Beeline Bikes picks up direct delivery for Raleigh, Diamondback, Redline & IZIP

great points Dave, my guess is that the big 4 are rich enough that they will buy their own fleet of vans. As you pointed out, when the profits drop thru IBDs even though they have squeezed every sq. ft. out of them possible they will do what is possible to match or beat last years profit #s and bleed anyone in their way to do it. returns will have to be first class, or no one will make it in the next phase of retail. Like Zappo’s with bigger boxes! Pre-sale info sharing and gathering will become a science, and if that don’t work the van will go back and refit/swap/refund the bike. simple. Then it is sold in another channel. They will not loose when making wholesale/retailers margin. And once in the buyers hands, if the thing is close and the van will come back and work with the new owner, most riders will keep it unless it was a train wreck of mis information and lies during the initial conversation. “yeah, I weight about 205 err sometimes a bit more, and about uhhh, 5’11 to 6′ on a good day haha, so I want the medium XC race bike like the XCO guys have, yeah, I like the bike totally nimble and I will easily drop under the weight limits on the seat post, seat, stem,rims and Ti pedals once I have the new bike and it inspires me to ride” The IBD would be able to sort that customer out right there!

This saddens me as a bicycle retailer. As was stated earlier, before Raleigh was purchased by Accell the brand was on the up and up. We were doing really well with Raleigh. We are also a Trek Dealer. As was stated earlier someone said trek wants all your floor space, that is up to the dealer and your area of Trek saturation. We have been Trek dealers since 84 and were Raleigh dealers from 78-84, when Raleigh sold out to Murray Bicycles, and started selling Raleigh again in 2012. Once Steve Meineke left Raleigh after the sell to Accell Raleigh has been on a downward spiral. Raleigh really complimented our Trek line of bicycles. Raleigh was a real brand. They had good eye catching road bike and competitive mountain bikes. Commuter bikes are never going to carry Raleigh as a great bike brand. We have seen our sales in Raleigh bikes diminish, and it is not because I am not stocking the Raleigh Brand. I have Raleigh Bikes in our shop from 300.00 to 3000 and they are just not selling. In 2012 Raleigh made up 35% of our sell through in bikes now it is maybe 5%. Accell is grasping for sales. Raleigh needs to make a captivating bike that draws attention instead of a ho hum model that has been copied from santa cruz, specialized, fuji, our any other off the shelf Taiwanese frame. We a company goes direct and takes the bicycle retailer out of the sale they are hurting and trying to come up with numbers to keep themselves afloat. The big brands(Trek, Specialized, and Giant) do sell direct but the dealer still gets a cut because the dealer will be the one handling the repairs, service and warranties. Raleigh originally stated that dealers would get a cut of the direct sales but this looks to say otherwise.

The entire bicycle market is down and all the companies are scurrying around trying to make ends meet.

Some brands do care about their IBDs. I sell Fuji bikes and ASI has been great. So far, their model of “direct-to-customer” will still involve us and we’ll get full margin.

God thank you! The local Raleigh rep used us to leverage another to commit more when we showed interest in the line. Bullet dodged.

Raleigh could be a great brand if they focused more on their sub $1000 bikes and made their mtn line more coherent. Once those two areas are stable, build upward.

Seriously, how many Tamland, Stuntman, and Roker bikes are they expecting to sell? Just look at the Fuji Jari bikes…much more reasonable.