so Marin and ATB sales part ways then?

jonnyboy666

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http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/marin- ... ars/015540

i have thought for quite a while that marin had lost there way, full suspension for example, when i was still in the trade i was selling the quadlink frames, they sold pretty well, the quadlink 2 version sold pretty well also, then they got a little too specific again, too xc and too freeride depending on your preference but still not quite right, then they changed to the newer design that is very trek/kona etc so very much not marin.

apparently the split is due to Whyte and Willier doing too well, sounds like rubbish to me.
 
When Kona changed importers, I could have got stacks of bikes/ frames cheap. Marin have been a bit quiet for a while.
 
i think they knew it was coming when Marin got sold. it does make me wonder about the current suspension design though, the single pivot and quadlink bikes were designed by jon whyte, then quadlink 2 was by ian alexander, both english chaps which can't have gone down well with marin themselves being a US company, then the company changes hands and a whole new different design comes out that is very similar to alot of the other current crop of vpp/kona/trek etc designs.

i just spoke to my old boss, a marin dealer, rather than deal with paligap and because he feels the brand is alot harder sell these days he's considering binning the brand and he's being doing them since about 1989.

i think pailgap might in someways improve the brand, mainly because they do something that atb don't and that is discount the brand abit, not just for the sake of it but to get stock selling through to incentivize the dealers, atb sale were quite forceful in the way you sold the brand, no discount to the customer until the new model was available, strict on warranty, strict on the stock buy in, they just made them a harder sale than an equivalent specced brand.
 
jonnyboy666":2rdjn8cf said:
i think they knew it was coming when Marin got sold. it does make me wonder about the current suspension design though, the single pivot and quadlink bikes were designed by jon whyte, then quadlink 2 was by ian alexander, both english chaps which can't have gone down well with marin themselves being a US company, then the company changes hands and a whole new different design comes out that is very similar to alot of the other current crop of vpp/kona/trek etc designs.

i just spoke to my old boss, a marin dealer, rather than deal with paligap and because he feels the brand is alot harder sell these days he's considering binning the brand and he's being doing them since about 1989.

i think pailgap might in someways improve the brand, mainly because they do something that atb don't and that is discount the brand abit, not just for the sake of it but to get stock selling through to incentivize the dealers, atb sale were quite forceful in the way you sold the brand, no discount to the customer until the new model was available, strict on warranty, strict on the stock buy in, they just made them a harder sale than an equivalent specced brand.

On the reverse Side of that coin.

I think discounting the stock will devalue the brand even further.

To my mind the "ONLY" reason they stayed on top so long is the Way ATB sales did business.

At the time as a dealer I hated it, it was the same story with Pace though. Carefully selected dealers and a strong rule NO discounting Policy Nationwide.

If you wanted one, You paid the Same everywhere you went. They traded On "REPUTATION" and NOT Price.

Sadly the market has changed Considerably.

New brands Everywhere, More brands than ever before. Everybody discounting everything. Christ you only have to look at Evans with Breezer, they brought in the new models and had 30% off the brand from day one. Nothing to back up the brand other than you can buy it here cheap.
Christ phone them up and the guy on the phone even said "its one of the better BRISTISH BRANDS, I don't know why we arent doing them this year"........... :facepalm:

And as yet NO new Importer has been announced For the Breezer brand..........(go back to the thread, I said it would happen).

No structure, No longevity in the marketplace........But then the Market is dominated Not By ID anymore.

Mark My words, If paligap take the Discount Road, its Doomed.
 
sinnerman":46o5qqij said:
I think discounting the stock will devalue the brand even further.

To my mind the "ONLY" reason they stayed on top so long is the Way ATB sales did business.

Sadly the market has changed Considerably.

Mark My words, If paligap take the Discount Road, its Doomed.


yeah that was sort of my point, discounting does devalue a brand, but only to a point, usually, what i mean by that is we are now in a constant year long loop of the new model, the is a finite period at which a bike is sold for it's retail price and annoyingly that time is mostly the off season as the new 'year' model tends to be launched at the end of summer, the 2014 models have already been ordered by dealers and alot will already be in stock. that means that the dealer is going into the less busy part of the year, winter, with high stock values on bikes that in alot of cases may sit in the shop till spring at which point they sell but then people start considering the new model again, should i wait? etc.

this means that distributors and shops start considering discounting, but the playing field isn't fair, between shops or distributors, if the marks ups on brands were the same across the board it wouldn't be so bad but it isn't, a specialized or a giant dealer makes more per bike than an orange does and so on. but then it's also how little a dealer is prepared to make to get the sale.

my point with ATB is that i think they run it how it should be run, meaning insisting on rrp because it protects the brand and the dealer and dealers who discount get reprimanded or binned in extreme cases, the problem comes when other dealers discount when marin/atb won't even consider it, so you then as a dealer end up with a brand that is a little more expensive than others anyway which can be a sticking point and also it isn't discounted until the new model is sat next to it. the rep used to insist that we didn't discount until we had the new model, this to me was crazy, if you know the distributor has none left and the new model is due inside a month you should try and sell that bike at rrp but if you have a customer on the edge it's better to discount to tip them over the edge rather than not discount, not sell the bike and then get the new model and maybe have to discount it more to then sell it instead of the new model.

does that make sense?


regarding Paligap though, look at the history, originally set up by ex carrati sport people, the very people who put GT into halfords, and that went well didn't it, lost the brand/went bust/whatever, then they get kona, which ruined a good brand at a good but small importer (2nd level imports) who had kept the brand small but successful in this country, then they stuck them in halfords which again like gt ruined it for every bike shop dealer, not to mention the owners of the bikes who then struggled to get parts etc. then the owners of paligap split, one going to another importer, who then quits that new job because kona want him to run a european hq for kona, but if one thing can be assured about the way paligap and previously carrati sport did business is that they always have discounted, and in big terms aswel, while this is initially good for bargains it can never last, because at some point people realise that there is never any point in buying the new model because if they wait just 4 to 6 months they can pick it up for 40% off. brand ruined, why? because if the brand doesn't make money then somewhere along the line someone goes bust, if we get lucky it's the distributor as opposed to the brand.
 
The bike industry is its own worst enemy sometimes. Especially this year, when as well as the standard six months between new bikes arriving in shops and the next lot of new bikes being announced (that six months having the crappiest weather of the year as Jon says), they're all faffing about with wheel sizes too. Seems to me that anyone in the market for a new MTB right now is just going to buy nothing until the 29/650B thing settles out. No-one wants to get stuck with Betamax. Or worse, V2000 :)
 
Totally Agree with Both Points Fully.

And I suspect a large part of the issues here is the massive competition forced onto the ID because of the likes of CTC and Evans etc.

Whilst I personally have no issue with Giant Mail Order companies, and competition is Healthy Always. Discounts are good for consumers, but not so good for the smaller importers/IDs and smaller brands themselves.

I suspect, this is Why more M.O companies Have Become Distributors as well as retailers, thus in some cases doubling there Margins, Making early discounts easy to manage, they still make there 35 points after discount, They see no harm in this, there net margin per unit remains unchanged and they gain the extra sales thus increasing there net profit. Ands I suspect this is why we have seen an increase in brand names too, and indeed old brand names being brought back from the dead. "Nukeproof Comes to mind"....lol

(It almost makes me wanna See Andy P, see if I can buy the Overburys name.....LOL.)

Alternatively Some Importers are finding other avenues too, By having "going concerns" in IDs, at least this way they can move aged stock through one retailer.
 
luckily i'm pretty happy with my fleet, sticking with predominantly retro means that the whole 650b thing is pretty irrelevant!

that said, my second Demon has been ordered and it's a 29er (i finally admitted to myself that that is what it is) :facepalm:

but back on topic, i think the bike trade should as a whole, have a massive rethink.

new models should be available in january and not before, this would mean that bikes would be sold up to xmas for kids at rrp, then discounted afterwards like normal department stores do, meaning a traditional discounting period, then hopefully the dealers can then concentrate on the new model which also would give them from february including spring and summer and autumn to sell the bikes, so the new model would be available for summer but crucially would effectively extend the selling period at RRP for the dealers.

the problem, i think, started when brands always tried to beat eachother getting their new model out, i seem to remember one year that the cheaper giant bikes up to about £400 were available in may but were actually the next year model. crazy.
 

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