Essay: On the Local Bike Shop
(2021) A few weeks ago I mingled with the cycling crowd at a shop's grand opening. I cannot tell you the last time I heard of a bike shop actually opening, especially during these turbulent times for small business. This sentiment was passed on to a few other industry attendees and the conversation pivoted to a darker bike shop direction.
It is a fact that of the bike shops I have worked at, nearly all of them cease to exist as of 2021. Wouldn’t you know, after the grand opening, I received a fresh email from another shop, this one in Harleysville, PA, calling time on their long community presence. The number of bike shops that have closed is at six. There were not many cycling shops in the area to start; losing six is a sizable chunk.
After a couple of days of digesting the shops that have closed, not one single common thread runs through them. One shop was sold and then sold again. Four shops have outright closed. One shop fledged for a few years because they actually owned the building. Some say the shops were in debt, others it was a supply issue, more cite increasing expectations on an already stretched industry. Then there’s the inability to compete with the internet. A shop can stock nineteen styles of bibs; inevitably everyone will request the twentieth style and scoff at the shelf collection.
There is also the incorrect reputation that bike shops cater only to the racers and would-be racers within the clientele. Having worked more than a decade in the industry, the first order of business with new customers was to disarm them, let them know we want people on bikes. The type of bike was the one perfect for them. Most people came around. Some clenched their fists through the exchange waiting for some misconstrued statement to justify their belief I was trying to sell them a race bike. Sometimes it felt like I was trying to convince them I wasn’t a car salesman while being called smug. Then if I tried laid-back indifference, an opposite to pushiness, some took it as apathy.
The pandemic walloped the cycling industry with an awful one-two punch. People re-visited the relationship with cycling and went to a shop intending to buy a new one, that’s good. Those potential customers were met with no supply and racks on racks of customer bikes waiting for parts, that’s bad. The moment people wanted to ride most, the industry couldn’t deliver. How to disarm the customer who says they have money for a bike but cannot find one anywhere in a one-hour radius?
A couple of years ago a local shop implemented an internet bike build service fee. That is, buy it online from a company outside their supplier, bring it in and have it professionally assembled. People got frustrated at that. People tried to circumvent the build fee by putting the bike together as much as possible, only to let it be known that the build fee should not apply. Or, customers wanted the rest of the build to be categorized as a tune-up.
So where does that leave the shop? Dead center in everyone’s crosshairs. People who want bikes can’t get them. People who want parts can’t get them. People who want matched internet prices (often closeout prices from shops going out of business) won’t have them. Sales and mechanics bear the brunt of the mystified customer. Frustration mounts amongst a demographic that should all be on the same team. People turn to the internet for their gear, ask the local bike shop to put the parts together, complain about the fee, and wonder why the drive to the ‘local’ bike shop is getting longer and longer.
Bike shops of today look nothing like they did ten years ago. Ten years ago the shop I worked in looked like a shipping container with inventory on every conceivable surface of the shop. We had stuff hanging from stuff hanging from the ceiling. Today shops are expected to be open concept. It is expected to be a place to hang out. And for those who cannot get to the bike shop, the social media presence should substitute in kind. Each shop should have a dominant team under this new model, a point borrowed from the shops of the previous decade. And shops are expected to provide support for 5ks, triathlons, fundraisers, and bike races. Now imagine doing all this during a pandemic with no inventory, no lead times, irate customers, no service parts, and it’s no wonder shops are calling it quits. Each part in the process outside the shop doors shoulders the same amount of blame.
When was the last time a bike shop opened near you? When was the last time you set foot in the local bike shop? Better yet, when was the last time you purchased something from the bike shop? Prior to the pandemic some shops were operating on razor-thin margins hoping for better days ahead. Just when the life ring was thrown out, it evaporated. Many shops could see salvation but get to it. Take your pick as to which culprit sank your local shop. There were only six mechanics we trusted to work on the asphalt steed. Three of them are no longer in the business.
Hopefully the worst of the pandemic is behind us, and the shops that are on the other side are ready to receive interested cyclists for years to come. It is our hope more new shops replace the once-bedrock establishments of decades prior. Until then, may level heads prevail and parts flow freely. We all have a duty to support one of the last community pillars of private enterprise.
