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.
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
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.
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.
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
Loving these little feature articles, very cool.