A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shops instead

If I recall correctly, Specialized Bikes pulled all their products from Amazon a while ago, pointing to the failing local bike shops eventually hurting the bike business for everyone.<p>Bicycles are not toys. They are vehicles that need maintenance. You can do much of that maintenance yourself if you&#x27;re a nerd, but the vast majority of cyclists are dependent on local bike shops to sustain the cycling community.<p>The bicycle&#x2F;parts manufacturers need a large cycling community to sell products to. The large cycling community will have novice and intermediate cyclists that will abandon cycling if their bikes break down. The novice and intermediate cyclist need local bike shops to do maintenance on their bikes at affordable rates. The local bike shops need a revenue stream beyond labor for maintenance to be affordable. Thus, the major bicycle manufacturers need to give a oligopoly status to the local bike shops in order to keep their user base large.<p>As a life long cyclist, I&#x27;ve seen the industry grow and wane, and throughout it all, I&#x27;ve seen the vast majority of people think bicycles are some type of sports-equipment. Decisions like this are one of only a few business models that I can see sustaining the community. I&#x27;m actually surprised and optimistic to see the major manufacturer Trek start building their own brick and mortar shops in certain major cities, though I&#x27;d prefer to see this happen through a major cooperative between the various brands. If you care about making cycling a serious, sustainable transit alternative, we need to maintain the entire ecosystem of ridership, which means the race to the bottom on amazon must be stopped.

From the article: &quot;PNW wasn’t the only business growing tired of Amazon. Kerson and his team asked buyers at every retailer who stocks PNW parts to remove them from their Amazon stores too, so that everyone involved could maximize their profits and not undercut each other.&quot; ... “We set up these calls and we were not expecting them to go very well,” says Marshall, “As soon as we started talking about it the buyers were really excited.”<p>From the FTC: &quot;Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors that raises, lowers, or stabilizes prices or competitive terms ... Price fixing relates not only to prices, but also to other terms that affect prices to consumers, such as shipping fees, warranties, discount programs, or financing rates. Antitrust scrutiny may occur when competitors discuss the following topics: ..., Capacity, Identity of customers, ... Defendants may not justify their behavior by arguing that the prices were reasonable to consumers, were necessary to avoid cut-throat competition, or stimulated competition.&quot; [1]<p>Is there a lawer who can say if that was price fixing?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;tips-advice&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;guide-antitrust-laws&#x2F;dealings-competitors&#x2F;price-fixing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;tips-advice&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;guide-a...</a>

Ortlieb[0], the very appreciated maker of bicycle bags, is not selling over Amazon. They are selling online, but your order&#x2F;payment is sent directly to a local shop delivering to you (in Germany). I really like it.<p>Some years ago, Amazon was pushing &quot;Ortlieb bag&quot; adverts on Google to redirect to Amazon where the bags were not to be found and was sued. Amazon lost[1].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ortlieb.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ortlieb.com</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spiegel.de&#x2F;netzwelt&#x2F;netzpolitik&#x2F;ortlieb-gegen-amazon-fahrradtaschenhersteller-gewinnt-prozess-a-1278894.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spiegel.de&#x2F;netzwelt&#x2F;netzpolitik&#x2F;ortlieb-gegen-am...</a>

I am happy the parts company is ditching Amazon, but its so much more important for us consumers to ditch amazon. I have cut my amazon purchases down to only 16 total items this year so far ( down from ~50 in 2020 ) and I am now only ordering from Amazon as a last option when I cant find what I want anywhere else. That brief glimpse of the Amazon future where all stores are shut down, and we can only ever buy things online, and everyone is an amazon serf was such a wakeup call as to what we were heading towards. I just hope enough people can jump ship to keep a functioning non amazon centric supply chain.

I suspect this is a trend that&#x27;ll continue as market buyers and sellers realize Amazon is a poor fit for certain of their activities.<p>I already avoid Amazon as a consumer when the brand, quality, or delivery date really counts.<p>But I also avoid Lowes when I&#x27;m buying appliances for tenant properties because they can&#x27;t be relied upon to call before they deliver. And I don&#x27;t buy from Harbor Freight Tools when equipment failure might be fatal because some things I&#x27;ve bought there haven&#x27;t survived their first use.<p>But those places have saved me a ton of money over the years when their model has worked to my benefit, just like Amazon has made a vast improvement in certain areas of my life.<p>I suspect companies like PNC are coming to similar realizations about Amazon as they see that their returns (or the implications on their reputations, or their confidence in continued sales) paint a picture that&#x27;s less attractive than pursuing alternatives.

It&#x27;s so interesting to see how the pandemic hits different countries in different ways. This article talks about struggling bike shops. The truth couldn&#x27;t be any more different in Germany. Bike shops were run over by customers because so many more people wanted to either go to work by bike instead of public transportation, or they had no work to do so they decided to go biking in their new spare time. Repair shops are super busy, but now there&#x27;s a shortage in bike parts, too...

Kerson and his team asked buyers at every retailer who stocks PNW parts to remove them from their Amazon stores too, so that everyone involved could maximize their profits and not undercut each other.<p>IANAL, but is this not collusion or price fixing?

Personally I find local bike and book shops to be excellent alternatives to Amazon. For tech stuff I go to Best Buy where possible (not exactly a local shop, but at least it&#x27;s still competition for Amazon). Nice to see the suppliers themselves pull out of Amazon.

This is fascinating and a great description to the threats facing Amazon. When you cede responsibility to Amazon that your business requires to perform adequately (in this case it seems to be the ability to match a bike to its compatible parts) than that is a risk for Amazon to lose its place as the internet’s mall if it cannot offer a way to stay relevant. If zero bike parts are available on Amazon today it might become bigger and bigger markets tomorrow, that a company like Shopify is better aligned to serve.

I love this trend. I stopped using Amazon last year, and I&#x27;m very interested in doing business with companies who chose likewise.

amusingly there&#x27;s nothing particularly new here in terms of the alternatives they&#x27;re exploring. i used to work in a local bike shop and thought about even doing bike parts e-commerce in the 90s. bicycles and parts have always been a high touch business. manufacturers treat local bike shops like customers, assign reps who visit to ensure merchandising standards and have strict rules regarding pricing to ensure all the shops can survive.<p>it amuses me to read that they&#x27;re setting that up now as if it&#x27;s new, as it is how it used to work for a very long time.

Good. PNW bikes (and treefort and some others) do good stuff.<p>At this point selling on amazon makes me trust you less — i’ve gotten way too many fake parts accidentally over the years to trust them with.

Do they actually make things or are they just selling branded white-label parts?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;PNW-Components-LLC&#x2F;Jobs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ziprecruiter.com&#x2F;c&#x2F;PNW-Components-LLC&#x2F;Jobs</a>

Probably smart; anything you put on Amazon nowadays that gets reasonably successful will get competed out of the market by either other sellers or Amazon itself.<p>The main challenge is discoverability; for a lot of people, websites like Amazon is the first port of call, and people are willing to pay the convenience fee just so they don&#x27;t have to scour the internet for an alternative.<p>That said, they now have to scour Amazon to find a decent product instead of &#x27;knockoffs&#x27; &#x2F; race-to-the-bottom competitors.

I&#x27;ve biked THOUSANDS of miles in the last years - growing up in Tahoe biking all through the 80s... Heck this month alone I have biked nearly 500 miles (26 miles a day, 29&quot; mtn....<p>Anyway, Have you dealt with a lot of &quot;local bike shops&quot; -- I have dealt with too many to count.<p>Lets look at a few pros and cons of &quot;local bike shops&quot;:<p>Pro:<p>-- Support a local business<p>-- Go in and talk to an actual person? (maybe)<p>Cons:<p>-- Many gear-head bike shop employees (specifically the mechanics) have a BOFH attitude, are gruff, rarely have time to talk - generally have an attitude.<p>-- Many of the local shops are now pushing bikes that are fucking $10,000 -- I looked at a bike in Mikes Bikes just last week - and it was $15,000<p>-- Gear selection is limited to a couple brands, and prices are no better than amazon<p>-- Bike shops aren&#x27;t like starbucks - they are fucking far apart.<p>-- I have biked DAILY for over a decade. I have gotten HUNDREDS of flats - and I always carry 2 tubes with me (yes, I want to go tubeless, just havent done so yet) - getting tubes off amazon is ideal. Having to have to drive very far to go buy a tube is a non-starter<p>Local bike shops currently have shitty inventories because of the supply shortage from china - and to have to again drive to the bike shop to find out that their inventory is low, that the lowest end bike is $5,000 and they want to sell every garment for &gt;$50 with stupid logos and printing all over them to show that you, the customer-turned-billboard are &quot;serious about your biking&quot;<p>-- Having to stand near too many weekend-road-warriors who really don&#x27;t need anything but want to instead show you how much money they threw into their entire kit....<p>-- Having to deal with upsell in certain cases<p>-- Having to get blank stares with questions about anything outside of what the store actually sells and too many answers of &quot;gee, I don&#x27;t know&quot;<p>---<p>Yeah, While I hate Amazon&#x27;s monopoly as much as everyone -- this does NOT make all local bike shops even.<p>Yes, I have met some awesome ones - not not enough to where every bike shop nearest me is a good one in every single city I have loved in all over the greater bay area all the way up to Tahoe City...

Related trivia: Jeff Bezos&#x27;s father was a local bike shop owner: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LP80jo1_UgU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LP80jo1_UgU</a>

i prefer to work on my bicycle. This is both a privilege and a luxury and i recognize such. PNW components are wonderful. I shop LBS for tools and &quot;need it today&quot; parts. I do not find value in paying the majority of bike mechanics (ive been scraping my shins religiously for 32yrs and part of what gives me confidence in jumping them tens of feet into the arm at the ripe age of midlife). I do, however, find value in shop talk and buying the right tools &#x2F; components (even if special ordered through the shops). Its a mixed bag of bolts

This doenst surprise me at all. There are more and more sellers that are frustrated with how amazon deals with them.<p>Amazons top priority is the customer, and thats how they got to this point, but everyone else suffers, from their 3rd party sellers to their suppliers to their own employees.<p>Here is a list of stuff Amazon does:<p>-Anti competitive behaviour on the buy box (Amazon doesnt have the product in stock. You have it, but your offer is still not shown)<p>-Banning sellers for no good reason, and you cant contact anyone helpful<p>-Screwing over their suppliers with Vendor Central, where they buy from you wholesale. They dont pay, they just say the goods were never delivered and dont accept your proof of delivery. I know sellers who are owed over 30k from amazon.<p>-Customers are able to send back items 1 year later. If you dont agree, they can file an “AZ claim”. If you get too manu claims, they ban you.<p>-Support for sellers is the worst combination of overseas call centers using some cookie cutter templates to answer questions. Often you are just copy pasting your question 5 times, until you get somebody with have a brain<p>-Use data from their sellers to create their own products and then force them out of the market<p>-creating huge incentives for chinese sellers which flood and undercut the local sellers<p>Its just a huge behemoth were nobody knows whats going on.<p>In my opinion this company needs to be split up by gov and reigned in.<p>But who knows, maybe more sellers will follow suit and the pressure will be increasing to change things.

&gt; After leaving his job in global business development at Amazon, Aaron Kerson used his knowledge of the platform’s sales algorithms to power up his new business.<p>Don&#x27;t corporations typically have non-compete clauses to prevent an employee from exploiting proprietary knowledge they gained while working for the firm? Would we be supportive of someone who left (e.g.) a small bicycle parts company to help Amazon rule that market?

If these are the growing pains of a &quot;bike economy&quot; this would be a good thing. In large parts of the world bikes could and should become the first choice for mobility and there needs to be a healthy ecosystem to support this transition. From (more) local manufacturing, to distribution, servicing, upgrading and eventually recycling(pun).

Amazon for bikes or bike parts? I don&#x27;t understand this, it must be a US thing.<p>Here in Europe, Amazon would be the last place I would go to buy anything bike related. We have _specialized_ large online retailers, like CRC in NI and Bike24 in Germany who are excellent, also tend to ship the same day and actually do care about their customers...

You can live very happily without using Amazon!! I have barely used them in the last couple years and I&#x27;ve been fine!

fact of the matter is... if you are a cyclist, amazon is definitely not the place to look for bike parts. sadly, all the SEO spammers only advertise amazon affiliate links so you&#x27;d think amazon sells decent bike parts, but you&#x27;d be wrong. IMHO google should ban any website heavily linking to amazon affiliate program.

I was considering to use Amazon Fulfillment for Summon The JSON decks. However, it occurred to be very expensive. My customers are fine to wait a couple of days. They can also choose fast manufacturing, to get decks faster. I don&#x27;t fell I miss anything by not selling or fulfilling by Amazon.

You know, I imagine the big problem that Amazon purportedly solves is discoverability for producers.<p>I wonder if there&#x27;s value in creating a website that is just a directory of online stores in various categories.