Trek to move to a direct to market retail platform.

link1896

link1896

Mr Greenfield
Manufacturer direct to consumer is the next rationalisation of the market. Margins for the manufacturer are restored to healthy, profitable levels allowing for R&D, end users gets a better deal.

In 10 years time we will be purchasing the 3D drawings and printing our new product.
 
Flow-Rider

Flow-Rider

Burner
Somehow I smell a rat, prices will go up or quality and warranty will suffer. No way will a LBS rely on repairs only, it's just taking the cream away from them.
 
stirk

stirk

Burner
Flow-Rider said:
Somehow I smell a rat, prices will go up or quality and warranty will suffer. No way will a LBS rely on repairs only, it's just taking the cream away from them.
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You smell a large corporation.

Trek is not taking away the stores floor stock so they will still make many sales there, I'd say the majority of sales are mid to low end bikes to mums and dads who walk through the door.

The 20% (or more) the LBS loses from the sale margin they might make up by reducing the stock they carry and depending on the take up of online sales versus in store sales they could reduce the size of the shop and move staff from floor sales to service and assembly duties.


Hybrid stores have been around for ages, trek are just removing the distributors or planning to down the track.
 
pink poodle

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Expense shifting and a redesign of the industry...suddenly you can store most of your stock in Taiwan China Mexico Bermuda...shift where the sale actually takes place to same and you have low rent, low wages, low taxes. Post bike out and as long as CRC aren't handling the delivery it arrives in a matter of days. If trek pass some savings onto consumers and lower the price point of their bikes significantly they will be ahead of the competition while the rest try and catch up.

Set up a warranty team in India handling calls and emails and a small network of agents in each country that run demo days secure sales, and support the product. You could even use your "dealers" in some sort of licensed capacity to throw them a little cream. No real complications here at all. But unlikely to be a big win for the consumer.
 
link1896

link1896

Mr Greenfield
pink poodle said:
Expense shifting and a redesign of the industry...suddenly you can store most of your stock in Taiwan China Mexico Bermuda...shift where the sale actually takes place to same and you have low rent, low wages, low taxes. Post bike out and as long as CRC aren't handling the delivery it arrives in a matter of days. If trek pass some savings onto consumers and lower the price point of their bikes significantly they will be ahead of the competition while the rest try and catch up.

Set up a warranty team in India handling calls and emails and a small network of agents in each country that run demo days secure sales, and support the product. You could even use your "dealers" in some sort of licensed capacity to throw them a little cream. No real complications here at all. But unlikely to be a big win for the consumer.
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Latest CRC order is having a holiday in Greenland?
 
pink poodle

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
link1896 said:
Latest CRC order is having a holiday in Greenland?
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I am not yet concerned...The first order and second order for my new rig were shipped same day they were placed. Third order was last night...wheels. I generally find that their delivery is what they say 7-10 working days. I even prefer the Australia Post option because I live near a post office and all the courier depots are a pain in the arse. But I can empathise with the common people.
 
Calvin27

Calvin27

Eats Squid
I doubt trek will abandon their retailers. Unfortunately bikes are mostly an impulse buy and seeing it in flesh accounts for a lot of sales. I'd say this is not a big shift as we make it out to be.

- Retailers will carry minimum stock - so not many changes here, how often do you get the exact bike in stock without them having to order?
- Retailers will rely less on margins on bike sales. Already happening. Someone like Trek will have absolute control of the margins as all the sales are usually consistent across all dealers. Trek will probably pay a small fee to the bike shop for the customer to collect and piece together and possibly a premium if the customer selects servicing options etc.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, it's probably in Treks best interest to keep some retailers happy. If they really didn't want retailers, they'd just open up a concept store by themselves in their own name like Tesla and sell online. Turning over retailers is a bad look on the company too. I mean look at Specialized, they offer retailers good support and probably somewhat a fair cut which is why Spesh stores are quite strong financially.
 
Flow-Rider

Flow-Rider

Burner
stirk said:
You smell a large corporation..
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Not really sure how it will work out, we will just have to wait and see. From experience the only reason large corps do these type of things is to make more money at someone else's cost and I have worked for a few of the chunts over the years. The poor bike shop will have to deal with the whinging customer, there will be very little in what they can do and the customer walks away disgruntled. When you do warranty work for car dealerships you never get full labour charge, that's why they do it as fast as possible and use some cheap apprentice. :tsk:
 
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stirk

stirk

Burner
Flow-Rider said:
Not really sure how it will work out, we will just have to wait and see. From experience the only reason large corps do these type of things is to make more money at someone else's cost and I have worked for a few of the chunts over the years. The poor bike shop will have to deal with the winging customer and there will be little very in what they can do and the customer walks away disgruntled. When you do warranty work for car dealerships you never get full labour charge and that's why they do it as fast as possible and use some cheap apprentice. :tsk:
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More money, absolutely on their agenda and making inroads into CRC, Wiggle, etc, the article said exactly that, they have been watching the online retail market for a while and thought, yeah we want some of that.

I'd say good for them if they pass the savings and increased revenue on to consumers as savings in the retail pricing, but going on current market trends that is not likely.
 
Flow-Rider

Flow-Rider

Burner
stirk said:
More money, absolutely on their agenda and making inroads into CRC, Wiggle, etc, the article said exactly that, they have been watching the online retail market for a while and thought, yeah we want some of that.

I'd say good for them if they pass the savings and increased revenue on to consumers as savings in the retail pricing, but going on current market trends that is not likely.
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I see they also noted that they will sell Garmins and other bike parts, I wonder if they will sell them cheaper than most online shops through bulk buying or be competitive.
 
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0

0psi

Eats Squid
I'm guessing no one here actually took the time to read the article?

Trek dealers everywhere are rejoicing, quite frankly it's f**king fantastic. Dealers will make approximately 80% of the margin they'd make from an in store sale without having to do any of the work. I wish I could sell all my bikes like that.
 
Art Vanderlay

Art Vanderlay

Hourly daily
0psi said:
I'm guessing no one here actually took the time to read the article?

Trek dealers everywhere are rejoicing, quite frankly it's f**king fantastic. Dealers will make approximately 80% of the margin they'd make from an in store sale without having to do any of the work. I wish I could sell all my bikes like that.
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0psi, where have you been man?
 
MARKL

MARKL

Eats Squid
This seems to be more about Trek controlling their online sales presence then anything else - essentially if you are Trek dealer this will be your online presence and you won't be undercutting each other cause pricing will be set centrally by Trek.
 
link1896

link1896

Mr Greenfield
0psi said:
I'm guessing no one here actually took the time to read the article?

Trek dealers everywhere are rejoicing, quite frankly it's f**king fantastic. Dealers will make approximately 80% of the margin they'd make from an in store sale without having to do any of the work. I wish I could sell all my bikes like that.
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I did, felt like it was written by trek in spots. Training bwah ha ha



MARKL said:
This seems to be more about Trek controlling their online sales presence then anything else - essentially if you are Trek dealer this will be your online presence and you won't be undercutting each other cause pricing will be set centrally by Trek.
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Try getting a price in writing from a Specialized dealer, getting a drug dealer to put pen to paper is easier.
 
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