead of 'knockoffs' / race-to-the-bottom competitors.
| samstave wrote:
| I've biked THOUSANDS of miles in the last years - growing up in
| Tahoe biking all through the 80s... Heck this month alone I have
| biked nearly 500 miles (26 miles a day, 29" mtn....
|
| Anyway, Have you dealt with a lot of "local bike shops" -- I have
| dealt with too many to count.
|
| Lets look at a few pros and cons of "local bike shops":
|
| Pro:
|
| -- Support a local business
|
| -- Go in and talk to an actual person? (maybe)
|
| Cons:
|
| -- Many gear-head bike shop employees (specifically the
| mechanics) have a BOFH attitude, are gruff, rarely have time to
| talk - generally have an attitude.
|
| -- Many of the local shops are now pushing bikes that are fucking
| $10,000 -- I looked at a bike in Mikes Bikes just last week - and
| it was $15,000
|
| -- Gear selection is limited to a couple brands, and prices are
| no better than amazon
|
| -- Bike shops aren't like starbucks - they are fucking far apart.
|
| -- I have biked DAILY for over a decade. I have gotten HUNDREDS
| of flats - and I always carry 2 tubes with me (yes, I want to go
| tubeless, just havent done so yet) - getting tubes off amazon is
| ideal. Having to have to drive very far to go buy a tube is a
| non-starter
|
| Local bike shops currently have shitty inventories because of the
| supply shortage from china - and to have to again drive to the
| bike shop to find out that their inventory is low, that the
| lowest end bike is $5,000 and they want to sell every garment for
| >$50 with stupid logos and printing all over them to show that
| you, the customer-turned-billboard are "serious about your
| biking"
|
| -- Having to stand near too many weekend-road-warriors who really
| don't need anything but want to instead show you how much money
| they threw into their entire kit....
|
| -- Having to deal with upsell in certain cases
|
| -- Having to get blank stares with questions about anything
| outside of what the store actually sells and too many answers of
| "gee, I don't know"
|
| ---
|
| Yeah, While I hate Amazon's monopoly as much as everyone -- this
| does NOT make all local bike shops even.
|
| Yes, I have met some awesome ones - not not enough to where every
| bike shop nearest me is a good one in every single city I have
| loved in all over the greater bay area all the way up to Tahoe
| City...
| Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 wrote:
| That's why I'd rather use Amazon/online stores to buy myself
| repair gear than pay hundreds per year for mountain bike
| maintenance. Similar cost at the beginning but much better in
| the long run.
| Finnucane wrote:
| I've biked daily for a decade too, and I've not had hundreds of
| flats. What kind of crap tires are you buying? Why would you
| drive to buy tubes if you have a bike?
| samstave wrote:
| I mean in my life of biking - I got two flats in the last two
| weeks - one, one a single track taking a tight turn - turns
| out the tube split at a seam, and was faulty. the other one
| was a faulty tube that literally just exploded around the
| fill stem... while I was standing next to my bike - almost
| all my tubes for a long time have been specialized...\\\the
| good thing is most places will replace the tubes.
|
| I have had a few bikes that would pop a tube when just riding
| off a six-inch curb.
|
| I have had so many flats all on different bikes for different
| reasons - that my riding behavior changes when I know if I
| have a spare tube on me or not.
| zanderz wrote:
| I'm a cyclist of many years and am sympathetic to the plight of
| the small retail business, but over and over I've had even
| minor repairs botched by the minimum wage kids often doing the
| wrenching. I started buying tools and learning maintenance,
| because as I've said after many a trip to the shop, I could
| have fucked this up myself for free and saved some driving!
| philistine wrote:
| This is fascinating and a great description to the threats facing
| Amazon. When you cede responsibility to Amazon that your business
| requires to perform adequately (in this case it seems to be the
| ability to match a bike to its compatible parts) than that is a
| risk for Amazon to lose its place as the internet's mall if it
| cannot offer a way to stay relevant. If zero bike parts are
| available on Amazon today it might become bigger and bigger
| markets tomorrow, that a company like Shopify is better aligned
| to serve.
| scoofy wrote:
| If I recall correctly, Specialized Bikes pulled all their
| products from Amazon a while ago, pointing to the failing local
| bike shops eventually hurting the bike business for everyone.
|
| Bicycles are not toys. They are vehicles that need maintenance.
| You can do much of that maintenance yourself if you're a nerd,
| but the vast majority of cyclists are dependent on local bike
| shops to sustain the cycling community.
|
| The bicycle/parts manufacturers need a large cycling community to
| sell products to. The large cycling community will have novice
| and intermediate cyclists that will abandon cycling if their
| bikes break down. The novice and intermediate cyclist need local
| bike shops to do maintenance on their bikes at affordable rates.
| The local bike shops need a revenue stream beyond labor for
| maintenance to be affordable. Thus, the major bicycle
| manufacturers need to give a oligopoly status to the local bike
| shops in order to keep their user base large.
|
| As a life long cyclist, I've seen the industry grow and wane, and
| throughout it all, I've seen the vast majority of people think
| bicycles are some type of sports-equipment. Decisions like this
| are one of only a few business models that I can see sustaining
| the community. I'm actually surprised and optimistic to see the
| major manufacturer Trek start building their own brick and mortar
| shops in certain major cities, though I'd prefer to see this
| happen through a major cooperative between the various brands. If
| you care about making cycling a serious, sustainable transit
| alternative, we need to maintain the entire ecosystem of
| ridership, which means the race to the bottom on amazon must be
| stopped.
| Foomf wrote:
| I'm happy to see you mention Trek. I've started shopping for a
| bike and there happens to be a Trek bike store in my city. I've
| never even heard of them until I looked up bike shops on google
| maps and Trek showed up. The fact that you mention them gives
| me more confidence that they're someone worth buying from.
| lodonnell9213 wrote:
| Not a cyclist but I agree with your post, we need to better
| support small businesses, even if it costs a tad more.
|
| That is the issue with Amazon, it's easy to get things from and
| cheaper, which also increases our want to buy more crap we
| don't need, and fuelling a business capable of potentially
| doing serious harm to the competitive landscape.
|
| My partner recently purchased some specialist cake toppers,
| from a one woman shop, they where super expensive but they
| looked really high quality, and she was so happy we was happy
| with the product, and I think that should be part of the
| purchase experience, that we can get a sense of satisfaction
| that we have helped a small business stay open.
|
| I think Jeremy Clarkson said it best (surprisingly), and it was
| something alone the lines of the following. Stop haggling, a
| dollar is a lot of money to these people, it's nothing to you,
| just pay them the price asked.
| fukmbas wrote:
| Bike repair is pretty much the easiest thing ever....
| williamtwild wrote:
| "Bicycles are not toys. "
|
| Yes and no. I think what most people think of when they think
| bicycle is the throw away kind that you buy at you local big
| box retailer or sporting goods store. These are toys in the
| sense the they were likely meant for casual recreation and at
| most might get a tire patched or some other simple repair.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| My kids all ride former-toy bicycles that I've had for a song
| from FB Marketplace and nursed back to health.
|
| But yeah, I think the GP is speaking aspirationally. We need
| to _get to a place where_ bikes are considered infrastructure
| the way a vehicle is, that everyone has one, and has a
| selection of shops around them to service it, same as
| everyone currently has lots of garages, dealers, and gas
| stations around to meet the needs of their automobile.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If bikes get to that point, that means buying parts online
| to me. Making it hard to get parts is not generally
| supportive of cycling IMO.
|
| I buy almost all of my parts to service our cars online.
| Amazon, RockAuto, and brand-specific parts suppliers
| (PeachParts, HandA/Bernardi, Ricambi, etc.) I can recall
| going to a physical dealer 3 times in the last 20 years and
| each time it was for a "I need it exactly this afternoon
| and I'm willing to pay for it in dollars and
| inconvenience".
| dublinben wrote:
| The point is that if you're performing your own service
| of your car, you're already more of an enthusiast than
| your bicycling counterpart. Cycling for transportation
| needs to work for the mainstream, buy it from a dealer on
| installment, take it to the shop for routine maintenance,
| treat it as an appliance consumer. Enthusiasts will
| always find a way in spite of bad infrastructure.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Maybe to you it's a more convenient experience, but not
| everyone has the same approach to shopping. Some are
| happy to receive advice for specific products (or to have
| someone tell them what quality level they're going for),
| while others are simply happy to be able to have a human
| interaction at the counter (i'm in both categories).
|
| Moreover, i'm not convinced online shopping is better for
| society at large. From an ecological perspective, from an
| anti-monopoly perspective..
| bradlys wrote:
| Ecological perspective, it's better than having a single
| person driving a significant distance to a specific
| destination. (On top of the maintenance of that
| destination) Whereas - delivery wise... you're like a few
| hundred extra feet of driving maybe. (Assuming you live
| in a city/decently-sized suburb)
|
| Packaging is the only issue that needs to be solved more
| efficiently but there are potential solutions to that.
| r00fus wrote:
| Not everyone is capable of handling the labor portion of
| the (labor + parts) equation of servicing a bike (not to
| mention a fleet of bikes for family).
|
| I certainly can only handle the basics and the family
| rides a decent amount of miles/wk.
|
| I buy local - many times it's even cheaper than Amazon -
| and I live in an expensive metro.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Presumably the people who can't (or won't) do the labor
| are _already_ buying parts from their shop though, right?
|
| I doubt many people are buying parts on Amazon (or
| previously from Nashbar) and asking a bike shop to
| install them.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I think the point is to enlarge the community. More local
| bike shops and services will lead to more riders, firstly
| because they'll notice it as an option whereas many
| wouldn't have before and secondly because the more there
| are the closer they'll be to anyone's home or workplace,
| thus more convenient.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I would expect new bike shop openings to significantly
| lag, not lead, local cycling popularity, but maybe that's
| only the case in areas where real estate is expensive.
| burnished wrote:
| I used to cycle as a means of transportation. Much faster
| than walking, on par with the bus, paid for itself in six
| months from money saved in transit fees.
|
| I would generally order nothing online because I didn't
| have the education or interest to know what I was buying
| or what needed done. Part of the value of a good,
| physical shop is the relationship you form with people
| and being able to trust their expertise. I definitely
| needed some one I could look in the eye, explain my
| problem, and ask them to solve it for me.
|
| I don't say this to contradict you necessarily,
| especially in your primary point, just to offer a very
| different perspective.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think your situation is a quite common one. People
| prefer to shop in-person in a lot of situations and will
| continue to do so.
|
| In the context of this article, those people are _already
| buying these parts_ at bike shops. Removing them from
| Amazon doesn't change this group's buying habits.
| burnished wrote:
| yep, good point, lost track of the real point. thanks!
| silisili wrote:
| My wife and kid wanted cruiser style single speed
| bikes...what you'd call a toy. And I'm not hung up in that
| word, it is what it is. But they bike a couple miles a day
| going to and from school. They sit all day in the sun and
| rain and just keep ticking away. They were both less than
| 200, and honestly, I don't see what would be gained in
| spending more given the criteria, other than perhaps
| appeasing 'bikesnobs'(is that a thing? I was thinking of
| something like beer snobs).
|
| Sure it's not a race bike, or mountain bike, but they still
| work just fine for transportation.
| aix1 wrote:
| If the bikes are serving their purpose, IMO there's
| absolutely no reason to replace them with anything else.
|
| (Speaking as someone who personally would be highly
| unlikely to buy the type of bike you're describing.)
| Rapzid wrote:
| I think of my road bike and the mountain bikes I owned when I
| did that.. So toys(sports equipment).
|
| But yeah, the majority of the US population probably thinks
| recreational bikes for their kids and maybe the ones they own
| to ride with their kids.. Also toys.
| rapind wrote:
| > I'm actually surprised and optimistic to see the major
| manufacturer Trek start building their own brick and mortar
| shops in certain major cities
|
| I wouldn't be too optimistic. We have one in Toronto. When I
| brought in my trek that I bought from them to fix it, it cost a
| fortune and they didn't actually fix it properly.
|
| Similar to servicing your car at the dealer. It's super
| expensive. Difference being the quality of work is questionable
| (no doubt varies quite a bit).
|
| Lesson: learn to fix your own bike or settle for crappy big box
| bikes instead.
| JCharante wrote:
| Non-chain shops might be better. I'm learning to service my
| own bike because the cost of labor and overhead is really
| high in the US compared to where I got hooked on road cycling
| (Vietnam).
| secondcoming wrote:
| I have a lot of tools that I got so I could service my bike.
| Now, the industry has moved on with various sizing standards
| and these tools will be useless when I get a new bike.
| scoofy wrote:
| I would actually write to trek about that. The shop here in
| SF seems pretty solid, but I don't currently have a Trek
| bike, so I might be wrong. I agree with you on the analogy,
| but I'm pushing for the apple-store parallel. No serious
| computer nerd would use an apple-store as a serious place to
| maintenance their laptop, but novice to intermediate computer
| users would, even if they have to go back a few times.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Going to suggest high schools add a bike repair class/course.
| They can work on bikes students bring in, get the knowledge
| they need to fix their own bikes.
| sonthonax wrote:
| > You can do much of that maintenance yourself if you're a nerd
|
| I'm finding this to less true these days. As bikes become more
| 'integrated' with components specific to the model they're
| becoming harder to fix. It's particularly bad with aero bikes
| that have aero handlebars, weird stems and internal routing.
|
| Even if you're a bike nerd, what you know won't really apply on
| another bike anymore.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree. Buy used, buy old-school.
| jamil7 wrote:
| They cop a lot of ridicule for being impractical but a fixed
| gear track bike with a single front brake has been my daily
| commuter / beater for years with minimal maintenance. You can
| ride them through anything and they keep going, replace brake
| pads occasionally, a chain or a sprocket very occasionally
| and that's basically it. I think they're perfect from a
| maintenance perspective but it does depend on where you live.
|
| Sheldon Brown had some good articles about their versatility.
| hinkley wrote:
| Even if you can do routine maintenance - and I can't recommend
| learning basic maintenance highly enough - sooner or later your
| bike will get damaged by a wreck, falling over, getting backed
| into, or ending up in way too much water for too long. You want
| a pro who can tell you fix or replace.
|
| And you don't want to deal with counterfeit items either.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| > sooner or later your bike will get damaged by a wreck,
| falling over, getting backed into, or ending up in way too
| much water for too long. You want a pro who can tell you fix
| or replace.
|
| If you ask a store, the answer will always be replace. They
| don't want to deal with liability questions ("but that store
| told me it would be good to ride"), so they will pick the
| safe answer.
|
| This will be especially true for components like a carbon
| frame, where even the best equipped stores will lack the
| equipment to perform a proper check - like an x-ray device.
|
| However the store might help you getting a discount on the
| replacement or get it warrantied.
| hinkley wrote:
| Materials probably play a role in that. When I was in the
| biz we still had steel bikes, so the answer was sometimes
| just a new fork, if the bike was worth more than the parts
| and labor. When it's in the cusp we recommended an upsell,
| because why spend all that money on an old bike you've
| already broken once? For some in particular we knew they
| would break them again, and there's a happy medium of
| repairable and reasonable. One guy had a death wish and a
| dad who owned a bunch of businesses. He broke so much gear
| and that guy (or his dad rather) was keeping everyone
| else's prices lower.
| jounker wrote:
| Not my experience at all. I've always had different
| recommendations based on the condition of the parts and the
| costs of repair vs. replace.
|
| There are plenty of other things that need work beyond
| frames.
| t0rt01se wrote:
| The same can be said of numerous products/industries
| 'disrupted' by YC/HN types. Kettle/pot? Specialized are no
| angels themselves. There are no sacred cows anymore - sorry but
| screw your small/local/artisanal shite - this from someone who
| would've ordinarily supported your sentiment. But these aren't
| ordinary times - the quest for economies of scale will bring
| scorched earth to everybody one way or another.
| amscanne wrote:
| > I'm actually surprised and optimistic to see the major
| manufacturer Trek start building their own brick and mortar
| shops in certain major cities,
|
| Wait, wasn't this always the case? I recall multiple Trek
| stores in the Toronto area at least a decade ago. I always
| though this was part of their model (vertically integrated
| retail), although other stores did sell their bikes also
| (exactly like Apple).
|
| I just bought a Trek bike at a local Trek store a couple months
| ago and it definitely wasn't a new store. Looking now, there
| are six (!) Trek stores all over the San Diego area. That's
| actually _more_ than the number of Apple stores IFAICT.
|
| Maybe they are just expanding this model to some other part of
| the world?
| inferense wrote:
| > Bicycles are not toys. They are vehicles that need
| maintenance. You can do much of that maintenance yourself if
| you're a nerd, but the vast majority of cyclists are dependent
| on local bike shops to sustain the cycling community.
|
| This is true. Although, I'm afraid the business model of a
| local bike shop is not sustainable at the moment, at least in
| Europe where the markups on components and service are just
| outrageous. It almost seems like the industry is following the
| footsteps of car industry which is based on franchised D2C
| sales points and incredibly high margins on servicing.
|
| Unfortunately, for folks who want to save money the only option
| is to learn how to maintain and fix your own bike using
| components sourced from online stores.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I think you're reading too much into this. Specialized stopped
| selling bikes on Amazon for the same reason Apple (as well as
| other high profile brands mentioned in the article like Nike,
| etc.) doesn't use Amazon as the primary retailer of their
| products - because it's an unnecessary middleman. Specialized
| is enough of a big, premium brand name that they can drive
| people to their own online shop directly. Online/DTC sales is
| inevitable in the bicycle industry, just like it has been for
| most other consumer products in the past decade, and prior to
| the pandemic Specialized had made a huge push into online sales
| to compete with the likes of Canyon (which was a bike company
| founded to take advantage of exactly this market gap which for
| whatever reasons the traditional brands were slow to get into).
|
| The online model is also amazing for consumers as well (not to
| mention small indie bike manufacturers). Instead of choosing
| between maybe 2-5 bikes that might match my basic preferences
| and be in stock at my local bike shop, I have dozens if not
| hundreds of models to choose from made by any manufacturer
| around the world.
|
| Sure, shops that do bike maintenance are important, but none of
| what you're saying here explains why any special interventions
| are needed for them. Won't the demand of more people using
| bicycles, and needing them fixed, be enough to keep these
| maintenance businesses healthy? I think bicycle advocates are
| much better off focusing on getting bikes to more people, and
| then improving cycling infrastructure to make it safer and more
| accessible to average people in everyday situations. The number
| of bike mechanics available is certainly not a major bottleneck
| that is keeping anybody from taking up cycling today.
| scoofy wrote:
| I'm not reading into it. I literally remember reading
| articles about this (i'm a reddit bicycling mod so i see a
| lot) in like... i dunno, like 2010-ish?
|
| The best i could do to verify is this article about fake
| knockoffs from 2015: https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-
| gear/a20045553/to-catch-a-co...
|
| I'm shocked that i can't find an old article about when they
| announced the change. Maybe my memory is wrong, and it could
| be, but I remember the local bike shop as being one of the
| main reasons for the change, even if that was just marketing.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Funny that Specialized are worried about local bike shops given
| their track record. Want to stock Specialized bikes? They'll
| try and strong-arm you to dedicate the majority of your floor-
| space to selling other Specialized components, removing options
| for the existing customers of the shop.
|
| Named your small bike shop after a famous bicycle race and
| French town (roubaix)? Specialized will try and sue you because
| they have a model of bike with the same name (and don't even
| own the trademark). https://capovelo.com/Specialized-
| Threatening-to-Sue-Bike-Sho...
| cycomanic wrote:
| Specialized worrying about small shops is certainly ironic.
| They definitely have been one of the players central at
| pushing out the small shops. They were one of the first
| pushing concept stores and are really squeezing the margins
| of small shops.
|
| It's been an interesting observation to see how all the big
| brands have been massively increasing their margins through
| cheap manufacturing in China (a frame that costs >$4000
| retail is less than $300 for those guys to get to the US)
| while the margins are incredibly low for the actual shops
| (<10% often) especially on high end bikes. I know many shops
| now make their primary income on bike servicing.
|
| I think specialized avoiding amazon is more a case that they
| don't want to stay the big guy that can push the small shops
| around, instead having to deal with the 500lb gorilla that
| amazon is.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I mean of course they are worried about local bike-shops:
| they certainly can't strong-arm Amazon!
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Funny that Specialized are worried about local bike shops
| given their track record. Want to stock Specialized bikes?
| They'll try and strong-arm you to dedicate the majority of
| your floor-space to selling other Specialized components,
| removing options for the existing customers of the shop.
|
| Exactly the same as trek and giant will do. There's a whole
| other game involved when dealing with the top 5 consumer
| brands of $1000+ bike, as a local bike shop.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, the idea that Specialized isn't moving toward the
| apple store-style model that Trek seems to be moving toward
| is honestly an act of good will. Dumb lawsuits aside,
| specialized is one of the best brands out there, and they
| absolutely have the power to ask for concessions. They're
| running a business selling absurdly high-end bikes. They're
| not bikesdirect selling baseline products.
| stbtrax wrote:
| what? They spend a crap ton on marketing and it seems to
| have paid off. I don't really know how their bikes are
| particularly that much better than other stuff out there.
| It's not like they make the drivetrain and carbon frames
| are pretty commodity at this point. Unless you buy into the
| layup marketing and special construction that only they can
| do hype.
| AlunAlun wrote:
| Specialized and other major bike brands spend a lot on
| R&D. The reason that you can buy a reasonable quality
| open mold carbon frame direct from Taiwan these days (and
| rebrand it as "my great bike brand" before selling it on
| at a markup, if you want) is because the big brands have
| spent a lot of money developing and refining the concept
| over the years.
|
| Modern bikes, with all their bells and whistles, which
| are light years better than their counterparts from 20
| years ago, simply wouldn't exist had this R&D not
| occurred.
| ohmaigad wrote:
| That doesn't really explain the prices, a Specialized
| Turbo Kenevo SL Expert (9.6k EUR) full suspension e-mtb
| costs more than a Kawasaki or Yamaha 900cc naked
| motorcycle (~9k EUR). The top of the line S-works e-mtb
| is in a similar price point as the latest BMW S1000RR. It
| just doesn't make any sense other than greed.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| I don't like big corps but my specialized bike has a
| feature (front spring shock absorber) that no other road
| bike has.
|
| Also their triathlon bikes have multiple unique features
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Specialized have had their own "concept stores" for years
| now, Trek are merely copying that idea.
|
| As someone who has worked in multiple bike shops, and also
| broken their own Specialized bike and had to deal with
| their warranty department, I'm never giving them any of my
| money again.
| scoofy wrote:
| Huh... so it seems. It appears that they only really
| exist in the UK, which is odd seeing as Specialized is
| based in the Bay Area. I see there are two locations in
| the Los Angeles area.
| grp000 wrote:
| I thought the UK was big into competitive bike culture,
| what with having big champs like Cavendish and Froome,
| the Ineos Grenadiers being based there too, as a really
| successful team.
| pharmakom wrote:
| UK has great funding for elite cycling but it's not very
| popular generally, and definitely not as a mode of
| transport. The car is king.
| azalemeth wrote:
| That really varies a lot by geographic location. Oxford,
| Cambridge (and to a lesser extent, London!) are very
| cycling intense places and the infrastructure is
| reasonable. Nothing compared to Denmark, Germany or
| Holland, but reasonable nevertheless.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > The car is king.
|
| This seems a very strange observation to make about
| London. It actually has the lowest rate of car ownership
| of the cities in the UK.
|
| In my experience the primary mode of travel is public
| transport (or it was before Covid-19 at any rate), with
| people occasionally using their cars for trips outside
| London and perhaps larger shopping trips. Though this
| clearly varies by Burrough, with those on the outskirts
| of Greater London being more car focused than those near
| the centre.
| prodent wrote:
| > This seems a very strange observation to make about
| London.
|
| It was an observation about the UK.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Ireland checking in: if you go outside of Dublin, most
| people own cars and use them as their main mode of
| travel. A recent post on Reddit /r/AskUK came from an
| American who was astounded that someone would be given
| directions to a location and told "it's about a 30
| minutes walk". They asked if British people really walked
| "that much". A redditor responded with Bill Bryson's
| piece about Americans and their cars, which included an
| anecdote about inviting his next door neighbors over to
| dinner, in which _they drove_. While Irish people
| certainly aren 't allergic to walking considerable
| distances, I've seen "country people" here drive
| obscenely short distances. The car becomes a habit. Once
| you're outside the city, the car is still king,
| unfortunately. When I visit my family, I get a train to
| their nearest town, and _if_ there 's a convenient bus,
| I'll use it to do the last 20km. But that bus only runs
| every 2 hours and, stupidly, doesn't align with train
| times. When I'm there, my family constantly offer to
| drive me stupidly short distances. Occasionally I accept
| if it's raining or after dark, since most county roads
| have no foot path and are unlit. Also, because almost
| everybody in the country drives a car, there's a far
| higher percentage of idiots behind the wheel. For
| example, those between the ages of 17 and 21 who think
| that they're amazing, omniscient and indestructible, even
| after a few pints. In the city, many people hold off on
| the unnecessary expense of a car until they "need one",
| since rent costs a ton, and decent public transport makes
| a car a luxury that you don't need until you get a space-
| wagon with 3 child seats.
| NGRhodes wrote:
| I agree with that observation; also somewhere in-between
| you have hobby/club cycle racing that has some popularity
| (Road, MTB, BMX, 4cross, CycloX etc), which are essential
| feeders into the national/pro/elite (my Brother is a
| British Cycling qualified coach/scout for BMX).
| mulmen wrote:
| Specialized earned a life-long customer in me when they
| replaced the frame on my 3 year old Allez Sport with an
| Allez Elite frameset.
|
| Admittedly this was 15 years ago but still, never had a
| bad experience with them.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I was told the chainstay of a Specialized Enduro was not
| covered under their 5 year frame warranty, as they class
| it as a suspension component, despite even their
| technical description listing it as part of the frame.
| mulmen wrote:
| Yeah. Pretty frustrating. I've had similar experiences
| with other companies. It's unfortunate the experiences
| aren't more uniform.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Trek replaced a hardtail xc mtb frame that cracked at the
| bottom bracket/chainstay interface with the next model up
| in the series. Was quite a painless process with the
| dealer.
| klyrs wrote:
| Try to steal a sandwich from a squirrel. It isn't going to
| bite you out of concern for how you'll treat the sandwich...
| namdnay wrote:
| > The novice and intermediate cyclist need local bike shops to
| do maintenance on their bikes at affordable rates. The local
| bike shops need a revenue stream beyond labor for maintenance
| to be affordable.
|
| I don't agree with this reasoning. Why wouldn't maintenance be
| priced at the true rate? In what way is it better for consumers
| to overpay for their equipment in order to underpay for
| maintenance?
| burnished wrote:
| What is the "true rate"? You could say it's whatever you need
| to charge to keep the lights on and rent paid based on
| however many hours a week you expect to be performing
| maintenance. You could say it's what people feel is fair for
| skilled labor. You could say it's what people historically
| pay for the service. But we are talking about bike shops
| going from selling things and selling services to just
| selling services, so it's really what you need to charge per
| hour to keep the lights on.
|
| So if the "true" rate ends up being more than the market will
| bear, and you dont have alternate income, you close down.
|
| So it isn't really a situation where one thing had an
| artificially inflated price and the other an artificially
| deflated price, more like the way bike shops as we know them
| work is to have diverse income streams, and removing an
| important one means that the business model as we understand
| it ceases to function.
| ljf wrote:
| I didn't read it to say that, just that it is very hard to be
| a mechanic only shop - they also need to sell something else
| to be a profitable business.
|
| In London there a few mechanics/coffee shops that stayed
| profitable that way.
|
| If more people cycled I'm sure you would see more 'just
| mechanics' but in most places they can't afford to be that.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| An acquaintance of mine tried to do the cafe/sales/repair
| thing [1]; he went more high end on all three, selling
| fancy drinks, pricey Dutch cargo bikes, etc. It didn't work
| out. I think they lasted ~3 years, though it was clear by
| the end that the writing was on the wall.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/berlinbikecafe
| jamincan wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure why Berlin Bike Cafe didn't really
| work out in the end. I do think KW is very well served by
| existing bike shops, and while Graham focused on a market
| segment that isn't well-represented by incumbents, it
| meant that he needed time for it to grow as well. London
| Bike Cafe seems to be chugging along quite nicely on a
| similar model, so it doesn't seem like it was an entirely
| hopeless endeavour on the face of it.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Berlin is the wrong place for that. Even in tech salaries
| are often in the EUR45k range gross, and with mandatory
| medical insurance at EUR400/m, rent at probably EUR800/m
| and still taxes it doesn't leave much for expensive
| bicycles.
|
| Cheap bicycles plus good mid-priced service is where it's
| at. Of course, that's hard, dirty, skilled work.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Note that this is Berlin as in the pre-WWII name of
| Kitchener, Canada, not the Berlin in Germany.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Ah, I saw a similar setup in Berlin, Germany at a
| location which has now been replaced by Rose Bikes, and
| the cafe seems to be gone.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > he went more high end on all three
|
| Maybe that was the problem there?
| JCharante wrote:
| Yeah high-end cafe seems like a tough sell. A cheap cafe
| to go to during group rides sounds great for having
| people learn about your high end service shop.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel like high end bike service in general is a tough
| sell unless you have a huge local club-ride community of
| people whose time is extremely valuable.
|
| I know someone who operated a Velofix van for a few
| years, and I used it a few times, but the minimum cost
| was basically $100+. For that much coin, I would just
| walk my bike home or take it on the bus. Particularly if
| it was something like a flat tire where I know I can fix
| it myself at home for a few dollars.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Possibly, but it was also not a large storefront, and
| it's been replaced by a boutique donut shop. It's down
| the street from a creperie, a wine bar, and some other
| bistro thing. There used to be a health food store on
| this block.
|
| Basically just saying that some combination of floor
| space, rent and other fixed costs, etc etc led to
| pursuing a higher-end business model and it didn't work
| out. There may be lots of reasons for that, but one of
| the principles here is that you need to be able to bike
| to your bike store-- it's not fulfilling its purpose if
| it's in a power center plaza that you need to drive to.
| jandrese wrote:
| Bikes are pretty low maintenance, the repairs are usually
| fairly simple, and the parts are cheap. It's hard to make
| margins on a low price low volume service. If a bike is
| really damaged it usually makes more sense to just replace
| it wholesale.
|
| If e-bikes take off they could help. There are a lot more
| moving parts to break and especially electrical issues to
| track down. Electrical issues are real moneymakers in
| diagnostic fees on cars.
| srg0 wrote:
| > Bikes are pretty low maintenance, the repairs are
| usually fairly simple
|
| Most forks and rear shocks require full service yearly or
| more frequently (typically every 100 to 200 hours). It is
| not that simple and requires experience and tools.
| Tubeless tires are messy. Bleeding breaks is another
| thing I would rather not do at home. And frankly, I can
| never setup my derailleur as well as my mechanic.
|
| > the parts are cheap
|
| Shocks, forks, transmission components, performance
| wheels are easily in the iPhone category and beyond.
|
| Clothing, protection, accessories, smaller components
| like handlebar stems or seatposts are still usually in
| the three digit range.
|
| You would be surprised to know how much consumables like
| chains and tires can cost per year.
|
| > low volume service
|
| I might be living in a place where both MTB and road
| cycling are very popular, but bike mechanics have so much
| work that they redirect clients to each other.
|
| > If a bike is really damaged it usually makes more sense
| to just replace it wholesale
|
| Full suspension bikes can easily have a $2K frame and $2K
| worth of components. Unless it was hit by a freight
| train, the bike is almost never completely destroyed by a
| crash. So it makes sense to replace what's broken. If the
| frame is solid, everything else is replaceable.
|
| As long as bikes are ridden hard, there is always work
| for mechanics, and it can be pretty expensive.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| I think you might underestimate the higher end bike
| market.
|
| Parts are often higher priced than what lots of people
| pay for complete bikes (e.g. a set of disc brakes 400$, a
| MTB fork 1000$, a groupset 1000$, a wheelset 800$, a
| dropper post 300$, etc). And the associated repairs like
| a brake bleed, a shock service or a wheel rebuild might
| take time and will have a high cost too.
|
| You don't have to look into ebikes. On Mountainbikes that
| are used as intended parts break often enough to keep
| mechanics busy.
|
| Ebikes might however indeed bring the higher priced bikes
| to a higher amount of people.
| jandrese wrote:
| High end bikes are a tiny sliver of an already small
| market.
| aix1 wrote:
| And also, while a groupset might indeed cost $1000, what
| sort of circumstances might require one to replace the
| entire groupset?
|
| (We're talking repairs rather than upgrades.)
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Riding 50k km on dust/gravel roads, and the frame and
| wheels will still be good but chain and groupset will be
| significantly worn.
| aix1 wrote:
| Chain is indeed a wear item. It costs tens of dollars to
| replace.
|
| $1000 groupsets simply don't deteriorate in the manner
| you describe. Source: I rode many thousands of kilometers
| on my gravel/adventure bike, including a 1000km ride
| around Kenya (very dusty, rocky roads where there _are_
| roads). The only two groupset components I needed to
| replace on this 2016 bike so far were the derailleur
| hanger and a jockey wheel. The former got bent due to
| carelessness on my part and could have been straightened,
| but I chose to replace it for structural reasons. The
| bearing in the latter got a little sticky and so I
| replaced the jockey wheel.
|
| Each of the two parts cost the equivalent of US$15 here
| in the UK.
|
| I think this is a very long way from replacing the entire
| $1000 groupset, which was what the post I was replying to
| suggested.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| I believe the new 11s/12s with their higher chain angles
| tend to wear faster. They actually recommend changing it
| with the chain.
| aix1 wrote:
| I think we're talking about different things.
|
| I am talking about the groupset (the shifters, brake
| levers, brake calipers, derailleurs, crankset, bottom
| bracket, chain and cassette).
|
| There are indeed some wear items (chain; cassette,
| especially if the chain isn't replaced when worn; brake
| pads; brake rotors) but, apart from those, a looked-after
| quality groupset can last decades.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| A chain for a high end group (like a XX1 Eagle) is 80$. A
| replacement cassette - that you will need after 2-3
| chains is 300-500$.
|
| And if you are into mountainbiking - there is also a fair
| amount of chance you might break something like a
| derailleur and spend a few hundred to fix that.
| scoofy wrote:
| The reason is that the price elasticity of demand for bikes,
| outside of, say, the netherlands, is extremely elastic. Your
| counter-argument presumes that cycling can't just fail, that
| the prices are inelastic enough to support mechanic-only
| shops.
|
| I truly believe that cycling, as an activity, can just fail
| and cease to exist. It _has_ ceased to exist in many areas in
| America. Many, many, many novice cyclists would rather
| abandon cycling than pay a large premium on bicycle
| maintenance. Perhaps there is a different business model that
| would work, but I see the large manufacturers as having in
| interest in creating an environment where maintenance service
| can be delivered at-cost.
| hinkley wrote:
| The mechanics end up helping pay for the building and profit
| margin, same as everything else in the shop. There's a price
| point where you can keep your mechanics running at 90% every
| day, and that may or may not pay for the building.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| I see this as the major issue. Any business has to pay the
| commercial landlord. That rent seeking behaviour is a huge
| tax to place on a business.
|
| The only way I would operate a shopfront business of any
| kind is if I owned the building. But I'd need to build a
| business first that could pay for the building. If I can
| build such a business, then I likely wouldn't bother with
| the shopfront until you get "Apple" big.
| hinkley wrote:
| You lose about half of your customers when you move to a
| new building and the landlords know it.
|
| Big companies and churches play this right. They buy more
| land then they need, and when the market is down they buy
| more, and when they have too much they rent it out a few
| years at a time so they never have to wait long to
| expand.
| notriddle wrote:
| It's not that simple. If you own a brick-and-mortar store of
| any kind, there are a lot of costs other than labor and
| parts, like the building itself, marketing, security, and
| attending the desk or phone. A lot of these costs won't go
| down if the store stops selling new bikes; they're flat, or
| there's some minimum amount that you can possibly buy.
| jandrese wrote:
| I have a local bike shop that I would like to support, but
| they stock only the cheapest no-name parts and charge way
| more than the premium parts on Amazon.
|
| I went to get a replacement inner tube--nothing special, just
| a 26x1.95 with a Schrader valve--and all they had was some
| Chinese brand (Hilong or something like that?) for $35. I
| want to support local businesses, but come on. The only thing
| they offered over Amazon is that they would install it for
| you for a modest $50 in labor.
|
| They also basically don't stock anything under $800 if you
| are looking to buy a bike, and even those are Giant brand
| mountain bikes with trash tier hardware. I went looking for
| something I could commute to work on every day and they were
| trying to sell so much fragile carbon fiber stuff that was
| miles outside of my budget range. I don't need to shave
| 5/10ths off of my commute, I want low maintenance, comfort,
| and ruggedness. Apparently that's totally uncool and biking
| is all about ultralight and ultrahard--feel every crack in
| the pavement through the hard plastic saddle! I wasn't
| impressed with the line about "it's more comfortable because
| you use less energy to get there".
| inopinatus wrote:
| > they were trying to sell so much fragile carbon fiber
| stuff that was miles outside of my budget range
|
| This is self-awareness issue. At what point did you realise
| you'd wandered into the wrong shop for your target segment?
| Judging by the misrepresentation of the genuine preferences
| of folks like me, as being somehow nonsensical or
| antithetical, I suspect, "not yet".
|
| I'm reminded of the vegetarian who visits a steakhouse and
| complains there's nothing for them on the menu but salad.
|
| > all they had was some Chinese brand
|
| Place of origin indicates nothing about the item
| manufactured, and product labeling even less so. Most
| bicycle tube & tyre production is in E/SE Asia.
| JCharante wrote:
| It sounds like a local bike shop isn't really what you're
| looking for. Under $800 a Decathlon/triban road bike is
| pretty decent.
|
| There are commuter bikes for $100 but it's just not worth
| servicing them because telling someone it'll be 40% of the
| original bike price in labor + parts to fix something not
| major is hard for them to accept.
|
| > low maintenance, comfort, and ruggedness. Apparently
| that's totally uncool and biking is all about ultralight
| and ultrahard--feel every crack in the pavement through the
| hard plastic saddle!
|
| Carbon is more comfortable by reducing the vibrations that
| you'll feel compared to aluminum.
|
| The reason why they stock shitty parts is because they
| appear to service really cheap bikes and for people who buy
| cheap bikes, that's what they want. I know many shops who
| wouldn't service cheap bikes and I know many shops where
| they would but I wouldn't trust them with my more expensive
| Trek road bike. So it's strange that they also stock carbon
| frames.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Carbon is more comfortable by reducing the vibrations
| that you'll feel compared to aluminum.
|
| So you approve of my steel frame bike? ;-)
| maxerickson wrote:
| They insinuate the shop marks the price of the tube up
| ~10x and charges $100+ an hour for simple labor.
|
| You don't seem to respond to those things.
| inopinatus wrote:
| My LBS charges the same fee for _any_ labor, whether it
| 's changing a tube or building a wheel.
|
| If you ask a skilled professional to do menial trivia,
| expect to pay for their skill level.
| whakim wrote:
| The bike shop can't compete on price with the biggest
| online retailers/Amazon. I have my doubts about a tube
| costing $35. $10 or $15 rather than the $5 you'd get
| online, but I have been to a lot of bike shops and that
| 10x markup doesn't comport with anything I've seen.
| Perhaps the $35 also includes the labor? (Also, it's an
| inner tube - it's a cheap commodity product, who cares if
| it's a Chinese no-name brand?)
|
| Bike shops need to charge for labor because most people
| don't buy bikes from bike shops anymore, so labor is
| where they make their money. $100/hr for labor is on the
| higher end but doesn't seem crazy in expensive locations.
| Not to mention that the prevailing way people treat bike
| shops (as places you can walk in at any time, get your
| bike fixed, and walk out) is incredibly antithetical to
| bike mechanics actually being able to take the
| uninterrupted time to focus and do good work.
| JCharante wrote:
| Oh I just realized they meant inner tube and not top tube
| (I was confused about that while reading it)
|
| Yeah an inner tube for $35? And it's not even those fancy
| orange ones?
|
| Well it's not hard to change it yourself, as long as
| they're not charging more than $4 for a basic ones. If
| they are actually selling it for $35 that's pretty yikes.
| I'd just buy it online given that it doesn't benefit from
| retail (you don't need to see a tube in person, just need
| to know the dimensions)
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| > Carbon is more comfortable by reducing the vibrations
| that you'll feel compared to aluminum.
|
| Is it actually noticeable for an average cyclist? I don't
| doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a
| marketing slogan from carbon frame producers and people
| went with it, and since their bicycles were more
| expensive, they "felt" better.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| > it's more comfortable because you use less energy to get
| there
|
| I wonder if these people are internally consistent enough
| to eschew the use of ramps or pulleys.
| asdff wrote:
| The next thing the industry has to do is spend some of this
| unprecedented COVID profit on lobbying for more bike lanes. My
| word. What's the point of a bike if it feels too dangerous
| taking it out on the roads sharing lanes with these
| reckless/distracted/intoxicated drivers? The auto industry
| lobbied for highways. It's time for the bike industry to play
| ball and do the same.
| nintendo1889 wrote:
| Especially with all the people in their cars with the windows
| up and mask on, breathing on the bicyclers. Lol
| axus wrote:
| Completely wrong place to ask, but why can't bike lanes be
| part of a wider side-walk instead of extending the road?
| flyinglizard wrote:
| It's like that here in Israel. Sidewalks get extended and
| partially paved. It's much more reasonable than having
| another lane right on the road.
| aix1 wrote:
| Pardon if I'm misunderstanding the layout you're
| describing, but I do wonder:
|
| 1. How often do pedestrians wander into those bike lane?
|
| 2. What are the rules at intersections? Specifically,
| does a bike lane along a major road have priority over
| minor roads at intersections, or are bikes required to
| give way to all traffic from both the major and the minor
| roads?
|
| 3. How obvious is it to drivers turning right from the
| rightmost lane that they might, in fact, be crossing a
| bike lane?
| flyinglizard wrote:
| 1. Pedestrians do wander into bike lines quite a bit but
| I think it's improving because of the sheer number of
| e-bikes and scooters out there now.
|
| 2. The sidewalks and bike paths run together, and road
| crossings are dual marked. Everyone needs to exercise
| extra caution, of course.
|
| 3. Riders for the most parts have the same traffic flow
| as pedestrians. If you're turning right, you'll most
| likely cross both the sidewalk and the bike path at the
| same time.
| siva7 wrote:
| All the answers to this questions have a simple guideline
| for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians altogether: slow
| down if you can't predict what will happen next. There is
| no magic behind it. Someone won't pay attention and the
| difference between a crash or a near miss is usually at
| least one paid attention and slowed down.
| mcntsh wrote:
| I can answer for Berlin:
|
| 1. Depends on where. In busy areas it happens a lot. You
| just have to be careful when there are people around.
|
| 2. The bike lanes have their own traffic lights, which
| are on the same cycle as the cross walks to the right of
| them, and the main road/lights to the left.
|
| 3. It's obvious since these bike lanes are everywhere;
| it's just apart of driving. I will say it's a little
| worse in the West of the city though!
| Fradow wrote:
| It works well when there aren't too many pedestrians and
| they don't confuse the bike lane for a sidewalk too much.
|
| On the other hand, if there are enough pedestrians, they
| will spill on the bike lane thinking it's a sidewalk. Or in
| some places, people really don't pay any attention and
| don't have a single care in the world, and will be totally
| oblivious to the fact that they are on a bike lane, even
| after ringing a very loud bike bell a few times right
| behind them.
|
| My commute happens to have both of those configurations,
| and the second one is hell, to the point I'll rather ride
| on the bus lane (which is forbidden to cyclists) than risk
| a collision with a pedestrian.
|
| Edit: I almost forgot, but since it tends to be between the
| road and the sidewalk, cars turning right will always check
| for pedestrians, but often fail to give way to cyclists,
| depending on how used they are to see cyclists coming. Some
| intersections have high change of T-bone because of that.
| contravariant wrote:
| You mean put the bicycles on the same sidewalks as the
| pedestrians? Maybe it sounds like a good idea to you but to
| someone who lives in the Netherlands that sounds completely
| insane.
|
| Unless you meant something like [1] or [2] where there is a
| raised bicycle lane effectively on the sidewalk.
|
| But even if they're part of the road that's not necessarily
| a problem [3], but in that case you'll want to have a
| reasonable speed limit (that sign on the road is 30 km/h,
| not 30mph) and you'll have to teach cars they're supposed
| to just be patient and slow down if they can't overtake.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciclovia_Povoa_Varz
| im.jpg [2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gonzaga
| _ciclovia.jpg [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fiets
| strook_Herenweg_Oudo...
| siva7 wrote:
| You can't teach drivers such a thing, they still will be
| impatient. That's why cars and cyclers can't peacefully
| coexist on the same lane, another solution is needed.
| II2II wrote:
| If you're talking about sidewalks with separated pedestrian
| and cyclist traffic, some bike lanes are effectively that
| (e.g. raised to sidewalk level, left turn boxes on the
| right instead of forcing bikes to cut across traffic). They
| don't seem to be very common. Perhaps it's because it is a
| newer idea that people are unfamiliar with or maybe it is
| because it is less expensive to take some space from
| oversized lanes than it is to widen sidewalks.
| mertd wrote:
| Pedestrians can be unpredictable and distracted. They
| should have their own space not shared with any vehicle for
| their own safety.
| abruzzi wrote:
| Definitly a good question, given that pedal bikes exist in
| a grey area of traffic definitions in many areas, but I
| will say in my area (small urban area of 150k population)
| 95% of bike lanes are in areas without sidewalks, just dirt
| shoulders.
| rkangel wrote:
| Because it changes the right of way and so you have to stop
| start more than you would otherwise.
|
| This has been done in places in Cambridge UK (a reasonably
| bicycle friendly city). If your cycle lane is part of the
| road you can act like a car does - you get to ignore
| turnings because anyone joining the road has to give way as
| per normal. If you're on the pavement though, you're like a
| pedestrian - every turn off is a road you have to cross.
| Even if there isn't any traffic you have to slow down
| enough to look and as a cyclist what you want is constant
| speed.
|
| If you can't quite see what I'm talking about aee this
| example from Milton Road:
| http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/images/milton-road-1.jpg The
| 'main' road is the one going into and out of the picture
| with cars on, and the image pictures a junction. You can
| see where the cycle lane 'crosses' the joining road and how
| you'd have to look for traffic (even ignoring the bump down
| and up that messes with a nice cadence).
|
| (from this blog post I found via Google:
| http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/anti-social-cycling-north-
| cambridge...).
| mcntsh wrote:
| This is exactly how it's done in Berlin and for the most
| part it works perfectly fine.
| scoofy wrote:
| Absolutely.
| chapium wrote:
| Bike lanes, as implemented in the US are a gift to cars and
| are down right dangerous. They communicate to drivers that
| bikes are designated to a lane when they are not. This is the
| style of lane than runs along the left side of the road with
| parking on the outside. They are designed with minimal buffer
| space (if any) and are right in the doorzone. What use is a
| bikelane that can be doored? Also, if a driver wants to make
| a right-hand turn, they must turn through a bikelane that is
| in a straight line direction. How does that make sense? We
| don't put our turn lanes for cars to cut across straight
| lanes.
|
| Bikelanes also are mostly just there (in practice) for
| rideshare services and delivery services to drop off goods.
| This isn't necessarily a bad thing, given the problems with
| right turns and doorings mentioned earlier. It is problematic
| in name however, but because new cyclists treat them as
| actual bike lanes and are just gambling with the probability
| of eventionally getting hit.
|
| We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting money
| into this garbage is a mistake.
| ascar wrote:
| In Bavaria we have most bike lanes as part of the sidewalk.
| They are clearly indicated and separated from the
| pedestrian zone by a 2-3cm drop. Eliminates most problems
| with cars. However, often the problem with the doors for
| side parking cars persists for the car's passenger side,
| which makes it less frequent but more likely that the
| person opening the door didn't look.
| aix1 wrote:
| > In Bavaria we have most bike lanes as part of the
| sidewalk.
|
| From my experience (in the UK) how usable those lanes are
| depends hugely on pedestrian discipline. There's one of
| those running alongside the seafront in Brighton that in
| my experience works well. The same style of lane that
| I've seen in and around London generally doesn't work as
| well: there are often pedestrians on the wrong side, not
| infrequently looking into their phones and/or wearing
| headphones.
|
| What makes matters worse is that in the UK the rules are
| asymmetric: while it's an offence for a cyclists to go on
| the pedestrian side, there are no rules preventing
| pedestrians from walking on the cycle path (source: [1]).
|
| [1] http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/
| corty wrote:
| The solution is to make pedestrians afraid of stepping
| into the bike lane. Pass them quickly, closely and
| surprisingly, if they run into something in the process
| all the better.
| jounker wrote:
| ^^^This^^^
| aix1 wrote:
| I can't tell whether you're being serious, but sadly
| there's indeed quite a lot of this us-vs-them and people
| behaving like arseholes to each other.
|
| Not to mention that, in my jurisdiction, if this sort of
| behaviour led to injury or damage to property, the
| cyclist would almost certainly be found to be at fault,
| at least partially.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Eliminates most problems with cars.
|
| Except now every street crossing becomes a death trap
| because you're outside the cone of visual awareness of
| drivers.
| petre wrote:
| That's taking space from pedestrians instead of cars. I
| always see joggers, kids with rollerskates and moms with
| prams on these _sidewalk_ bike lanes. Side parking and
| bike lanes cannot cohexist on the same side of the road
| without wasting another 3 ft of space for a door zone.
| Some of the useful bike lanes are raised a bit like a
| mini sidewalk separate from the pedestrian sidewalk or
| have a physical separator like bumpers.
| zamfi wrote:
| Obviously I can't speak to your own personal experience,
| but I've done a surprising amount of biking on streets that
| have _added_ bikes lanes, and my experience is that the
| bike lanes tend to improve my subjective experience of
| biking on those streets substantially. Many of those
| streets, to be fair, have bike lines that are shifted 3+
| feet away from the parking lane, with stripes to indicate
| the door zone -- which is a huge benefit, frankly, over the
| streets that don 't have this. Another change that I'm 100%
| in favor of is the removal of a traffic lane to allow this:
| this often enables right-turns to be explicitly marked as
| crossing a bike lane, and drivers tend to be more careful
| there (again, just my experience).
|
| I've also biked on streets that became "super sharrow"
| streets: one lane striped with a giant green stripe that
| supposedly provides a big visual indicator that a bike can
| use the full lane. This was terrible.
|
| > We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting
| money into this garbage is a mistake.
|
| What bike infrastructure would you like to see, if not bike
| lanes?
| jfim wrote:
| > What bike infrastructure would you like to see, if not
| bike lanes?
|
| Actually, let me show you my commute when I was a student
| several years ago. This is in North America.
|
| 1. Walk to the local park
| (https://goo.gl/maps/CdCinYAp24MgCBBm7)
|
| 2. Grab a bicycle from the local bike sharing system
| (https://goo.gl/maps/46vzmXzx5CPSPFRE9)
|
| 3. Bike a minute to the bike path
| (https://goo.gl/maps/gpkXGcXxMHYH4epn7)
|
| 4. Hop on a bike path, wave to the other cyclists
| (https://goo.gl/maps/JiRSC6yhwqanRn1K7)
|
| 5. Bike some more (https://goo.gl/maps/jvSoQQ2rmB1F2NNo8)
|
| 6. And then some more
| (https://goo.gl/maps/u2WyLVGvJBfNL5718)
|
| 7. And then even more
| (https://goo.gl/maps/LcxSoUZ9BzgsovU97)
|
| 8. Exit the bike path
| (https://goo.gl/maps/AyqzZUuo89osSEPf6)
|
| 9. Bike on surface streets, sharing the street
| (https://goo.gl/maps/NNyhCU9gZEXVxk5D8)
|
| 10. Arrive at destination, drop off bike at the bike
| sharing system dock
| (https://goo.gl/maps/qCy5GESLL4AxHuL99)
|
| That's an example of good bike infrastructure. For the
| parts where bikes interact with cars on low speed
| streets, the streets are either narrow so that cars drive
| slowly, or there is another lane for cars to pass bikes
| easily.
|
| Note the lack of painted lanes; bikes and cars share the
| street, and cars pass bikes whenever it's safe to do so.
| Also note that in most of these street views
| perspectives, you can pan the camera and see other people
| biking.
| chapium wrote:
| I think decreasing parking and providing a central lane
| for cars to pass makes a lot of sense. Segregating cycle
| traffic creates dangerous intersections.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Segregating cycle traffic _can_ create dangerous
| intersections, but well designed intersections do not.
| For example, you can give the cycle lane its own light
| phase. There is no question that well designed segregated
| infrastructure is safer than no cycle infrastructure at
| all.
| jfim wrote:
| > Many of those streets, to be fair, have bike lines that
| are shifted 3+ feet away from the parking lane, with
| stripes to indicate the door zone
|
| That sounds pretty great. Unfortunately in my area the
| bike lanes are straight into the door zone (see for
| example https://goo.gl/maps/nMnKZEVZduEfkups8) and this
| seems to be the general design for bike lanes in the
| South Bay.
|
| In fact, the city of Sunnyvale's own bike map [0] says to
| avoid the four feet door zone, yet the bike lane is less
| than 4 feet wide and straight in the door zone.
|
| It's frustrating. You'd think they'd favor the safety of
| the unprotected squishy humans over the ones in two ton
| metal boxes, but it seems like the opposite most of the
| time.
|
| [0] https://sunnyvale.ca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.a
| spx?Blo...
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually in Germany bike lanes are typically on the other
| side next to the sidewalk which in my experience is much
| more dangerous. It gives the indication to cars that
| bikes are more like pedestrians, they get often
| overlooked at intersections, dooring is an even bigger
| issue, because people getting out the car to the street
| side tend to least look back to avoid cars coming and
| next to the sidewalk one also has to deal with
| pedestrians who don't pay attention.
|
| In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are as
| a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have clear
| markings, but you should always be in sight of drivers
| IMO, as an active participant in traffic.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Bike lanes where traffic has priority when turning across
| are a disaster:
|
| - Gives cyclist false sense of security, since they need
| to yield to vehicles turning across "their lane"
|
| - Little notice given to drivers that they need to take
| care, since they have right of way
|
| - Cyclists have to stop at every side road, which can
| make taking the bike path as slow as walking
|
| Experience cyclists won't use them and novice cyclists
| are given an unsafe and slow route; they will drive
| instead. What a waste of public funds.
|
| A better solution, as seen in NL and some parts of
| London, is to make the motorist give way or even remove
| the vehicle entrance entirely. The transport mix you get
| is the transport mix you build for.
| jfim wrote:
| > In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are
| as a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have
| clear markings, but you should always be in sight of
| drivers IMO, as an active participant in traffic.
|
| I definitely agree with you that people on bikes should
| be in the way of cars because that's what gives them the
| most visibility, but I'd disagree with the marking parts.
| See the commute post I have a little bit below, the only
| markings on that commute on streets are a few sharrows,
| no bike lanes at all.
|
| What needs to happen is for bikes to be perceived as slow
| moving vehicles, not unlike tractors in rural areas.
| People overtake the tractors as soon as it's safe to do
| so and don't honk at them. That happens as soon as there
| is enough of a critical mass of people on bikes on
| streets.
| billfruit wrote:
| Is dockless app based bike sharing popular in US cities?
| chapium wrote:
| No, but dock based ones are.
| lmm wrote:
| > What bike infrastructure would you like to see, if not
| bike lanes?
|
| Junctions are where drivers tend to kill cyclists, so
| junction improvements are far more effective than
| anything along the "normal" road. Bike boxes and,
| ideally, dedicated light phases for bikes help far more
| than lanes.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| In our hometown, a big project was just finished where
| most busy intersections were replaced with bike tunnels.
| It was an expensive project, but now that it's finished
| it saves a lot of time in the morning commute for both
| cyclists and drivers.
| komali2 wrote:
| > dedicated light phases for bikes help far more than
| lanes.
|
| We have that in SF and in the year before COVID I
| basically spent every morning commute berating at least
| one person that tried to cross in front of me on a bike-
| only light. It's _really_ hard for Americans to give up
| the right-turn-on-red.
|
| In NYC they just hand out tickets like candy to people
| who don't know that right-turn-on-red is illegal through
| essentially the whole city. In 2019 though I didn't see
| any enforcement at all of bike-protection lights and
| lanes.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| This is the perfect use-case for cameras. Here in .nl you
| dont get a ticket from a police officer. The camera takes
| the picture and the fine is there in your mailbox the
| next week ;-)
| itsbrass wrote:
| This echoes a lot of my feelings about bike lanes, do you
| have any references to traffic studies or the like showing
| that these kinds of lanes are, indeed, more dangerous?
|
| I'd be especially curious to know what the good
| alternatives are.
|
| IIRC physical dividers like reflector poles actually do
| make bike lanes safer, and sharrows are mixed on whether or
| not they make lanes more effective.
| scoofy wrote:
| >I'd be especially curious to know what the good
| alternatives are.
|
| Open Streets: https://openstreetsproject.org/
| chapium wrote:
| Here's a video that illustrates my point better than what
| I commented, and there are some studies cited in the
| description which validate my admittedly anecdotal
| experience.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fztvoxj_pds
| jimt1234 wrote:
| THIS ^^^. My two-cents: 90% of recent "bike lane"
| implementations in my area and the whole "share the road"
| concept is bullshit. This is just aggravating drivers and
| giving a false sense of safety to bicyclists. Cars and
| bicycles don't mix.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| In the US they're implemented in a ham-fisted way just to
| get federal ISTEA money for minimal effort. 90% of the
| lanes around me added in the last 10 years are unusable
| because they are broken by dangerous safety compromises.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yeah, that kind of lane sucks. Cities need to face it - the
| bike lanes need dedicated space designed in when building
| or upgrading a road, or you need to _remove parking spaces
| entirely_. My city (in Australia) has been doing a lot of
| both recently. In the inner city, nobody misses the loss of
| street parking up one side of major thoroughfares (you can
| fit a bike lane with both directions in the space on one
| side of the road) - it was extremely unlikely to get a park
| so you usually had to pay to park in an underground /multi-
| storey car park anyway. Removing the parking means you can
| have a properly separated lane (they have plastic bumper
| things in like 30 cm separated double lines, painted green
| so it's obvious what it is and that you can't legally pull
| into it or park over it) and it's great. They've even put
| push buttons to signal you're there for the traffic lights.
| riatin wrote:
| I assume this is Sydney? I love the work the council have
| done to the CBD recently - I wish they'd emulate what
| they did to George St all over the city centre.
| stephen_g wrote:
| No, Brisbane actually, but I have heard some good things
| about Sydney's from a cycling group that reports on
| things happening locally but every week mentions a
| project from elsewhere in the country (Space for Cycling
| Brisbane).
|
| These are some of the fist ones through the CBD -
| https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-and-
| transport/roads-... - As part of this they closed a major
| bridge in the middle of the city (Victoria Bridge over to
| South Bank) to road traffic. Before it was two bus-only
| lanes and two car lanes, but now it's three bus lanes and
| a separated bikeway.
|
| They're also building four bridges over the river
| dedicated to cycle and pedestrian to link up different
| bike routes, and the State Government has been doing some
| good work with their 'Veloway' next to the M3 highway. A
| lot of intersection and road upgrades (and new roads) are
| starting to add separated bike paths too, like the
| overhauled Kingsford Smith Drive that finished recently.
| cheschire wrote:
| you would appreciate the bike lanes near the capital
| building then. https://goo.gl/maps/9AGskMFB3GjQ1ErZ7
| arglebarglegar wrote:
| You're not talking about protected bike lanes, which I
| think is an important distinction.
|
| Traffic travels too fast in the US, and I do not want to
| share roads with cars going 40+ mph
| rtpg wrote:
| I get your complaints but in a lot of areas the alternative
| to the painted-on lane is to have no lane at all, and
| having the lane at least establishes a principle. I feel
| safer in it, and cars in my area tend to take it seriously.
|
| I don't think there's really a solution to the turning
| problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every
| intersection for cars/bikes. I'm hopeful that newer cars'
| safety features help to fight this back (I would also like
| people to, yknow, pay attention when driving).
|
| My principle (especially after getting a drivers license
| and realizing how little visibility one actually has while
| driving) is to not listen to music (so I can actually hear
| cars etc) and to basically slow down at every interesection
| that has even a bit of doubt. It's annoying but at least
| I'm not rolling the dice on every intersection (or at least
| not as much)
| lmm wrote:
| > I get your complaints but in a lot of areas the
| alternative to the painted-on lane is to have no lane at
| all, and having the lane at least establishes a
| principle.
|
| It establishes the wrong principle - it makes drivers
| feel entitled to exclude cyclists from the main road
| lanes. A bike lane that isn't wide enough, isn't
| adequately maintained (sweeping, filling potholes...),
| leads to blind corners, or just dumps you out into the
| main lanes at junctions, is worse than useless - it
| actively makes cycling more dangerous, because drivers
| feel no need to share the main road lanes.
|
| > I don't think there's really a solution to the turning
| problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every
| intersection for cars/bikes.
|
| The solution is to have bikes be part of the main traffic
| stream at that point. If you have a bike box at the front
| of the queueing area, and ideally a bike phase on the
| lights, that can help a lot.
| porknubbins wrote:
| I ride in bike lanes, road sides and sometimes in the
| middle of the lane. When I started cycling seriously I
| tried to go full vehicular cycling, but a lot of the time
| it endangered more than it helped and made drivers angry.
| 10K+ miles later the one thing I've learned is not to be
| dogmatic, there is no one safest way to ride for all
| roads and environments. Some roads are way better with
| bike lanes and some bike lanes are terrible. I just do
| whatever seems safest.
| lmm wrote:
| I've ridden a similar distance and I've actively given up
| on ever using bike lanes except for lanes that I
| specifically know are properly laid out and maintained,
| or a handful of places that do decent lanes (the
| Netherlands, London post-2010). It's just far too common
| for a bike lane to end up being a trap, and you have no
| way of knowing it's going to dump you into a blind corner
| / high kerb / unavoidable debris / muddy field / ...
| until it's too late. I agree with doing what seems
| safest, but you simply can't trust an unknown bike lane,
| so using one is just too high risk.
| einpoklum wrote:
| It's a perfectly fine principle when bike lanes are
| universal.
|
| In the Netherlands, for example (well, much of the
| Netherlands, I haven't been everywhere), the bikes are on
| the bike lanes, the cars are on the car lanes, and that's
| that. You have no motivation to go on the car lanes
| (except on small alleys with no lanes), since the bike
| lanes just get you wherever you want to go.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| There's only no choice in a lot of areas if you accept as
| axiomatic that we must have street level parking. While
| that's a framing that anti-bike advocates like, we could
| also decide to make driving and parking harder in order
| to make other, more efficient forms of transit better.
|
| Personally I'd argue that it's extremely odd that we
| dedicate so much public space for people to leave their
| private property laying around.
| rtpg wrote:
| I'm for reducing the number of cars on the road, but I do
| think that street parking is already a pretty big step up
| from the alternative of like huge parking lots.
|
| And like for deliveries... what do you want people to do?
| Not stop in front of the place they are delivering?
|
| If there's an argument for it being a public space, it's
| also a public space for things like deliveries, dropping
| people off, etc. "People should be more careful" is a
| glib thing to say for this stuff, and I think we should
| make improvements to things, but if we're talking about
| public space, cyclists are _also_ not the only thing on
| the road and accomodations can be made for stuff like
| delivery
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| >And like for deliveries... what do you want people to
| do? Not stop in front of the place they are delivering?
|
| When you make a delivery, do you just stop dead in the
| middle of the lane you were driving on?
|
| If yes, please proceed.
|
| If not, why not? Don't you want to stop in front of the
| place you are delivering to? Why do you think that it is
| ok to completely block bicycle lane for the same purpose,
| but it's not ok to block a car lane? For an extra point,
| assume the car lane is a single-lane one-way road, and
| the delivery takes 5 minutes.
| rtpg wrote:
| Where I live, there are many "1.5 lane" roads. Roads that
| are both ways, but there's not _that_ much space.
| Sometimes people pull over. You then have to drive around
| people.
|
| So, yes, you stop "in the car lane" and it affects
| people.
|
| There are also times where you change lanes because of
| obstructions. Just like intersections, stop lights, so
| many things that prevent the "just speed right ahead
| without any concern in the world" use case.
|
| There are safety reasons for isolating bike/pedestrian
| traffic. But acting like it's uniquely unfair to bikes to
| have any form of obstruction... this is what roads are.
| Shared area for movement.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Good to hear! I wonder how car drivers would react if an
| uber delivery guy would park a bicycle in the car lane
| next to a bicycle lane to make a delivery.
|
| And while I do agree that it isn't uniquely unfair for
| bicycles, it seemes that when there is no isolation
| between a car lane and a bicycle lane, during the busy
| hours there is a random car, van, taxi parked every 30-50
| meters. (Well, used to be, 2 years ago)
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > And like for deliveries... what do you want people to
| do? Not stop in front of the place they are delivering?
|
| Where do you live where the parallel parking spots in
| front of businesses are always open? Where I've lived
| things like UPS will just stop in the road if necessary,
| and other cars will go around.
|
| Deliveries in areas without lots of parallel parking is a
| solved problem; we don't need to pretend like reducing or
| eliminating street level parking will have unknown
| impacts on things like delivery vehicles.
| TomVDB wrote:
| I've noticed in various places in the Bay Area that new and
| improved bike lanes are being added.
|
| A good example is a Bubb Rd, the part north of McClellan, in
| Cupertino (which has a bunch of Apple offices): much improved
| signalization and there's now a bumper divider between the
| car and bike lane, making it very safe.
|
| They also added much improved commuter bus access islands.
|
| This is just one example. There are others. I don't know if
| it's because of COVID or because these things were already
| planned, but the lack of usual commuter and school traffic
| definitely made it easier to do the work.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > A good example is a Bubb Rd, the part north of McClellan,
| in Cupertino (which has a bunch of Apple offices): much
| improved signalization and there's now a bumper divider
| between the car and bike lane, making it very safe.
|
| Yeah, sadly a kid died on that stretch a few years back --
| likely why they added the new improved bike lane.
| Swizec wrote:
| > if it feels too dangerous taking it out on the roads
| sharing lanes with these reckless/distracted/intoxicated
| drivers
|
| As a motorcyclist and former electric skateboard rider,
| welcome! Everyone is trying to kill you and it's always your
| fault.
|
| Cemeteries are full of people who had right of way.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Am a current cyclist and eskate rider, and I also bike on
| (not busy) roads with my young kids. Nothing I hate more
| than being honked- or yelled-at to "just go" when I have
| the right of way but am exercising an abundance of caution
| to make absolutely certain I'm not about to get ploughed by
| a car which may or may not come to a stop.
| II2II wrote:
| My area has the opposite problem: motorists offering to
| let cyclists go when they have the right of way. It's
| generous of them to make such an offer, but they don't
| seem to realize that the safest thing for a cyclist to do
| is follow the same rules as motorists when they are
| cycling in traffic.
|
| (Of course my area also has reckless motorists who don't
| respect the rules of the road, but they seem to believe
| they are above the law whether they are interacting with
| cyclists or other motorists.)
| jamil7 wrote:
| This also drives me crazy, it's nice of them but ends up
| complicating an already tricky turn or crossing or
| something else. The worst is when they do it in a
| situation where there's more than one lane and I
| literally can't see or expect cars in the other lane to
| also stop / slow down for me.
| aix1 wrote:
| Any good strategies for these types of encounters (esp.
| when visibility is poor), other than thanking them but
| insistently waving them on?
| II2II wrote:
| On left turns, I do a shoulder check right as the light
| turns green. People seem to be less inclined to wave
| cyclists through and less inclined to hesitate thinking
| the cyclist is going to dart through if the cyclist isn't
| looking in their direction.
| jamil7 wrote:
| > other than thanking them but insistently waving them
| on?
|
| Unfortunately not, that's basically my strategy.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Yeah, an awful lot of drivers seem to forget that1 I have
| the _right_ to the entire lane, even as a cyclist. If you
| don 't like it, you can use the other lane, if there is
| one, to go around me. If there isn't -- tough! Am if I
| _am_ occupying the entire lane, there is almost certainly
| a _reason_ for it -- like an upcoming left or because
| there isn 't sufficient room for you to pass. Because if
| there weren't, fighting with a car is not high on my list
| of priorities: I'd much rather scootch over, give you
| room to get by so you can speed of into the sunset and I
| can have an empty road to myself.
|
| 1IANAL; in the jurisdiction I'm in, but my understanding
| is that this is common
| nicoburns wrote:
| That's definitely the law here in the UK, although FWIW
| most of the time I don't feel the need to occupy the
| whole lane. Cars generally pass _reasonably_ safely here,
| plus there generally isn 't another lane on the kind of
| road I'd be cycling on.
| steerablesafe wrote:
| I go into roundabouts while occupying a full lane, unless
| I use the first exit/turn left.
| aix1 wrote:
| In the UK you're not only _allowed_ to take the whole
| lane, the Department for Transport (through Bikeability)
| calls this the _primary road position_ for cyclists. The
| guidance is that this should be the default, with the
| secondary position (~1m to the left) only used when the
| road is wide and the rider is certain that keeping to the
| left wouldn 't compromise their safety.
|
| https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/cycletraining/article/c
| t20...
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _although FWIW most of the time I don 't feel the need
| to occupy the whole lane._
|
| Yeah, I perhaps should have made it clear that occupying
| a full lane is something I do probably <2% of the time.
| Not very often, and for similar reasons to the rest of
| the comment: I don't really want to have to deal with
| cars, and if I can stay right and let them by, I will.
|
| I'm in America, so it depends on the road; where we have
| unprotected bike lanes, then I'm in that & there's
| passing room, but too often there are "sharrows" where
| there really isn't a good deal of room for passing. Then
| it's very situational. (Usually the car taking up part of
| an oncoming lane as they pass.)
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Yeah. I was on my eskate on a 4-lane road recently,
| riding 1m out from the curb due to gravel and debris
| (killer for those tiny wheels), and I had a car honking
| at me to get out of the way even when there was a whole
| other lane to change into!
|
| He eventually did a half lane change, buzzing me as he
| went by, then got stuck at the next red light while I
| caught up. Ridiculous.
| ian-g wrote:
| Hilariously, sometimes I feel most comfortable on a bike in
| the road when I'm being a slight bit unsafe.
|
| If I keep to the edge of the lane folks pass by me really
| close. If I'm going back and forth a bit and taking a whole
| lane up, cars give me the entire lane. It's wonderful
| cataphract wrote:
| IMO the best is to occupy the center of the line to
| improve your visibility (especially when the road bends
| right) and to give the cars some incentive to slow down
| and overtake more on the left and then move closer to the
| right edge when they're actually overtaking you. This
| breaks down if the traffic is too heavy though.
|
| The exception is on left bends. There it's best to stay
| on the right, for three reasons: better visibility, you
| can have a straighter trajectory with a higher speed and
| if there is only one lane in each direction, cars going
| too fast in the opposite direction may cross into your
| lane.
| walshemj wrote:
| Exactly don't ride in the Gutter and also don't under
| take stopped traffic aggressively
| vanattab wrote:
| What does under take stopped traffic mean?
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Overtaking, but on the outside lane instead of the inside
| lane.
| Haegin wrote:
| If you're zooming past cars in traffic and the driver can
| open the door and hit you, you're overtaking. If the
| passenger can hit you, you're undertaking.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Take the lane! https://cyclingsavvy.org/road-cycling/
| canadianfella wrote:
| Why is that hilarious?
| de_keyboard wrote:
| One example in the UK: https://www.bikeisbest.com/partners
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Just ride on the sidewalk like a normal person.
| manachar wrote:
| Not just bike lanes, but urban/suburban planning based on
| pedestrian and bicycle traffic.
|
| Watching subdivisions going in with utterly unfriendly
| approaches to people who want to get around with anything but
| a car is horrific to me.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| You are right that we need local bike shops but I don't think
| we need more major chain shops. Admittedly a chain shop is
| better than NO shop at all if that's what you're dealing with
| in your area. In Philly, the Performance bike shop went out of
| business while many of the smaller independent shops have
| survived.
|
| The good news is that bicycle fashion has tended towards more
| "city bikes" in the last decade or so. These have fewer frills
| and thus are simpler (== more durable) and also more
| maintainable by someone who is willing to learn the basics. The
| "basics" would be lube, fixing flats, brake maintenance and
| simple shifter adjustments. I think that's better than the
| earlier trends of "mountain bikes" with too many parts and
| stuff that's too hard to adjust for people without enough
| tools.
| ian-g wrote:
| God, that maintenance thing is really a huge factor.
|
| I used to be a bike tech. Somebody ordering a $5000 mountain
| bike might take a full day to put together. But if you gave
| me $5000 in cruiser bikes, I could have them all put together
| well and get some maintenance done. I really loathe how
| cruisers look, but goddamn they're some of the sturdiest
| pieces of junk I've ever worked on
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Yeah, I am sure they are.
|
| I was actually thinking more of crappy $800 50lb "mountain
| bikes" with those cheap-ass all-plastic grip shifters and
| shitty "suspension" forks VERSUS an $800 basic city bike
| with low-end Shimano internal gear hub (or even single-
| speed).
|
| I think many folks have developed a taste for actual
| practicality in their cycling needs and this is a good
| thing.
| ian-g wrote:
| Oh definitely. Going back to that awful hideous cruiser.
| I hate it so much. But if you have a bad back, that's the
| bike for you no question. You sit upright and you can add
| a rack for pannier bags. Upright posture, no weight
| there.
|
| It's an excellent design ergonomically speaking
| mtnGoat wrote:
| one of the bike stores in my town was bought by trek, now you
| can only buy expensive parts there. they dont sell anything
| low end or for beginners. the cheapest kids bike they sell
| was $200, lowest priced helmet was $80.
| DC-3 wrote:
| > the cheapest kids bike they sell was $200
|
| To be honest this is not an unreasonable bottom-end price.
| If your budget for a bicycle is lower than this you are
| better off looking at buying second-hand.
| xnyan wrote:
| It's not a reasonable bottom end because you can sell a
| viable kids bike for far less, and many people even in a
| wealthy nation like the US simply don't have hundreds of
| dollars to spend on a bike that will quickly become too
| small to use.
|
| I agree with you that used is a better value, but Walmart
| will sell you a kid'a bike for a quarter of that price
| that is perfectly fit for many use cases. It will weigh
| more, be less durable and serviceable but if you're
| looking for something that will be used to go around your
| 1/5 of a mile street a few times a week (a common kids
| bike use case) it's fine.
| jonfw wrote:
| It would be much better for society overall to buy and
| sell secondhand, high quality, serviceable bikes than for
| everybody to buy a junk bike which is later trashed.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The cost structure of an LBS isn't the same as Wal-Mart.
| You can't compare pricing equitably because the latter
| has a disproportionate influence over their suppliers.
| Also physical hard goods aren't the same as electronics.
| Their material inputs are always increasing in cost.
| Compare to prices these things sold for 40 years ago. A
| $50 kids bike in 1980 should by rights cost $160 today
| and they were never even that cheap back then. That Wal-
| Mart can sell a bike shaped object for $50 without any
| apparent concern for inflationary pressure is more
| indicative of significant compromises on build quality.
| The bicycle industry has an issue with ridiculous gouging
| on the mid/high end but the bottom end is reasonable if
| you don't set unrealistic expectations.
| scoofy wrote:
| Look, I mean, I totally agree with you, but we're living in
| this system, and I'm terrified of the what happened to the
| bookstore industry happening to the local bike shop industry.
|
| You look at the towns that still have quality book stores.
| You have a few cities that have thriving bookstores: Boston
| (likely because of students) and SF (likely because of
| cultural nostalgia and real estate laws, but these are now
| failing). You then have the consolidation model, where cities
| have one good bookstore that can compete against amazon: NYC
| (The Strand), Austin (Bookpeople), Portland (Powell's).
|
| My point is that i would rather the cities follow this
| consolidation model than fail. You have one, trusted brand
| within the town, whose entire business model is built on
| quality and trust, because all parties know there's a cheaper
| alternative. This is where performance bikes failed, as they
| sacrificed quality service for price competitiveness. I was
| actively advising my friends to avoid their mechanics like
| the plague. The Trek shop seems to be moving in the other
| direction, as a boutique, with reasonably trusted service, so
| long as your using their products and, like apple, the added
| cost premium they charge.
|
| This is not idealism, this is a practical model based on what
| is honestly a sense of fatalism. The automobile system we
| have is a path-dependent clusterfuck, and we have to be, not
| just willing, but be happy to take less than ideal outcomes
| to fight for real alternatives.
| dheera wrote:
| Here's the other side of the story.
|
| For a long time I was a student (yes, I did a PhD). I didn't
| have the cash for local bike shops.
|
| Buying and supporting local is a luxury for the rich. I could
| not afford the $600 bikes they were selling. I bought $150 used
| bikes on Craigslist and repaired them myself. And no, not with
| parts from the bike shop. I could get the same parts at half
| price online, including from Amazon. Usually I could tune up a
| $150 bike for another $25 in parts and that's a lot cheaper
| than $600.
|
| If local bike shops want my business, and pretty much the
| business of students in general, they need to get with the beat
| and be cheaper than Amazon.
|
| Oh btw -- last week I changed my bike pedals for one that I got
| on Amazon for $20. I have never seen a bike shop sell such good
| pedals at this price point. I have never even seen a bike shop
| sell this brand ("ROCKBROS"). They usually sell some super
| expensive brand like Shimano only. They also seem to have
| politics against selling competing brands sometimes, and Amazon
| has none of that bullcrap, you see all the brands and you buy
| the best.
| stefan_ wrote:
| If it's got very fancy colors it's a shitty plastic throwaway
| product. Shimano pedals are not fancy but they are cheap for
| what they are and built to survive a nuclear war.
| dheera wrote:
| It has fancy colors and made of anodized aluminum. There is
| zero plastic in it.
| DC-3 wrote:
| Looks like you've gotten a good product for your use
| case. But flat pedals like that are generally intended
| for mountain bikes and I bet I know which of those two
| products is more likely to shatter into pieces if it
| glances off a rock.
| zwieback wrote:
| Agreed. Bike shop business models are problematic and it's
| worth shopping around. My local shops sell a lot of stuff at
| reasonable prices and we have 4 shops in walking distance of
| each other so there's some competition but at times it feels
| like being ripped off. And it feels worse being ripped off by
| your neighbor somehow. When that happens I don't feel bad
| about getting stuff from nashbar or similar.
|
| Pedals are a good example, ridiculously overpriced at the
| shops. Luckily we have a non-profit called "The Bike
| Collective" that strips donated bikes and sells parts super
| cheap, they also help with repairs.
| scoofy wrote:
| >Buying and supporting local is a luxury for the rich.
|
| This is extremely myopic. The entire point of cycling-as-
| transit, is that, as an investment, it's _by far_ the most
| inexpensive alternative. If you 're under the assumption that
| you'll already have a car, or free access to transit, or live
| on campus, then I see your argument. However, cycling _as an
| alternative to these things_ is wildly, wildly inexpensive,
| even factoring in bikes that cost thousands of dollars.
|
| The cost of luxuriously maintaining a bicycle is about
| $100-$200 annually. The cost of maintaining an automobile is
| about $8000 annually, it's just that the costs are broken up
| into micropayments on things like fuel or hiding in the
| depreciation.
| dheera wrote:
| First of all I didn't own a car. You're right that it's
| several thousand dollars annually and that's why I didn't
| own a car.
|
| > The cost of luxuriously maintaining a bicycle is about
| $100-$200 annually
|
| That's if you fix it yourself. I spent <$100/year on
| maintaining my bike.
|
| Changing brake pads at a bike shop cost upwards of $60.
| Wheel truing, probably >$200. Attempting to buy brake pads
| and refusing brake pad changing service usually involved a
| stupid long conversation with them to convince them you
| didn't need service, and they would price gouge you on the
| brake pads. With Amazon it cost me a grand total of $8 for
| the new pads, shipping included, and not having to convince
| anyone that I'm competent at fixing my own bicycle.
|
| I once had a pedal stuck in my crank and just needed a
| longer wrench with more leverage to get it out. Damn bike
| shop wouldn't sell me the wrench. They wanted to do it
| themselves and charged me fucking $40 for TWO MINUTES of
| work. WTF. Needless to say I never visited that shop again.
| tlear wrote:
| You are under impression that your skill in fixing things
| is free. Vast majority of people can not change break
| pads, can not understand a youtube video explaining how,
| can not oil a chain, can not fix a flat. Ability to
| problem solve and fix things is how a trade person of
| handyman can make very good money, as even using a stud
| finder and putting a screw in the wall is arcane magic to
| lots of people.
|
| This is tragic but this is current state of western
| civilization. Bring Shop back to school.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Local bike shops aren't exactly rolling in dough. If you
| ask your local car mechanic how much they'd charge to
| remove a stuck bolt you'll also encounter a labor minimum
| that'll be a lot more than $40.
| dheera wrote:
| Sure, but that's not really my problem. I'm not rolling
| in dough either, and that's why I don't usually use local
| bike shops.
|
| If they want my business, they need to match what I can
| afford _somehow_.
| Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 wrote:
| I bought a bike last year. I've never seen anyone as
| unhelpful as the staff there. I even decided to start
| servicing more complicated parts (fork/shock) myself to
| avoid visiting places like this. Bay Area prices for
| labor are insane. Maybe I'll give wheels for truing
| somewhere local since it's tedious and I don't have
| _that_ much time.
|
| On the other hand I've lived in places where truing
| wheels, servicing suspension fork and other regular
| servicing was really worth it. Prices were good, wait
| (1-2 weeks in the summer) decent and you were sure that
| they did a good job. No screwing around just to have the
| customer get wheel out of true 1-2 weeks later, they'd
| rather tell me to replace the spokes when needed instead
| of doing a crappy job. Whatever needed to be replaced
| (rotor, brake pads etc.) during the service was sold at
| online-like prices.
|
| I completely understand that plenty of local bike stores
| offer no value to anyone who can do basic maintenance. I
| hope they go bankrupt as early as possible. I'm not
| scared I'll run out of good bike stores. There's plenty
| of complicated tech that requires good technician.
| E-bikes and other trend also help.
| eythian wrote:
| Maybe you need a better shop? A couple of weeks back I
| broke a couple of spokes (finally found the weight limit
| of a Gazelle Heavy Duty NL bike - probably about 200kg of
| people), they fixed the spokes, realigned the wheel, and
| replaced the chain for EUR35.
| scoofy wrote:
| Again... I don't care about how much you, or I, spend on
| bikes. I'm a nerd, I do most of the work myself. You seem
| like that too.
|
| I'm talking about cost _in relation to alternatives_. If
| the cost in relation to alternatives is low, then you can
| easily afford luxurious maintenance, as you 'd be
| spending the same money, and lots more, paying for any
| alternative.
| dheera wrote:
| Well yes, if the alternatives are viable.
|
| For someone on grad student income, owning a car is
| largely not viable, it's not even an alternative that is
| remotely in sight.
| aix1 wrote:
| > I have never even seen a bike shop sell this brand
| ("ROCKBROS").
|
| RockBros is a Chinese brand. I have a few of their parts and
| in my experience they're pretty well made.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Exactly. I support local businesses if they're reasonable. I
| get that rent and everything can add a bit to the cost. But
| if they're just greedy scam artists asking 2-3x the price you
| can get online for everything, expecting your charity just
| for being local, then I won't shed a tear when they go
| bankrupt.
| JCharante wrote:
| The problem is that there's two types of people who ride
| bikes.
|
| Commuters who want to spend less than $200 on just something
| to get them moving, parents riding with their kids are also
| here.
|
| Cyclists who spent 10-20-40 hours per week on a bike. For a
| hobby that you spend 60hr/mo on it's reasonable to spend
| $1300 on an entry level road bike and much more as you
| progress. Especially because it's good for your health.
|
| Obviously there's money to be made with cyclists, but
| commuters would be so cheap and budget concerned that there's
| no money to be made from it.
|
| Amazon is perfect because you're not looking for quality. I
| use a rockbros sweat catcher for my indoor training bike
| setup and it's great because it's just fabric.
|
| You want LBS to stock $20 pedals? Who is going to buy them?
| What would the margins on that be? I wouldn't trust $20
| clipless pedals (because if they fail you will get
| hurt/injured) and if they're flat pedals then bmx people
| would buy flat, but they're going to be so heavy that it'll
| be bad performance wise. There's only broke students who
| would buy it, and at that point just get it from Amazon.
| lmm wrote:
| I'm happy to pay for the skilled labour of bike servicing
| and parts fitting. I wish bike stores would acknowledge
| that that's what I'm paying them for and fit parts that
| I've bought myself (probably off Amazon), charging a fair
| price that lets them make a reasonable overall margin.
| Don't try to keep a parts selection instore, use the space
| for the mechanics and just those parts that people might
| need urgently (i.e. some pedals that are good enough to
| ride home on if you broke off your current pedals - if I'm
| upgrading to fancy pedals I'm going to want to choose them
| specifically).
| walshemj wrote:
| I am looking at a bike for commuting and as this will be
| multimodal - that means a Brompton which is well over
| PS1200.
|
| Oh and trying to find one in stock is a nightmare in the UK
| most be even worse else where.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| Expensive but worth it. Brompton designs are far better
| than the alternatives. They hold their value pretty well
| too, if it turns out you don't like it.
| dheera wrote:
| If you're looking for cheaper, look into Dahon bikes,
| they're decent value and much cheaper. Especially if you
| can get a used one that has been kept well, you can often
| get it for less than half of the MSRP.
| walshemj wrote:
| Heavier unfortuetly and bigger
| [deleted]
| rasz wrote:
| >Cyclists who spent 10-20-40 hours per week on a bike. For
| a hobby that you spend 60hr/mo on it's reasonable to spend
| $1300 on an entry level road bike and much more as you
| progress. Especially because it's good for your health.
|
| how is using lighter expensive bike using fancy 0.5% less
| friction gearboxes better for your health? If you wanted
| health benefits you would be using the heaviest shittiest
| bike possible for more resistance.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| If you go on big rides in the middle of nowhere then you
| can't really afford to have components fail on you. I
| always take a few tools, small parts etc. but if
| something like a pedal or stem fails I'm walking a _long_
| way home. Quality components are made of different
| materials (e.g. higher grades of Alu) and manufactured
| using better processes (e.g. cold forging, not stamped)
| so they are stronger and lighter. I also don 't pick the
| very lightest components since I need durability.
|
| Aside from that, the joy of riding is what gets me out.
| Many cyclists choose tough hill climbs for added fitness
| gains and challenge. There is a good kind of difficulty
| (steep grade somewhere picturesque) and a bad kind
| (unresponsive bike that doesn't roll well)
| dheera wrote:
| > middle of nowhere
|
| I don't usually go to the middle of nowhere, most often
| I'm going through a bunch of towns. In the worst case I
| can shove the bus on a bike to get to the next town.
|
| Time and time again I have found that failure happens
| even with the best of components, and having standard
| components means you can find replacements more easily.
| Having a steel bike means the village welding expert in a
| random town in rural China can fix the frame, or fix your
| broken rack. Having standard spokes, tire, etc. means the
| LBS in Burmese village (who unlike American LBS, are
| actually reasonably priced) will have parts that work
| with your bike. Having standard brake pads and cables
| means you can get them anywhere when they wear down.
| JCharante wrote:
| I said it's good for your health, not that we're
| optimizing solely for health. You're right that the most
| frictiony setup could be beneficial.
|
| But also, a higher performance bike will help you go
| further & faster. It doesn't mean you will end up
| exerting less effort, it just means that you will go
| faster and you'll keep putting in the same effort. With
| this time saving you can try new routes, feel more
| comfortable going further or bike packing with higher
| quality gear. It wouldn't change how long I ride for, but
| it increases the options for where to go.
|
| Yes there are diminishing gains as with anything, but an
| entry level bike is still going to be below the Shimano
| 105 point of performance vs cost.
| jamincan wrote:
| Greg Lemond said that "it never get easier, you just go
| faster." A nicer bike isn't going to mean that you work
| any less hard, it just means you go faster. And fast is
| fun.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Shittiest and heaviest bikes are really unpleasant to
| ride. And if you don't enjoy the ride, you don't ride.
|
| Additional point: shitty bikes usually have really
| terrible geometries and _will_ fuck up your health if you
| decide to use them for sport. If your shitty bike calls
| itself an 'MTB' and you take it onto a trail, it is very
| likely for it to actually break if you catch even a tiny
| jump (let's say 20-30 cm root) because the welds are
| terrible, and the metal is brittle.
| aulin wrote:
| > Amazon is perfect because you're not looking for quality.
| I use a rockbros sweat catcher for my indoor training bike
| setup and it's great because it's just fabric.
|
| Guess they're just a chinese integrator/reseller and
| quality may vary a lot among different products but I have
| to say I'm really happy with my backpacking bags
| (waterproof top-tube and frame bags) I got from them on
| amazon. I wouldn't trust them with anything "mechanical"
| though.
|
| Pedals, especially flats (which btw are used by plenty of
| MTBers), are a breed of their own... they usually come from
| the same few factories and final price depends on who puts
| their logo on them. For a good while you could find the
| very same pedals from HT and from plenty of other minor
| brands for prices varying from 30 to ~150 euros.
| dheera wrote:
| I dunno, a lot of the time I get higher quality products
| from China, AND for cheaper. There is _much more
| advanced_ manufacturing tech there now. You just need to
| buy from a reliable company that knows their shit.
|
| Sometimes if it is just poor assembly quality you can
| patch it up yourself easily. If screws are unscrewing
| themselves out all that's needed is a little Loctite or
| lock nuts. The metal is still perfectly fine.
|
| Sometimes it's just patents that drive up prices in the
| US, for some stupidly simple thing like a bike pedal
| patents shouldn't exist, and for practical purposes it
| would be laughable to have a patent on some low tech
| stuff like that in China.
| aulin wrote:
| Sure but I'm not really sure how that applies to the
| biking world and to the initial topic here.
|
| Sure you can get various decent accessories from china,
| but for most of the basic maintainance you need to source
| proper components (drivetrain, brakes, tyres,
| suspensions) from respected brands. You can go to the
| LBS, let them do the work and pay a premium or you can do
| it yourself sourcing components online for half the
| price. You could also source the components to the LBS
| and do the work yourself but that's usually the more
| expensive solution. As it often happens the most ethical
| choice of willingly financing LBSs is only accessible to
| the rich.
| dheera wrote:
| So ...
|
| I spend a lot of time on a bike. I don't spend $1300 on
| bikes.
|
| There are people who want the latest carbon fiber blah blah
| just because they are using it for sport. I have no problem
| with them. But I have my current $200 Craigslist bike, it
| would have been $900 MSRP, but it rides fine, it's a little
| heavier than those carbon fiber things but so what? I get
| more exercise, and worry slightly less about theft, which
| buys me a LOT of freedom because I can just lock it up in
| downtown San Francisco and enjoy my day. If it gets stolen
| I just buy another bike, no biggie. If my landlord
| confiscates it, I just buy another bike, no biggie.*
|
| Yeah, I agree, it's reasonable to spend $1300. If you have
| $1300. But it's also okay to NOT want to spend $1300 and
| still want to take it up as a serious hobby. I for one am
| pretty happy with my $200 bike.
|
| I don't use clip pedals, I just use flat pedals, and these
| $20 aluminum flat pedals are nice and solid. I tried SPD
| clips before and hated that stuff. To each is own.
|
| I have done many long distance trips, and I _avoid_
| proprietary or hard-to-find components because it 's
| awesome that I can find replacement components in some
| random village in rural China or rural Myanmar or rural
| anywhere I go.
|
| *Saves me on rent anyway because apartments in my area with
| proper bike storage OR enough apartment sqftage to store
| bikes inside have rent rates higher than my current rent
| plus the cost of a new bike per month. It still saves me
| money to stay at my current cheap apartment, lock bike to
| the pool fence (because property manager refuses to install
| bike racks on the premises), get it confiscated every now
| and then, and keep buying new bikes.
| JCharante wrote:
| $1300 will not get you a carbon bike. It will get you a
| new Trek Domane AL3 which is aluminum. Carbon is usually
| an option on prebuilt bikes starting in the $2000-$3000
| range.
|
| You don't need carbon to workout or bikepack, but your
| comfort level increases.
|
| I love SPD, but that's because I have had my feet slip on
| flat pedals and seen how close I was to getting injured
| because of it
|
| If you're going bikepacking in a place where there's not
| going to be any high end mechanics then I agree that
| using the most common components makes sense because then
| anybody can help you. Although I've heard that to go
| bikepacking in China you need a local handler in a car
| following you, so I would probably just have them carry
| spare components there.
|
| And yeah, I don't lock my bike outside, only in groups
| where we can maintain eye contact with the bikes while
| sitting down. If I commuted by bike I would use something
| much much cheaper.
| dheera wrote:
| I got a Trek 2300 carbon fiber for $150 once, used. :S
|
| I mean, I don't go to LBS, that's how I get carbon fiber
| at insanely cheap prices. People who are brainwashed into
| supporting LBS will get their carbon bikes for $3000.
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| So it's _not_ a $200 bike! It 's a used $900 bike. The
| $200 bikes people are talking about are the $200 MSRP
| bikes.
| dheera wrote:
| Right, but still, I would not have gotten a better bike
| for $200 from LBS so I don't go to LBS.
| XnoiVeX wrote:
| For someone so value sensitive, what is keeping you in
| SFO inspite of the insanely high rents? That's money down
| the drain unless you can justify it.
| dheera wrote:
| Interesting people
|
| Interesting events
|
| Working on actually interesting things
|
| Availability of tech jobs
|
| Good scenery
|
| Lots of places to exercise
|
| Somewhat decent medical specialists which don't exist
| outside of a couple of major metro areas in the US
|
| Startup investment which is hard to get if you don't live
| here, but if you do take it they also expect you to pay
| yourself barely enough to live
|
| Good Asian supermarkets and overall decent food
|
| There is some basic disfunctional public transit here
| which doesn't exist in most of the US; US cities with
| good transit are equally expensive
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Pre-covid, I used a bicycle as my main commute method for ~8
| years in three different major cities. In my opinion, local
| bike shops are among the most corrupt and unethical business,
| and I eagerly await their demise.
|
| I do most of my own maintenance, but for basic things and low
| cost parts (chains, tires, wheels) my experience is that bike
| shops lie about the necessity of replacements and bill 2-3x
| markup for parts, in addition to billing for labor.
| II2II wrote:
| > They are vehicles that need maintenance. You can do much of
| that maintenance yourself if you're a nerd, but the vast
| majority of cyclists are dependent on local bike shops to
| sustain the cycling community.
|
| I do my own maintenance and choose to use local bike shops to
| source parts. I'm not really a bike nerd. I service my own bike
| since it's more convenient to pull out my spare bike to buy
| some easily transportable parts than it is to transport a bike
| to the shop. I can also fix my bike in an evening and have it
| ready for the next day, while it may take a shop a couple of
| days to get around to it.
| [deleted]
| jrd259 wrote:
| Kerson and his team asked buyers at every retailer who stocks PNW
| parts to remove them from their Amazon stores too, so that
| everyone involved could maximize their profits and not undercut
| each other.
|
| IANAL, but is this not collusion or price fixing?
| lardo wrote:
| This is pretty much how local bike shops work.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Aren't manufacturers (and branders) normally able to set the
| minimum advertised prices of their products, in addition to
| making suggestions (backed by "if you break the rules, we won't
| sell this to you any more") about how and where retailers can
| sell and advertise the product?
| ozzythecat wrote:
| You can set a minimum advertised price I think. That's why on
| some sites you don't get to see the lower price until check
| out. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine price fixing laws still
| apply.
| lardo wrote:
| Do they actually make things or are they just selling branded
| white-label parts?
|
| https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/PNW-Components-LLC/Jobs
| micro_cam wrote:
| They started just with rebranded dropper seat posts you could
| buy elsewhere but made a name for themselves with excellent
| customer service and warranty support and reasonable prices
| even if you could get the same post cheaper elsewhere without
| the support.
|
| Now they have engineered a few unique products you can't get
| elsewhere though they are all made in asia. Like they make
| road/gravel style drop style handle bars in uncommon widths.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Their dropper posts are rebranded TranzX parts as far as I
| know, which is supposedly common:
| https://stravaigingmtb.com/2017/11/27/so-who-the-hell-made-t...
|
| I heard before that Trek does the same thing with their
| Bontrager posts.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Define "make". Often companies are doing specifications and
| blueprints, but outsource the actual manufacturing to other
| companies. I think this would also apply to PNW, since their
| products (like the seatpost) are afaik not known to be just
| relabeled versions of other products.
| Eiriksmal wrote:
| +1. Their droppers are whitelabeled TransX, but the other
| components appear to have actually been designed by PNW and
| manufactured by various suppliers in Taiwan like most high
| quality, high volume bike parts. But they're still a business
| "making things" in the same way that most other companies
| that sell consumer products are.
|
| I have a Loam lever, a Rainier dropper, and Range stem.
| They're all excellent parts with tasteful branding. PNW's
| customer support is excellent, when it comes time to
| inevitably replace a sagging dropper. The stem's bottom has
| an unusual design that excited some bike wizards on
| bikes.stackexchange when I had questions about using stems
| without spacers. That certainly isn't a whitelabeled, off-
| the-shelf component.
|
| With the state of Amazon being what it is, I would never even
| have thought to look for bike parts on there. The likelihood
| of accidentally buying a counterfeit part is way, way too
| high. I buy all my bike parts direct from the manufacturer,
| whenever possible. PNW has a nice Shopify site, why give
| Amazon your money?
| Lamad123 wrote:
| You can live very happily without using Amazon!! I have barely
| used them in the last couple years and I've been fine!
| pizzaknife wrote:
| i prefer to work on my bicycle. This is both a privilege and a
| luxury and i recognize such. PNW components are wonderful. I shop
| LBS for tools and "need it today" parts. I do not find value in
| paying the majority of bike mechanics (ive been scraping my shins
| religiously for 32yrs and part of what gives me confidence in
| jumping them tens of feet into the arm at the ripe age of
| midlife). I do, however, find value in shop talk and buying the
| right tools / components (even if special ordered through the
| shops). Its a mixed bag of bolts
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Personally I find local bike and book shops to be excellent
| alternatives to Amazon. For tech stuff I go to Best Buy where
| possible (not exactly a local shop, but at least it's still
| competition for Amazon). Nice to see the suppliers themselves
| pull out of Amazon.
| mym1990 wrote:
| As an additional benefit, local bike shops and book shops also
| usually have some pretty cool people working there!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I went to a manufacturer's website recently to buy something
| direct (cut out the middle man, better for everyone, yay!) The
| price was double that on Amazon. And they charged shipping. I
| get that bringing wearhousing in house has to cost more money,
| but it was just strange to see that dramatic a discount.
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| Best Buy is great for electronics. They have control over their
| supply chain and you don't have to deal with counterfeits.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Agreed. They even offer free 2-day shipping just like Amazon
| (at least past a certain price point or something) or let you
| pick up in store, which I've preferred in certain cases where
| I want to minimize the time a fragile purchase spends
| shipping.
|
| My one gripe has been that they put a huge sale sticker right
| on the box of the animal crossing edition switch I bought. At
| least it was on the side and not front and center, but it
| would've been nice to not do that.
|
| Adding on to the Amazon alternative, Target is also great.
| I've happily purchased many electronics, home supplies, etc
| from them. Costco too, though they sell a different kind of
| inventory. Again, not quite mom and pops, but IMO anything
| that's not Amazon or Walmart is still an improvement.
| [deleted]
| Loic wrote:
| Ortlieb[0], the very appreciated maker of bicycle bags, is not
| selling over Amazon. They are selling online, but your
| order/payment is sent directly to a local shop delivering to you
| (in Germany). I really like it.
|
| Some years ago, Amazon was pushing "Ortlieb bag" adverts on
| Google to redirect to Amazon where the bags were not to be found
| and was sued. Amazon lost[1].
|
| [0]: https://www.ortlieb.com
|
| [1]: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/ortlieb-gegen-
| am...
| Symbiote wrote:
| I was very impressed with Ortlieb when I was able to buy a
| replacement part, for about EUR3, for a 15 year old bag.
|
| I will be a lifelong customer, but the bags are so durable I
| might never need another for myself.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| You can still buy some for your whole family. They might also
| make other products.
| progbits wrote:
| Similarly Peak Design (a well respected brand of quality camera
| gear including backpacks) is not selling on Amazon. See recent
| HN thread [0] about Amazon making a cheap knock-off of their
| product.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26338525
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| I suspect this is a trend that'll continue as market buyers and
| sellers realize Amazon is a poor fit for certain of their
| activities.
|
| I already avoid Amazon as a consumer when the brand, quality, or
| delivery date really counts.
|
| But I also avoid Lowes when I'm buying appliances for tenant
| properties because they can't be relied upon to call before they
| deliver. And I don't buy from Harbor Freight Tools when equipment
| failure might be fatal because some things I've bought there
| haven't survived their first use.
|
| But those places have saved me a ton of money over the years when
| their model has worked to my benefit, just like Amazon has made a
| vast improvement in certain areas of my life.
|
| I suspect companies like PNC are coming to similar realizations
| about Amazon as they see that their returns (or the implications
| on their reputations, or their confidence in continued sales)
| paint a picture that's less attractive than pursuing
| alternatives.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| fact of the matter is... if you are a cyclist, amazon is
| definitely not the place to look for bike parts. sadly, all the
| SEO spammers only advertise amazon affiliate links so you'd think
| amazon sells decent bike parts, but you'd be wrong. IMHO google
| should ban any website heavily linking to amazon affiliate
| program.
| haspok wrote:
| Amazon for bikes or bike parts? I don't understand this, it must
| be a US thing.
|
| Here in Europe, Amazon would be the last place I would go to buy
| anything bike related. We have _specialized_ large online
| retailers, like CRC in NI and Bike24 in Germany who are
| excellent, also tend to ship the same day and actually do care
| about their customers...
| IncRnd wrote:
| From the article: "PNW wasn't the only business growing tired of
| Amazon. Kerson and his team asked buyers at every retailer who
| stocks PNW parts to remove them from their Amazon stores too, so
| that everyone involved could maximize their profits and not
| undercut each other." ... "We set up these calls and we were not
| expecting them to go very well," says Marshall, "As soon as we
| started talking about it the buyers were really excited."
|
| From the FTC: "Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or
| inferred from conduct) among competitors that raises, lowers, or
| stabilizes prices or competitive terms ... Price fixing relates
| not only to prices, but also to other terms that affect prices to
| consumers, such as shipping fees, warranties, discount programs,
| or financing rates. Antitrust scrutiny may occur when competitors
| discuss the following topics: ..., Capacity, Identity of
| customers, ... Defendants may not justify their behavior by
| arguing that the prices were reasonable to consumers, were
| necessary to avoid cut-throat competition, or stimulated
| competition." [1]
|
| Is there a lawer who can say if that was price fixing?
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-
| guidance/guide-a...
| dstaley wrote:
| IANAL, but I think this would qualify as a resale price
| maintenance agreement[1], which is legal at a federal level and
| in most (but not all!) states. I guess it really depends on
| what exactly "not undercut each other" entailed.
|
| [1]
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/resale_price_maintenance_agr...
| hogFeast wrote:
| The US used to have "fair trade" laws with these kind of
| agreements. These were used to protect independent grocers
| from chain department stores...they were the Amazon of the
| 1940/50s. Plus ca change.
|
| But the legality of this kind of thing depends on the
| circumstances. From what I have read, it seems unlikely to be
| illegal (it is perfectly normal for a manufacturer to supply
| a product and attempt to stop a buyer selling into a
| particular channel) but I am not sure it is a great idea to
| say you are doing this specifically to increase prices.
|
| To give you an example I came across recently, when Sony came
| to the US they dealt with US wholesalers. Some wholesalers
| would sell to product to retailers who wanted to aggressively
| discount product. So Sony eventually stopped selling to
| wholesalers, and sold directly to retailers who wouldn't
| discount their product. It is a fine line but the
| manufacturer always has the choice of not selling to a
| certain buyer anyway (and tbf, as dollar stores have shown,
| some retailers will get around the manufacturer's rules
| anyway).
|
| So I don't think it is particularly unreasonable for a
| manufacturer to tell customers to stop putting product into a
| certain channel, and it probably isn't anticompetitive
| (because it doesn't limit the ability of competitors to sell
| on Amazon).
| [deleted]
| gnopgnip wrote:
| If they don't actually increase prices for consumers, because
| they all collectively save money not paying amazon fees it is
| unlikely to be an antitrust violation
| IncRnd wrote:
| Did you read the first paragraph of the FTC link I posted? I
| put the quote in the comment. It seems to strongly disagree
| with you.
| r00fus wrote:
| Is avoiding a major adversary/predatory channel considered
| price-fixing?
| [deleted]
| Wohlf wrote:
| Yes, if the effect/methods is the same.
| ec109685 wrote:
| "maximize their profits and not undercut each other"
|
| This is another way of saying, "charge the customer more".
| While this may work in the short term, there is likely another
| parts company that will not feel this way and once again look
| to sell on Amazon since they'll be able to undercut while still
| making a profit.
| notatoad wrote:
| Especially since PNW (mostly?) Doesn't make their own
| products - they put their brand on a bunch of generic
| products that get sold by various different brands, and act
| as a distributor and marketer.
|
| If people want to buy on Amazon for less, somebody else can
| buy parts from the same OEMs and sell them on Amazon.
| cascom wrote:
| If the conversation is had between PNW and customer (local bike
| store) - that doesn't seem to be conversation between
| competitors?
| IncRnd wrote:
| My understanding from the article is that it was a phone
| conversation between PNW and all their retail stores, which
| were each customers. The customers were all competitors of
| each other, which is why they discussed how to not undercut
| each other.
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