I’ve been talking a bunch with my industry friends about ‘the old way.’ That is to say, the way customers were earned when I first started working in a shop. Supporting the local ride groups, high school race teams, the BMX track, the randonneuring club. Focusing on selling someone their first bike as a kid, and then their next bike, and so on.
All this is part of a discussion of how bike shops need to stop putting so-so-so much effort into fighting over the same handful of well-heeled old people who already own more bikes than they can ride and really look at where their future customers are coming from.
Not so much the groms like The Clairebarian who are growing up mountain biking but all the kids just riding around who will discover the activity for themselves as teenagers and adults. New mountain bikers, some of whom will hopefully return to where their first two-wheeled machines came from.
I’d guess if you stand at your local trailhead and poll people pedaling past that most of them found mountain biking rather than being raised in it.
[Selling Used Aside]
I was chatting with a friend the other day about their collection of mountain bicycles they don’t ride. The used market is rebounding but also, for whatever percentage return on the original purchase price, wouldn’t it be way better for those bikes to be out on the trails living their best lives than hanging flat-tired in a garage?
The truth is some folks, many folks, maybe most folks, despise selling their used bikes. To such an extent that if there was a store that bought used bikes for pennies on the dollar, cleaned them up, and re-sold them that for every person complaining they weren’t being offered a fair price for their rig {sell it yourself then}, there would be multiple people just happy that re-homing it was someone else’s problem.
Used and consignment shops have been done, no doubt. But I think a boutique thrift-style used shop focused on performance rigs would maybe do well in some markets?
[/Aside]
Anywho, I’ve never heard of a bike buy-back program for adult bikes. Say someone is upgrading their starter rig, or has switched to riding eebs, or maybe has switched back from riding eebs, or has decided that rigid single-speeds are their future {welcome to 50,000:1} and they would rather not sell their bike themselves and also, they aren’t going to use it again.
But, thankfully, especially with all the one-grom families out there who aren’t cascading hand-me-downs, for kids’ bikes {generally from balance rigs to 24″ or 26″ grom-rippers} these sorts of buy-back programs exist. They’re not for everyone, as with used cars many folks would like to try and maximize their return selling privatively.
For those folks who would otherwise have 12″, 16″, 20″, 24″, and 26″ kids rigs still taking up space years after their children leave the nest, this is a great way to lessen costs and also make certain those bikes are still out in the world being loved.
Food for thought. I think every shop selling kids’ rigs would benefit from a buy-back program. It keeps customers coming back. It creates a channel for parents to save a few bucks by buying their kids a quality, professionally serviced, used bike. And it provides shops a chance to help parents build on that innate love of bicycles that all kids carry, while also building a relationship that can thrive for decades.
Anywho, for folks who are interested in looking into it further, here are two programs that I’ve been chatting about lately:
Obsession: Bikes Buyback Program: “Kids Grow Fast. Their Bikes Should Too.“
The Obsession program has been in place for well over a decade. It depreciates bikes purchased at Obsession by 1/3rd of their purchase price per year. As with every buy-back program I have seen, this one provides a store credit toward the next bike. The shop fixes up the buy-back bikes and then resells them, adding a lower-priced option to the local riding community.
MEC Bike Trade-In: “Keep your pre-loved wheels in rotation.“
The MEC program is more qualitative, offering up to 50% back on MEC kids’ bikes in good condition, based on an assessment by MEC staff. Here too, their mechanics service the returned bicycles so they can be returned to the wild under a new grom’s guidance.
Personally, this is the best sort of customer and community-benefitting marketing project where everyone wins. No one more than the bike shop that has multiple opportunities to build a relationship and earn long-term customers. Both current parents & groms and future mountain bikers.
Tunnel Talk will be back more frequently with an eye to ways ‘the old way’ is relevant to selling and servicing mountain bikes, and mountain biking, today.
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