State of the industry: a running thread

[Tootyred]

Do wiggle crc have any assets? Or do they run banded warehouses?

We supplied parts a vew years back to a big manufacturer... OUR parts, sat in THEIR rented warhouse, until THEY had a sale, at which point they took OUR stock and sold it.........

Then paid us for it 90 days later!

So we got the money 6 months after we paid to make the part...they got their cash pretty much immediately.

Im assuming wiggle may be the same, especially on bigger higher value items.?

 

[clubby]

Do wiggle crc have any assets? Or do they run banded warehouses?

We supplied parts a vew years back to a big manufacturer... OUR parts, sat in THEIR rented warhouse, until THEY had a sale, at which point they took OUR stock and sold it.........

Then paid us for it 90 days later!

So we got the money 6 months after we paid to make the part...they got their cash pretty much immediately.

Im assuming wiggle may be the same, especially on bigger higher value items.?

Lots of small LBS would be the same on the bike front. Parts orders not so much but the big advance bike sales.

CRC would have been the same with some suppliers. Eg the Hope stuff disappeared off the site when all this started off.
All the Nukeproof, Ragley stuff as well which due to the fire sale has seemingly taken Hotlines down with it as well.

Hope it doesn’t ripple down too far as my preferred shop has gone big on Nukeproof this year.

 

[al-onestare]

https://singletrackworld.com/2023/1...pRTmtkl7ELXLOXKEx25a-j_s&utm_content=cmp-true
I'm not one to suggest stockpiling but you might want to consider it if Wiggle and Chain Reaction go down the Evans path. This can't be good news for a lot of distributors.

 

[brocklanders023]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/post...tm_medium=member_mobile_web&utm_campaign=copy
Interesting article by one of the people who set up the USA arm in the last few years detailing what went wrong.

TL: DR, the main share holder of Signa made his money via property and due to interest rate raises + other factors has lost loads of value, which in turn means he can't guarantee the £150m. He's also been dumping areas of his business interests to prop up the property side. Or something like that.

 

[jonnyboy666]

@al-onestare hey captain, obvs we met on the kona stand with ben and scott at the malverns, it's not just kona that have excess as i'm sure you know, it seems every manufacturer got it wrong in the amounts they ordered versus the demand they expected

 

[fettler]

@al-onestare hey captain, obvs we met on the kona stand with ben and scott at the malverns, it's not just kona that have excess as i'm sure you know, it seems every manufacturer got it wrong in the amounts they ordered versus the demand they expected

I remember Santa Cruz having a big sale earlier this year (25% ish discount ?), but this was in about February. I saw this as an alarm bell if factories are trying to offload bikes this early in the season. A little foresight to sell their bikes before anyone else drops prices/realises it's all going wrong.

 

[legrandefromage]

<pokes around sales bin for 26" innertubes >

Any news on that cassette yet?

 

[brocklanders023]

I remember Santa Cruz having a big sale earlier this year (25% ish discount ?), but this was in about February. I saw this as an alarm bell if factories are trying to offload bikes this early in the season. A little foresight to sell their bikes before anyone else drops prices/realises it's all going wrong.

Up until recently Stif (basically SC importer) were selling the 5010 at over 40% discount! My mate bought one.

Talking to the people in the shop they said a new bunch of colours were due and they had loads of build kits spare so just wanted to make space for the new stuff. I imagine a bit of profit is better than no profit and a full warehouse?

 

[al-onestare]

I imagine a bit of profit is better than no profit and a full warehouse?

For sure. What struggling brands are missing is that there'll have to make a loss per unit to shift the backlog, which whilst on the outset looks bad, long term is the right thing to do. Free-up your inventory, massively reduce your storage and logistic overheads, and have the brand focused on the current/next year/future year models/direction (not muddied on "old" stuff).

But what do I know?

 

[coomber]

I do wonder how the big chiefs could get the over stocks so wrong. 2 years of covid super sales and profits, what in the last 25 years made them think that would continue. Even given an 18 month lead time their order numbers were seemingly very optimistic to have such overstocks throughout the industry.