Rapha, nice but a bit pricey?

Not at all, a tuning fork sounds equally dull against all flesh.

What costs are they not covering at £35 a day?

The bikes cost what £5k at full retail but Rapha aren't paying that (I hope - if so they need to negotiate better). If bikes are hired for 200 days a year and in service for only 2 years that's £14k (200 X 2 X £35).

Not being facetious here - I'm genuinely asking what are the £9k+ in costs for providing a hire bike service.

...maintenance, insurance, shipping, staff costs, advertising, customer service...

They will be covering costs - that’s exactly what I said. I can hardly imagine they are making any profit at that cost though.

You have to service and safety check after every hire before the bike can go out again (we do at least, anyway). This involves labour, and labour costs money. As far as I’m aware, the cycle clubs don’t have in store mechanics in most instances. This means they will have to be getting the bikes serviced externally, which will involve logistsics, which costs money. Indemnity Insurance is also expensive for hire bikes. Insurance and maintenance will most likely be their biggest outlay.

Hiring bikes to make a profit is a pretty crap business model IMHO (and probably Rapha’s too), it’s a lot of hassle, for little money. Hiring bikes to get more footfall in your cycling club/cafe/store Which in turn gets people to spend money on shit that does make decent profit is a good business model, as long as the hire bikes don’t cost the business any money. Which is probably why the cost has gone up, as running a hire bike scheme at a constant loss to subsidise RCC members is not economically viable in the long run.

TL;DR:
They’re not making more money. They’re just losing less money.

...maintenance, insurance, shipping, staff costs, advertising, customer service...

...business rates, VAT, insurance...

If only making money was a simple as 200 x 2 x 35 = cashback!

Every size of bike, being hired 200 days of the year is very optimistic too. I imagine some sizes at the two extremes barely get hired at all.

For the sake of this argument, let's not attribute costs from other aspects of the business to the bike hire component.

Also does Rapha actually take out indemnity insurance on the hire bikes? There's about 5 pages of waivers when you hire a bike, and you're pretty much forced to take out the optional insurance cover.

I'm going to assume most places are mainly lending the bikes out at weekends, so 200 days a year is very optimistic.

M8 there are 365 days in a year

This is lol. Membership price goes down by over half and people are going nuts about having to pay a little extra for some coffee* and bike hire they've never used.

*heard some stories from the clubhouse

The hire price includes full damage insurance afaik

@alsoPhilDAS whats the price of mechanics shirt on the sale?

Here y’are pet
LMGTFY

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VAT?

How are the group rides with RCC? i'm tempted to join in 2020 now they've dropped the prices, predominantly for the rides more than anything else. Are they regular around N. London? I'm getting very boring doing Regents park on my own.

Are they regular around N. London?

Yes. They meet in Highgate on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Or used to when I was member, years ago.

I don't understand how this is a discussion, they're obviously not making a profit off the hire bikes, they exist to create value for RCC

I hired one of those bikes and I was still fucking slow. Who do I complain to?

Yep, there's a hills session every Wednesday at 6:40 at Whitestone Pond at the top of Hampstead.

It normally splits into two or three groups based on speed so you'll find a group that suits you.

It's not an "official" clubhouse ride so feel free to join sometime, see if you like the vibe before signing up.

There's also a regular Sunday morning ride into Hertfordshire.

FYI in the first year of operation of the clubhouse I worked at (I looked after the RCC hire bikes) we didn't have anywhere 200 rental days for the entire fleet. I don't think the biggest size went out once. Also at the time 100% of the money we made with the hires was spent back on maintenance.

You're only asking people to be really original here and inventing a group of memes that doesn't even exist yet.

Clearly the meme-lords' minds have been blown with the originality of my suggestion.

'Dear Simon Mottram,

I am severely dismayed etc etc...'

Perfect, i might give that a go next week then. Thanks for the heads up.
Are there many regents laps that you know of?

Chatty laps are Friday from 7am. Meet at Royal College of Fishians.

Meets at the golden gates in the inner circle now actually. Groups were getting too large to meet safely at the old spot.