The Business of Bicycles

I'm finding myself rediscovering bicycles. I've been involved in the world of bicycle retail for something like ten years and started two stores in that time and have only recently extracted myself from all that. It feels good. I've been riding my bikes more lately and I own fewer than I have in years. The collection has always swollen and receded in a regular cycle but over the last year or so I've managed to sell bikes without replacing them like I usually do. And I even have a couple more I'd like to sell without replacing them. For years every new innovation in the world of bicycles, every new material, configuration of tubes, it was all sold to us quite well and one wanted to try every new thing. Every year I'd be swayed by something as simple as an aesthetic and somehow justify that I owed it to my customer base to try the new stuff, to comment on it the only valid way one could, by riding it. Reality is often the new stuff was good but there was also nothing wrong with the old stuff. In fact, many times the innovations were purely cosmetic or, best case scenario, marginally lighter, not that there's anything wrong with that if performance and durability are maintained but unfortunately often they were not.

My last foray into the world of bicycle retail was short lived, only a year. In that year I really began to hate bicycles. I tried to like them but there was very little out there that made me happy. This wasn't good. It wasn't long before I realized I had made a mistake getting back into the industry and I had to get out.

What went wrong? So many things and a lot of them were beyond my control. The bicycle industry is a messed up affair most of the time. This wasn't new to me but for some reason I thought it would be different this time. It wasn't.

What's wrong with the industry? So many things. I've been accused of being somewhat cynical, or retro-grouchy, or unadventurous, or whatever, when it comes to innovation in the world of bicycles. That's not true, I like new and shiny stuff but I've also been bitten by a lot by mediocre parts in fancy packaging promising to bring nirvana to my bicycle riding experience.

It's a time like this, as I reduce and streamline, I wonder about what I specifically want out of a bicycle and what it is that bothers me about the majority of bicycles out there.

The industry has been running rampant with upgrades and innovations and promises of lighter, stronger, stiffer. Why am I not enthused about this? Why does this actually do more to piss me off than impress me? I like new stuff. I like good stuff. I like shiny stuff. And yet for all the new and shiny stuff the bicycle industry puts out they seem to forget to also make it good.

Where in my old store I would fight the urge to build up whatever frame was in the store that just happened to be my size (funny how that happens when placing orders for new stuff) in the new store not only was there very little on the showroom floor that really made me want to ride it, there was very little in the catalogue that stood out as a lustworthy object. Mediocrity had taken over. There were any number of reasons for that, most likely being that stuff had gotten pretty damn good so there wasn't much room for improvement. There were also a number of mainstream manufacturers who had so much wrapped up in what they made that the little guys who usually push the innovation couldn't compete, couldn't beat the big kids at their own game. But trusting the general impatience of human nature, simply making something new and calling it better and making it shiny was often enough to sway consumers. I've been there. If you're passionate about bicycles you've been there too. You've picked up a magazine and seen something very slick and well marketed and you've read the ad copy and then saved up a few bucks and gone to the store and bought "something" even if you didn't need it. The first time this happened to me I was distracted by Machine Tech brakes. I didn't buy them specifically, they came on a second hand bike that I bought, but they were a selling feature of the bike that I found really appealing because, well, everyone wanted Machine Tech brakes. Reality is, they sucked. They were very difficult to set up and despite ad copy touting how stiff they were they really did a very poor job of stopping a bicycle. There were lots of other bits that got me like Girvin flex stems (I still remember the debates about what was better, suspension in a stem or suspension in a fork, seems pretty obvious now), AMP forks (neat design but the bushings wore out in about five good hard rides), early Grip Shift which promised fewer parts meaning less maintenance and lighter weight, except they didn't work unless you installed a bassworm (it pulled the cable at the rear derailleur), a power spring (made the derailleur spring stronger), and Gore housing (less cable drag to allow the derailleur to shift smoother), and even then they didn't work all that well.

So yeah, I'd try new stuff all the time but newer wasn't always better. Of course sometimes it was. I like my Hope disc brakes, I like my external bearing bottom brackets. 10 gears on a road bike is nice. And suspension forks on mountain bikes work really well now. So while I'm a fan of reasonable innovation what we're subjected to today is quite unreasonable. Consider a ceramic bearing headset. Obviously there's no need for the reduced rolling resistance that a ceramic bearing would provide in a headset application so the only rationale that can be argued is durability. Sure, a ceramic bearing is harder and might last longer there are any number of bearings around that cost a 5th as much that will last at least half as long (do the math, that means it's a much better value and it won't slow your bike down any).

Where all this left me is standing in a bicycle store that I had just opened thinking about what it was that I wanted to sell and if it was even available anymore and a lot of the time it wasn't. The good solid components were being replaced by well marketed disposable components. Wheels, for instance, are one of the most important parts of a bike. I'm a huge fan of handbuilt wheels. I'm also a fan of Campagnolo components because they are quite durable and, more importantly, they are rebuildable. What shocked me this year is that Campagnolo will no longer offer hubs for their component sets except for Record which is quite expensive and excessive for most users. Instead you could pick from any of the prebuilt wheels in their catalogue at a number of reasonable price points. While this might seam a decent alternative my experience with Campagnolo wheels is that while they are quite durable the replacement parts are proprietary and expensive and you often realize it's cheaper to buy new wheels than fix your old ones. Wasn't cycling supposed to be environmentally friendly? If so, why do we so readily accept throwing out things that traditionally have been quite serviceable?

Campagnolo hubs were just one thing. There were so many others it's hard to get into here. And there were any number of companies that seemed more motivated to get stuff to market regardless of whether or not it worked. And other companies that were doing their best to sell sunglasses to the blind with their glossy ad copy touting the benefits of their mediocre products.

Leaving the bicycle retail industry a second time was essentially a vote of no confidence in the industry upon which I was to depend on for a living.

But wait, there's more. It's not that I've given up on bicycles, it's that I've decided there needs to be more people producing bicycles and bicycle components from the other side, people who really care about making good stuff without getting distracted by marketing or lightweight or any other gimmicks. Some of these items exist already. Phil Wood hubs, Chris King headsets, Paul Component cantilever brakes, all good and, not uncoincidentally, pretty much unchanged designs for years. They've all recognized what they make is a good thing and there's not much need to change from year to year for the sake of change. Me? Bicycle frames, or at least that's a start. There's no real shortage of bicycle frame builders in North America and it's fair to wonder if there's a need for them all but I suspect there is. Especially in Canada where there's only a handful of small builders. I suspect it won't end with frames. I have sketches and designs for clean, functional, rebuildable bits and pieces. Perhaps as time goes on I'll finalize a scheme or two and make a product or three available for sale. But for now I'll keep making frames and see where that takes me.