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SA online bike shops, Part 2: Evo Bikes

· By BikeHubCoreAdmin · 6 comments

There is much debate surrounding the reasons for purchasing a bike online. But are they all justified? I spoke to some of the main players of South Africa’s growing online shopping community to find out how they started, why they did so and what some problems they encountered. I also asked about some of the typical concerns that customers would usually worry about, such as after market servicing and grey imports. This is Part 2 with Naas Kruger of Evo Bikes.

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We went online secondary, we still are the importers of some brands, primarily from Italy… And the main reason we went online was… firstly, if you are not a known big brand, you battle to get your products into any shops because they prefer to sell the easy stuff. And secondly, there’s a huge payment issue as well with being a wholesaler. We must pay upfront cash for all our goods; we don’t have 30 or 90 day accounts. Every LBS wants a 30 day account minimum and prefers a 90 day account. Which gives you a cash flow issue, firstly, and secondly what happened was two of our biggest suppliers renegated on their payments, simple as that… In that time period we also started an online section where we retailed our products we imported at a retail price, less a bit of a discount. And that obviously picked up during that period and we also got a lot of enquiries about other products, the ones we don’t distribute.

About a year ago I made a decision to go online, almost purely online, but we are still the importers and distributers of those brands and still supply them wholesale to bike shops, those that are interested. Obviously the bike shops see us as competition. Not everyone; there are bike shops that understand that a cyclist will buy online anywhere in the world.

So the reason we went online, is that primarily there was a demand from the public for us and for our products. Secondly, we had to make a business and strategic decision: do we carry on wholesaling with its problems of cash-flow, non-payment and up-front orders every season, which is a fairly big item, if you order all your year’s stock up-front and sell it throughout the season? It was the best decision I could have ever made.
Naas Kruger

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Price and Availability

Evo Bikes sits fairly in the middle of the balance between niche products and the easy sellers. They import a fair amount of niche products, mostly from Italy and mostly road related, but also have the standard stock that you would expect to find at your LBS. And like CWC, Evo Bikes has had its own problems trying to get stock from local distributors.

“Whenever we show something that’s in stock, it’s in stock and out of stock is out of stock,” says Naas. Evo Bikes dabble in grey imports, “when we’re forced to do it.” And this is down to the case of local distributors not supplying the online shops because they are online. But, as Naas argued, he actually has a warehouse, so they are a shop in a sense. They buy and sell stuff through a showroom. But when a distributor refuses to supply products, then Evo contacts overseas suppliers, which mostly ends up being the same price that they would be getting the products for locally.

Some distributors are still trying to control pricing and I understand their viewpoint that the pricing needs to be controlled, but they need to understand that the cycling market is a world market. There is no way in which you can control the price once the product leaves your store…All our products that we import either come from the official distributor or that product in another country or from a physical shop that’s got clearance sales.

Naas continued to say that he buys from European bike shops that have sales and specials, and has actually developed relationships with these shops as distributors. As the market in Europe is immensely bigger than in SA, the bike shops are actually warehouses in themselves and stock vastly more quantities than shops in SA. What Evo Bikes does not do is import OEM (original equipment manufacturer) products. Meaning that the products were originally meant for a complete bike but for some reason didn’t find its way onto one or was actually taken off one. These products are often sold ‘via the back door’ in a sense and are not made to be sold separately from the complete bike. It doesn’t stop some people buying them cheap and selling them as new.

Service and Convenience

Because Evo Bikes do not get the dodgy sorts of grey imports, their products carry warranties, “The stock that does not come from local suppliers either comes from the official distributor in another country or an official shop in another country, so there’s a warranty on those items.” And this means that if there is a problem with any products bought through Evo, the customer can send it straight back to Evo and they will carry the warranty, or depending if it is imported from a non-local distributor, then Evo swaps the item out and returns the customer’s product back to the supplier under warranty.

Naas said that customers looking to buy online not only know what they want to buy, but they also look at online shops as a place of information. They know what they want, but they also want to know that what they’re getting is exactly what they want.

Even if they don’t purchase from us, we educate them, and ourselves in the process. We give a big service in terms of knowledge that we transfer back even if you don’t buy from us, just through emails and conversations with people.

It seems like a theme for online shops, to not treat customers as an online presence only, but as actual living breathing people. To keep people happy it is necessary to try and help them with their purchasing decisions, without the pure agenda to sell. As shops become more competitive with their pricing, it becomes more about the personal service you receive at a shop. And this determines whether you will give that shop your service in the future. It seems that just because a shop is online, doesn’t mean the service won’t be up to LBS standards or even above.

Evo Bikes: www.evobikes.co.za

Comments

LazyTrailRider

Nov 19, 2013, 7:29 PM

Loving these little feature articles, very cool.

gummibear

Nov 19, 2013, 7:35 PM

Loving these little feature articles, very cool.

 

+1 :thumbup:

Capricorn

Nov 19, 2013, 8:01 PM

that might explain my pedals...

Capricorn

Nov 19, 2013, 8:05 PM

yep, have to +rep the small cosy nature of the articles, even includes what i presume to be naas' often idiosyncratic grammar :thumbup: :D . (renegated as opposed to reneged )

tunariaan

Nov 20, 2013, 1:40 PM

Got to agree.. Naas has been very helpful and aways quick to reply even if I dont buy everytime

Carbon Junky

Nov 23, 2013, 9:53 AM

Evobike is simply the best when it comes to those niche products like my QXL rings or those exotic shoes. They're always helpful and friendly. Thanks Evobike

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