Danger Dassie

Still operating, different premises around the corner at Design Appel. It’s easy enough to take a quick look at their socials and maps to confirm. Think the landowners have plans for that corner.

Quite sure, there was an initial boom yes. The vast majority was lockdown stock, then when the supply chain needed to restock and meet demand, there was nothing to supply and keep up with the momentum. It became a bun fight. This has been documented in not just the cycling industry, but also a number of manufacturing industries (cars) went through the same.

Wasn’t really any profit, the cost of manufacturing and supply more than trebled in a lot of areas. So yes, while we paid much higher prices it didn’t correlate to massive margins and profits as brands absorbed a lot of the increase as well. Probably banking on a levelling out in the market. Of course a cost of living crisis driven by post lockdown and wars compounded the drop off and bad forecasts. It also doesn’t help that there’s little investment in cycling advocacy by the industry.

Capegro Sports, they also do Vision and Sapim.

Maybe it’ll pop up in Decathlon

Could well be counterfeit knock offs and/or lowball supply chain. Or a combin of the two. Therein lies the rub, if it seems too good to be true, more often than not it is.

Neighbor down the road got their delivery last week. Some running, outdoor stuff and casual riding gear. 50/50 split on the quality and longevity, as well as the blatant counterfeit gloves. For me personally I’ll give it a skip.

Ass Magic do a great kit wash too. My stuff is normally washed by hand or sport cycle inside out and dried inside out as well, all my cloths really.

Likely it will be a semi-wireless system, so still some fidgeting with installing. Also interested to see how Shimano adapt designs to the UDH standard in their finished products. Interestingly none of the Shimano equipped teams (UCI) at Epic were running Di2, although two of the teams alluded to something in the pipeline.

100% Less MBAs and more hands on. DC were brilliant out of the blocks and looked to be consistent, but based on the Bryanston store, it feels like they went backwards at a rate of knots. Not so much to do following XCO, macroeconomics etc … Business is tough, I get it, having acutely felt the pressure myself. Which also makes every rand I spend important, I don’t want it to feel like a grudge purchase.

Lots of high level talk, but if one don’t invest in the foundation levels of marketing, customer experience etc. Then forget about any economic performance. I’m in the Decathlon Bryanston store now. They did a revamp of the layout, there’s errors in the merchandising, ie a beautiful contour display of trails meant for cycling, is in its original spot amongst golfing whereas cycling is upstairs. Each visit lately- Staff, more keen on rearranging displays, talking to eachother, stock taking etc. But not engaging customers. This includes supervising/management. It is borderline rude. Half the bathrooms seem to be locked, or occupied, I don’t know but I waited. One opens up and all I hear is the door slamming each time and a staff member yelling for his mate “it’s time to eat” I love the place and what Decathlon does/stands for. But it feels like the actions aren’t aligning with the principles of late.

Don’t know about the others but Bryanston, HP on Roodepoort and Greenstone in Edenvale are in high density areas and have pretty high foot traffic. As far as Leroy’s goes, I’ve had better in pricing and service at Mega Mica and Chamberlains.

Outside of a constrained economy. We’re a saturated market, and to be frank ,with hard cycling goods Decathlon would struggle against the established brands here in spec/pricing value. Especially the local ones. Sure for a short/medium period, because something new and shiny. But ultimately not as big an impact as people may think. Some gems in the soft goods though like their Van Rysel rain shell. Same in their other areas, find some really good stuff, particularly the hiking and camping. Likewise I can’t believe they’ve not opened up branches in KZN, Eastern and Western Cape.

William at Dunkeld Cycles might able to assist you.

HDMI cable and sorted 👌