Business is booming for Singapore’s bike retailers, but the picture isn’t all rosy
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Business is booming for Singapore's bike retailers, only the picture isn't all rosy
Demand for bicycles that cost upwardly to five figures has increased, only global supply shortages are property back sales numbers. The longer waiting times have also led to disputes betwixt customers and retailers.
The ongoing pandemic has seen a adequately meaning number of people picking upward cycling equally a hobby. (Photo: Freepik/Bike Cosmos Workshop)
08 Jun 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 10 Aug 2022 09:43AM)
Business is booming for bicycle retailers. Or at to the lowest degree it seems to be. Just do a quick straw poll and you'll probably find that one, if not more, of your friends have taken up cycling in the past twelvemonth.
Call them travel-starved, lockdown escapists, or even simply people trying to discover something new to do while stuck on an island barely 50km across (and getting fitter in the process), but the ongoing pandemic has seen a fairly significant number of people picking up cycling equally a hobby.
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At present, this evidence might be circumstantial, simply given the numerous recent calls to license/legislate cyclists on the road, parks teeming with bikes and the number of people posing with their two-wheelers on social media, information technology seems cycling is at present the sport du jour.
Afterward all, there'southward quite a scrap to love well-nigh information technology. Firstly, information technology lets you become out of the house, gets you lot fit and if information technology interests you, allows you to indulge in a bit of gear acquisition, if that's your purse.
Simply what isn't circumstantial testify, however, is how empty bicycle shops seem to be these days. Non of people, mind you, since most times will run across these retailers heaving at the seams with customers (within rubber distancing rules, naturally), just the floors accept nigh universally been swept clean of shiny new bikes.
In some cases, the bikes are snapped upward by hungry customers as shortly as they're removed from their aircraft cartons and assembled. This chronic shortage of bikes bachelor in stock has led to what Vivian Yuan, co-founder of local retailer Mighty Velo (a self-styled "folding bike specialist" who got into the bike retail by "sheer blow") chosen a "vibrant secondhand market" where new, and fifty-fifty used bicycles are sold for amounts that she says isn't reflective of regular market weather condition.
Prices for new bikes range from but under S$1,000 for a CarryMe to a little over Due south$6,000 for top-end Birdy folding bikes.
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So you might recall that bike shops are making coin paw over fist, whose owners are triumphantly throwing giant wads of cash into the air.
The reality, all the same, is that while business is definitely good, it's nowhere near as good as what those same empty showroom floors might suggest. Yuan said Mighty Velo'south sales accept gone upward by around 25 per cent, with like rises existence reported past used bike/wheel components retailer BikeMart at xx per cent. I doing a piffling meliorate is multi-brand retailer and distributor, The Cycle Settlement, which recorded a 30- to 50 per cent increase from 2019.
Not quite the two- or threefold increase we were expecting, then.
The biggest reason for those empty stores, with all three retailers echoing information technology in unison, is a clogging on the supply side. Kelvin Ng, possessor of The Bike Settlement, where sure Gene models can cost upwardly of S$10,000, said that delays and shortages upwards and down the supply chain as a event of the pandemic accept seen await times balloon to just over a year.
A similar situation can exist observed in the automotive manufacture, where shortages of computer chips, an integral component in the highly avant-garde automobiles of today, accept seen thousands of half-completed cars languishing on manufactory floors.
These delays are peculiarly painful for Bike Mart, as marketing manager Jerry Tan explained. Having recently acquired the right to sell Wilier Triestina's (a high-terminate Italian brand which has bikes costing well over five figures) wares in Singapore, he's had to return customers' deposits simply because stock wasn't arriving in a timely plenty fashion.
Ng of The Bike Settlement is getting around this result past "sourcing as many variations of bikes and accessories which are in stock, or take earlier delivery dates, so every bit non to disappoint our customers".
Tan also admits to having to "go creative" with sourcing. Where in the past Bike Mart relied on Singaporean distributors, Tan has now had to find parts from other countries in the region, going as far afield as Italia.
"If you know that whatsoever you ordered isn't going to come in, yous got to think of [other] ways to get acquirement," said Tan.
Of course, with an influx of customers, many of whom are new to the sport and unfamiliar with the rhythms of bike shopping, the mechanical ins-and-outs of wheel ownership, along with the extended waiting times for a new bike, tempers are leap to, well, fray.
Mighty Velo posted on its social media channels in early April this year exhorting some of its customers to "stop your verbal corruption". The post, which quickly went viral, drew the usual polarised crowd of supporters and detractors, with the former rallying to Mighty Velo's side and the latter proverb perhaps the retailer somehow deserved all the brickbats information technology got.
In whatsoever case, Yuan is adamant that the pandemic has inverse customer expectations, and shared several more than stories of having to handle difficult customers, amidst them some who came in enervating discounts from a 2022 advertisement.
Handling difficult customers during this fourth dimension is as well something that Bicycle Mart'due south Tan has had to face, though it's somewhat understandable.
"When customers, especially in Singapore, pay for something they expect it to exist fast," he said, citing how there are some customers who have had their bikes' servicing delayed. Non through whatever fault of Bicycle Mart, but more a factor of the aforementioned pandemic-related shortages, with some components being near impossible to go a hold of.
Still, while concern is booming for now, simply making banking concern selling bikes isn't the but thing these retailers are preoccupied with. The current smash can't last forever, after all, with The Cycle Settlement's Ng citing a fairly depressed industry from 2022 to 2019, a time that saw several retailers go under.
Ng told united states of america that in improver to selling bikes, he and his colleagues are constantly trying to educate customers on the finer points of ride safe and wheel maintenance. In addition to that, The Bicycle Settlement is i of the main drivers behind the Loveist Group, a non-turn a profit organisation dedicated to helping the less-fortunate in gild.
Equally for Wheel Mart, Tan is looking ahead to the near future, with an intent to strengthen its e-commerce presence, along with offering bike maintenance courses, and content creation to benefit riders in a bid to diversify its revenue stream from its electric current one of simply selling bikes.
Mighty Velo's Yuan wants to practice this past ensuring people proceed their honey affairs with bikes, fifty-fifty later on borders reopen. Information technology's something she'south confident of, citing examples of how a couple of cabinet ministers have been seen to exist riding, or advocating for, bicycles.
More than that, however, is her (and by extension, Mighty Velo'southward) approach to the business of wheel retail.
"I never upsell. I always say to newbies, simply go one, it doesn't have to be the about expensive i," she stated.
She continued: "Y'all've got to buy a bicycle that fits your lifestyle. You don't just want to purchase a bike because your goal is to ride to Lamppost 1 [a famous landmark for cyclists in Tuas], then say 'I've done it' and not ride anymore, and I know it sounds boring and not controversial."
We beg to differ, however. A cycle shop owner whose business is booming at the moment not pushing buyers toward its most expensive products, but pushing more people to love the sport she does?
Well, that sounds pretty controversial to u.s.a..
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/experiences/singapore-s-bicycle-retailers-business-248476
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