*2023* HOW IS OUR BICYCLE STORE PERFORMING AFTER THE PANDEMIC BOOM?

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0:00 INTRO
1:00 *BEFORE* PANDEMIC TIME
9:20 *CURRENT TIME* HOW ARE SALES TODAY

in today’s video we’re going to talk about what it is like to own a bicycle store in 2023 post pandemic I’ve made plenty of videos back in the day during the pandemic period where I talked about my inventory levels how sales were doing our empty shelves our empty floors our empty accessory settings now that is year 2023 things kind of normalized out um the demand for product is not there as much as it used to be I’m going to tell you guys how it’s been working and owning the store how the sales have been how inventory has been how other companies have been like manufacturers with inventory levels and stocks like that I’ll also give you guys a little bit Insight of how bigger companies are doing in terms of uh their product level um and also other stores around me in my area and stores that I know of as well and the whole country how they’re doing as well so hopefully you guys enjoy this kind of a little bit of a bicycle retailer talk and I hope that you guys find this information interesting but before I get in all of that I want to talk about how we got here I’ll bring it back to time of 2020 around March of year 2020. when this whole pandemic time started things were looking pretty Grim the whole country shut down we didn’t know what to do as a retailer so we shut down for a little bit as well then it came out that bicycles were it deemed a necessity I believe necessity for people to use to get to work so bike shops started opening up locally we’re also in Florida so um there weren’t as many as restrictions there but we’re all scared of the time because there’s something new to us so we started opening up the store and operating to a point where we basically wouldn’t let anyone side the doors and we had basically a line outside of that front door all the way down to about the end of the street where people were literally telling us what bikes they wanted picking through the door pointing at I want that bike I want that bike I want that bike I want that bike for my family and it was a frenzy we couldn’t sell enough we couldn’t stock enough people were literally buying two thousand dollar bikes just to ride around the neighborhood with their family bikes that weren’t even used for what they were the necessary of what they should be using for the bike for they were buying a 2500 road bike against a rather family at this time it was great I wasn’t gonna lie to you um but we were also working at a time where we were unsure of stuff I just had a newborn baby obviously we’re scared as things kind of lightened up a little bit still The Craze was still there we were allowing people to come into our doors we change our business hours from open seven days a week but ten to five to kind of regulate everything but there was times where we had like 12 people in the time of the store literally saying hey we didn’t have enough employees they were really picking bikes up and saying hey I just want to buy these bikes give them to the place deliver them wherever it is and yes so what this all caused sorry I almost dropped my phone there what this all caused was a crazy demand and there was enough inventory because a lot of factors are shut down in China so we were telling our manufacturers like Specialized or Scott hey we need more bikes meanwhile their businesses were closing in California and also their factories are closed in China so there’s buying up all of our inventory that we house as well of inside this building which we have bike boxes back there we also have off-site warehouses that we ran through as well I want to say just to be honest with you guys we probably turned our inventory six or seven times now I get it boohoo me yeah no it was a great time we turned inventory that was sitting we turned Dusty inventory that we didn’t think we would sell and we sold every single bike uh tenfold now in those videos where I’m literally talking about this and explain this to you guys back then this whole floor was completely Barren this whole floor was completely Barren I don’t think we had Italian section back then we ran out of them this was a bike rack area we barely had row bikes up on the Shelf I think we had every five bikes we had one road bike one road bike one road bike one road bike um again clothing was nothing there Saddles were off the wall no helmets at all that we could seem fine um our whole accessory wall of lights and locks and some of that were gone oh we we couldn’t get enough inventory in time so we had to put on these massive back orders and the solution for this was our manufacturers basically told us hey the only way to get products is to give us massive orders and basically the bigger your order the better chance you have of receiving your product first so I’m sure they were telling this to every single uh retailer out there and collectively what was the cause for this was that every single retailer out there was kind of ordering heavily because at this time we didn’t see an Insight at the moment people are buying bikes like mountain bikes and road bikes that we never even stock before so we were ordering stuff that was even on sitting on these other company shelves that they weren’t selling and people really didn’t care people were buying whatever it was they just wanted bike to be outside because that was the only thing they could do at this time go for another year or so we start thinking collectively as a group here in our store we start saying hey there has to be some kind of bus there has to be some kind of bubble there has to be some kind of end to this so still at our store in the state inventory is very hard to get especially for the high demand bikes like the tarmac sl7 like the high-end mountain bikes like the mid-level 3000round by Sue that was a really popular Grant uh brand as well the townie Cruisers we used to have all this stuff on a back order we’re still waiting for this stuff to come in but we have a very heavy back order as well more than what we ever used to back order in our lives so we’re sitting here hey guys let’s make sure that we’re not over ordering and let’s start canceling some of these backwards to get ready for this because even though the demand is still crazy crazy high we were so very very worried that we’re going to be stuck with our pants down and we’re gonna have all this inventory here and this is basically how businesses go out of out of business uh we would be Mass amounts of inventory here uh and like I called in one of my videos where we’d have all this inventory we’re sitting our hands and the demand stops and then what do the companies do to get rid of this inventory they go ahead and put out massive sales uh like Trek is doing with their sale right now it’s like their trek-a-thon where they have every single bike listed on their website for sales same with specialized where they released we made too many bike sale uh every single company is doing it now but again back to 2021 where they are now uh we’re starting to go ahead and think about this as a whole but now let’s jump to about 2022 to 2023 uh around the holiday times Thanksgiving to Christmas components bikes everything is pretty much come to a screeching halt uh economy is going up the interest rate is going up I’m sorry economy’s going down interest rates going up people are watching what they’re buying people are watching what they’re spending and we have all this inventory still coming in so what happens when manufacturers retailers and everyone else still has a bunch of inventory coming in but no sales obviously the thing they have to do is go ahead and get rid of this inventory so they create their own sales like specialized deal with the re we created too many bikes now me as a retailer was kind of upset by us at first but I’m not gonna lie the sale has generated a lot of walk-in traffic a lot of people are buying bikes off of our floor we’re moving inventory we’re doing a pretty good job but at one point during this time we all got to get together again as a business we sat down and we basically said hey this is the most amount of money we’ve ever had in the store in inventory it’s a very scary time basically as a business we try to keep it like this we try to keep what we have in inventory is the same amount of what we keep in the bank and this was not the case so we went ahead again and put together a game plan to go ahead and get things right do our own sales in-house push e-commerce and also push uh social media as well which I’m very thankful for to have this platform that I’m able to push as well and within two to three months we got ahead of ourselves or I’m sorry in two or three months we put this plan to to use and we moved a ton of inventory and I mean a ton of inventory we did a really good job with our sales we did a really good job with our tactics and we got down to right now in the year 2023 we are closest we have ever been to our 2019 numbers in terms of inventory levels and also our uh sales numbers as well we’re we’re right now we’re doing a great job in terms of monthly sales to what it was in the past years and also we’re very happy and comfortable with our inventory levels and I want to take credit for that uh with our whole team inside of here we did a really really good job um but I definitely do think once we got all that situation taken care of where we got the inventory where we wanted to be at we also talked to ourselves and said hey let’s stop this covet ordering because we basically called it that we called it covet ordering where we were ordering a massive preseason that we never did we were ordering way more orders than we never did let’s go back to how it used to be where the manufacturers were the retail I’m sorry where the warehouse is make them house their own product we order what we need pick what we need for our floor stock our floor but that’s it before we used to order five of these bikes during covert five of these bikes are encoded five of these bikes are in covert because basically our manufacturer said if you don’t order these bikes now at the beginning of the year you won’t get them at all but back in the day before 2020 I used to be able to go into a dealer website take my customer up to the desk show them every single bike on this on the catalog that we had here and they could literally pick whatever color they wanted model they wanted size they wanted and or that bike to our store within five days that’s how it used to be but during that cover time it was basically order every single bike in every single size at the beginning of the year go ahead and house it for the whole year and you’ll basically will eventually sell it so like I said 2023 we did a great job and a great plan with that so now let’s get into how it’s been in 2023 . so at the beginning of the year it was a little bit of a struggle coming off these sales having higher than expected inventory levels but then like I said specialized sale did go ahead and bring in a lot of customers with walk-ins especially for Turbo levos stump jumpers people who are thinking about buying bikes maybe on the fence of buying a bike but didn’t want to spend that specialize put out really big discounts to go ahead and help incentivize those customers and they really did go ahead and invite the bowl and go ahead and get a new bike um but also our groups what we used to Cape we used to keep in stock like a ton of SRAM red group sets a ton of Shimano duress group sets um for frame builds because that was a big popular seller in kova times now we’re back down to keeping just about one group set in stock of each uh group just in case the consumer want to walk in and buy the bike um walking traffic is definitely slowed down and also our tire inventory has definitely calmed down as well but in terms of 2023 as a whole uh our store I knock on wood I cannot complain about our store of where we are today very happy with the crew I have very happy with the work we put out very happy with our sales day to day um and again I get a lot of extra spotlight-ish from my Instagram and also YouTube about the bikes I have I do a really good job of showing what bikes I just got in maybe uh maybe that boost or incentivizes uh walking traffic into our store for like high-end bikes like these because without that no one really know I even had the bike in stock so that is a big help as well and we also have been noticing a pattern now that during that pandemic time we notice a lot of people leaving bike shops and doing their own things and creating their own businesses like a mobile mechanic uh they start their own bike shops we’re noticing a ton of service work come in I don’t know if that’s a popular increase of people buying direct consumer brand bikes I don’t know if it’s a popularity thing or people may be buying upgrades to their bikes and bringing to us but a ton of service work coming in to a point where almost overwhelmed with it uh but again we’re very fortunate to that and we cannot complain about it but it is more than why I used to be back in 2019 for sure and I think that’s just in result of how many people got into the sport during that pandemic time there is definitely a more noticeable amount of people on the road riding road bikes now in terms of other people in the business like I mentioned before I can speak on it uh specialize when I go there to deal a website now I see bikes in stock that I would never have seen back in stock in 2020 or 2021 I can actually take a customer to the computer screen show them the the B2B or show them their deal website and be able to go ahead and show them product or give them a choice of bikes so they can order same with SRAM or same with Shimano back in the day a customer called for a SRAM right group set or maybe if we’re speaking about frames of build up for a custom set of bikes I can now take that customer and basically give them any kind of option in terms of frame sets or handlebar sets or choice of Wheels they’re now able to go ahead and get those done whereas before back in the pandemic that would really slow down or hinder a sale because they’d have the money in the hand they get a frame but I’m missing a wheel set they get a handlebar by missing a group set and that would kind of always be like oh the the knife in the back where a customer wouldn’t buy a bike now that everything’s back in stock if I call it SRAM they have a whole group set if I call up Shimano they have a local group set it definitely makes things a little bit easier speaking to those companies I’ve also asked them just kind of just casually like hey how’s it going they also said you know it’s it’s getting back to normal but there still is a demand for the crazy high and stuff which is crazy I mean I don’t think the the high end customer really feels The Squeeze as much as the middle or low end customer as well um but in terms of also other Distributors like jbi quality Holley I mean I check their stocks every single day and I also see what they have in stock in terms of uh high-end products and I think that they got hurt the most because these companies were definitely able and willing to take back back orders or uh cancels and stuff like that and I think that they also heavily ordered just like we did and I think that maybe they got stuck with too much like like I mentioned before during my Black Friday video uh SRAM and Shimano putting these massive amounts of group sets and really common sized crank sets and chain rings on discount heavily I’m seeing quality have in stock like 50 plus of these group sets and like almost every warehouse and I’m just like holy cow like that’s so much money in terms of one skew but then they have multiple amounts of the group sets in multiple warehouses um I can’t imagine how long it’s gonna take to move all those when you have every other company out there like competitive cyclists like uh JB likes Ram like bike shops with this stuff in stock how long it’s going to take for that stuff to sell off and kind of regulate it might even lose its value after a while because there’s so much made of it um so you know we have to kind of figure out what happens I just also saw in bicycle retailer recently that quality closed down there bicycle Mechanics School that they used to have where you can actually go and be a certified bicycle mechanic and they pay money for they just said it wasn’t working they didn’t have enough uh employees there to run it I guess it wasn’t profitable with the building so so yeah you’re seeing a little bit more companies starting to feel squeeze start to go ahead and trim the fat and uh figure out what’s working and what’s not for them and then as for other stores in my area that I walk in and go do these videos at where I do these bike videos that they also let me do it and I talk to these local reps around me everyone’s basically saying this bicycle sales are still happening not as much not as demand but these stores are so overwhelmed with inventory that they accumulated over those past couple years that they’re not ordering as much from their big name stuff they’re basically selling off whatever they have in the back room before they go ahead and give new orders so that’s a whole chain effect to point where they’ll everyone will feel that effect so when a rep walks into a store and says hey you guys ready to buy more bikes so they go no we’re selling everything else that you we bought during that time come back a little bit that rep goes ahead and goes back to their manufacturer and says hey they’re not buying anything that manufacturer goes back to your factory and says hey they’re not buying anything so you’re going to start to see maybe less product release maybe they’re going to hold off and releasing a new model of a bicycle uh you’re gonna see maybe uh companies only select uh release a select few of bike models or colors coming up maybe they might see a couple companies re-run colors from 2023 to 2024 models so but this is a serious conversation I want to talk about other bicycle stores in my area and also in the states I have gotten tons of reach out from people on Instagram and also just people calling me of bicycle stores closing never a good thing I always I always hate hearing that I think there’s enough money in this world to go ahead and you know give everyone a piece of pie if they’re one and able to work but uh sometimes unfortunate things happen and sometimes um we make mistakes in business and it does happen but I’ve got a ton of reach out from business owners employees lost their jobs stores that close down and again I don’t think it’s the end of it I hear of people all the time hurting and suffering in terms of lack of sales lack of walk-ins lack of anything yes it’s that’s a I think one you have to direct to Consumer brands do a really good job at selling stuff that’s taken away from the consumer you have online selling a ton of group sets now to to Consumers as well also these Chinese frames and stuff like that these bicycle frames that’s right why I really got into the wind space frame because I see that as almost one of the Futures I mean I think that’s gonna be a really big heavy hitter of a bicycle brand uh as a direct to Consumer I think that’s a great sales tool to sell that in my store but I have heard of ton of stores closing down which is always unfortunate and even in my area as well people hurting so but yeah I figured I’d go ahead and let you guys into it I know it was a little bit of a rant but some good information there if you guys have any questions or comments you guys want to make down below let me know and um yeah I always enjoy talking retail on these type of situations so it’s fun to me and um I love the business aspect of it I love the retail aspect of it so let me know what you guys have heard let me know what you guys stories have happened or any kind of interesting experiences you guys have seen but anyways guys that’s gonna do it first video thank you guys again so much for watching and I’ll see you guys in the next one