Opening a new shop.

Which makes me think bike shops don't really make money. Which is why I like the cafe with some mechanics in the corner model.

Maybe a couple of restored vintage* bikes in the window.

ofcourse these are just my idle net musings, good luck and best wishes to anybody who'll actually pony up to run a bike shop!

*second hand

Which makes me think bike shops don't really make money.

They can make money, you'd need to upping your ante in term of customer services, some bicycles shop still exist despite terrible Google reviews after eons of existences.

(no I'm not going to mention the shop).

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Not much money in coffee tbf

I'm a long time out of the service industry but when i managed bars coffee had the highest GP hence why before the coffee shop takeover every pub had a coffee machine with poorly trained staff churning out shit coffees.

Edited as i've just clocked your spreadsheet! i'll get my coat...

There will be elements of any business that aren't profit making.

I mentioned coffee because it's an example of a common step away from purely traditional bike retailing.

You could go entirely the other way. Just build a pretty Factor showroom, do bike and cleat fitting and have a fancy laptop to talk through colorways with customers and sell them Zipp wheels.

and sell them Zipp wheels...

There lie the badgers, the question is how many Zipp wheels are you able to sell to customers before you ran out of customers with money to buy Zipp wheels?

Might be lucky if you're operating in Kensington or Islington.

Yeah, heady days when coffee was very cheap (and we didn’t care about paying farmers well, actually we still don’t on the whole). It’s always been a margin rich/cashflow poor business.

A blended approach is a decent idea though, assuming that we do get back to a semblance of drink in.

One thing COVID has show us is with sufficient demand the traditional bike shop model works as it should - I've not had to sell a single bike at a discount over the last year, so we made a much better margin, and as wiggle et al have ran out of stock that's meant less competition (No 50% off RRP shimano groupsets floating around online anymore) chuck in Brexit making it harder to get cheap stuff from Europe which will only continue. Our on-site cafe's been closed most of the year due to covid and reduced footfall in the area making takeways non-viable

Which makes me think bike shops don't really make money.

I think this is the elephant in the room. Bikes are still considered toys, not serious transportation, and in a time of economic difficulties most people don’t want to spend money on expensive toys.

Make the venue a nice destination and collaborate with other services.

This is my conclusion too. Shopping-turned-experience will become more and more important as online shops replace physical retail. Most bike shops were struggling before and will be struggling again after covid, but the few ones that were doing well provided a combination of good location, quality products, attentive service, and a good/great customer experience.

I'd agree. C19 has given new life into what was becoming a doomed industry.

I know his biggest problem is going to be able to decide what Avenue to head down. Some of you have mentioned eBikes and thats a great suggestion. He's unsure if posh road would work in this area as rumours are about of another new shop.on the horizon in a more affluent area of the city. There is a trad shop 2 miles away, Trek , Genesis and Surly and they are on the brink of folding as they cannot get any stock.

My thoughts are to try and get an account with a big group who own many decent brands in the hope of cross pollinating- Pond cover this but I'm unsure how hard it is currently getting products into the UK

I think this is the elephant in the room. Bikes are still considered toys, not serious transportation, and in a time of economic difficulties most people don’t want to spend money on expensive toys.

Leisure can be as profitable as essential goods. I’d argue there is maybe more potential. It’s optional spending. Look how pet shops and veterinary services have exploded in the last few years whilst private medical hasn’t. It’s related to changing lifestyle and priorities and good marketing.

We can measure ‘serious transportation’ as business for bike shops as it largely continued (with key workers and those avoiding public transport). A lot of shops scraped-by on this as they couldn’t get any bikes to sell. Correct me if I’m wrong but IME the average dispassionate commuter will buy the cheapest wheel etc, only once the old one is unridable. That’s fine but a relatively low ‘basket’ value at the till.

Compare that to ‘non-serious’ cycling products sold; entry level bikes for leisure and smart trainers. These are £700 purchases. Those take little time to sell and have flown out.

I’m not suggesting ^ these are the markets. I’m trying to show people will happily spend on leisure.

Nice shop branded jerseys seem like such a good idea I'm amazed more shops aren't doing it. Customers paying to become rolling billboards for you business. I've checked out a couple of local shops i hadn't heard of before seeing them on jerseys out and about. They get about too as I've seen several LMNH and Brixton cycles down in Brighton.

They are good for branding. Their sales will only make a slim profit.

Brixton Cycles kit is an all time classic.

One shop i know had nice Santini ones made and they sold them for £35-40 so probably made very little on them but the other jerseys they were selling mainly Castelli and Gore were £60-100+ ensuring they shifted plenty of their own by making it their only entry level option.

You have to be a cool shop for people to want to wear your jersey... there’s a fine line...

Yeah if the shops not cool and/or the Jerseys are naff then it doesn't work. I assumed with it being a new shop and all the talk of coffee collabs it would be fairly cool.

My understanding was Wiggle/CRC sourced their Shimano from Poland distributor and did wonder if the party was over

Speaking in more general terms than profit/loss, if I were in the same position, I'd aim to encourage a community of cyclists around the bike shop, weekend/weeknight rides, accommodating for novices, be generally the best and most helpful shop going, nice place to be, get a good rep with local clubs. Hopefully word of mouth will then do some of the advertising for them. The shop I use is local to my work and the main 'sales' guy there is always the most friendly, helpful guy, happy to chat about bike stuff and generally a nice chap. Always happy to give them my trade.

In my experience, cycling club members are usually the tightest customers unfortunately, always after discounts, and far too 'clued up' from all the forums/internet research/cycling friends etc to take sound advice from lowly shop workers

Trying to run a cafe in the shop doesn't sound very straightforward. My LBS tried for a while, but fairly rapidly gave up on the idea. I think you need a certain volume of custom through for coffee to make it worth warming up the machine every day. If you can't assume a steady flow of customers wanting coffee and cake you'll either be wasting the time of a specially-hired barista or calling staff of bike-related work to make coffee.

Might be worth seeing if you can get in touch with @jammy who started a cycling cafe/workshop that sadly had to be wound up during lockdown.

Yeah it can become a nightmare if the shop owner is actually the club himself. It happened to an old mate of mine all the other club/teammates wanted to support his new bike shop but also wanted mates rates on everything and expected to be able to pop in at any time and queue jump the mechanics job sheet.

if i was opening up a new bike shop, in the uk looking to shift product vs services, i would adopt the American outdoors model of very expensive outdoors lifestyle gear and boutique parts.

yeti, snow peak, paul components, open, hope, Patagonia, jet boil et al, hoka,

i simply would not sell "BIKE" parts, the customers are annoying and tight at the wallet, i'd sell people a trinkets, cnc, a nice seatpost, brakes, to "people looking to enjoy the outdoors" with sales people who can talk the talk when it comes to "their lovely time off spent in the peak district" and pictures of the "team getaway weekend" dressed in product i wanted to sell

i would market my brand as a destination store which was a lifestyle brand in and of itself, similar to "artisanal lifestyle stores"

good hood, liquor store, oi polloi

i'd focus on ecommerce as my primary sales route and brick and morter as suplimentry, focusing on making myself look "cool" and make the store a show room destination and nice for locals filled with custom bikes

i'd have a selection of lifestyle goods a consumer could buy as a souvenir

stickers, bottles, badges, patches, custom bags

i would have a welcoming atmosphere, but one which is not pandering, even if the customer doesn't know what they want, they're treated like they do, as if they knew about all the nice shiney bits your hawking, get them in on the joke

in my online presence i'd have a similar experience, weights, sizes, exact measurements listed for every single product, the specifications and overwhelming detail would be the copy, not the spiel from the makers marketing person. the pictures would be detailed and large, non stock, taken in the shop with my house product around them, ideally some of the staff too

we'd offer bike mechanic work, it would be more than most places, but "nerdy", people could trust us to give them back an excellent looking bike "like the ones on the internet", or "the cute ones in the window" for a budget which suits them

there would be a lot of talk of "buying it for life" and "once in a life time trips" and how "this could finally be the trip them and their family needed to really get to know each other now they're all a bit older", bikes would be barely be mentioned

for the time they're in the shop they're in a parasocial, platonic ideal of the person/lifestyle friends they wished they had/were doing instead of coding on a trading estate outside of town/ browsing our site from at 4pm on a wednesday waiting for 530 to come

Can I send you some money? I have the urge to give you my disposable income.

Me too, I know a few empty shops as well

I agree with basically all of this. I think there’s a market for being a shop with a ‘curated’ selection of goods, plus your own. Narrow focus on excellence where customer knows they can’t buy a bad/ lame product. Lifestyle aspirational. Don’t just have the standard copy add something of value to the experience. No shaming for wanting the shiny fancy thing. A destination shop, ideally easy to get to. Advertise repeatedly every thing and service available on social media - any reason for someone to come in to check it out and leave with goodies. Lean into shopping as an experience.

Outsiders store does this well I think. It’s an offshoot of Ellis Bingham/ Cotswolds but has its own identity and puts a lot of their own ‘fit’ pictures of clothes on Instagram and sells the lifestyle.

I’d add - being open early (like 7:30) and/ or late (like 7pm) is a boon for people working elsewhere and/ or solidly between 9-5:30. Again it makes it easy to go and buy more than you came in for.

I’d think it would have to be authentic to your mate though. I can’t imagine chasing an idea of cool that doesn’t occur to them naturally is going to work, and if they were studied enough to do it they would already know it.

Obviously don’t know how big this market is. I think I’m mainly just agreeing with Maj here

My only real disagreement is that everyone knows oi polloi’s measurements are absurdist comedy

Fair enough. There’s a little shop near here who seem to have done quite well with this model. Never been in a a cycling club, but could imagine the absolute bores who would enact this scenario.