Saving American Roads... Again.

I saw a short, interesting article on Autoblog Green about how bicycles built American roads:

In the late 1800s, a business man by the name of Albert Pope had noticed the growing popularity of bicycles and started up his own manufacturing company. In order to make his product more appealing to those who lived outside of well-manicured city streets, Pope began a crusade that would shape the face of transportation in America. He started a magazine with the sole purpose of bringing road quality to the public eye, donated vast sums of money to MIT to start a new road engineering program and eventually succeeded in convincing congress to found the Office of Road Inquiry – what would eventually become the Federal Highway Administration.

Many might not recognize Mr. Pope's name, but you may know about his company, Columbia bicycles. 

More biking - Less driving

This weekend, I was asked whether I bike more than drive.  My gut response was, "Oh no.  I ride a lot, but I still drive more."  But my wife thought otherwise, and I started thinking about it...

• I don't commute to work anymore (work at home)
• I don't drive to the grocery store (bike 90%-95% of the time)
• I bike for most errands and some business meetings
• My wife and I have started biking to dinners much more often in Royal Oak because its such an easy ride and we can split a bottle of wine without having to worry about a designated driver*

Hmm, maybe I do bike more than I drive?

Trading Bike Racks for Parking Spaces in Berkley

My dandy little town of Berkley, Michigan just had an article in the local little paper, Woodward Talk, entitled "Berkley aims to promote greater bike usage at city businesses".  This sounds like it will be all about new bike lanes and bike racks, right?  Sounds encouraging, right??

Well, almost.  The article is actually about how the council voted DOWN an amendment to the bicycling parking requirements for Berkley businesses and requested that the planning commission rewrite the ordinance.  From there it goes on to point out that...

...the original ordinance would have allowed existing establishments to reduce their number of required off-street parking spaces. By counting bike rack spaces toward this requirement, the number of parking spaces could be decreased by as much as 25 percent for commercial businesses.

and as written, the ordinance "...would have REQUIRED [emphasis is mine] business owners to install a new bicycle rack anytime their existing parking lot is developed or resurfaced."  But Councilman Dan Benton does not feel that businesses should be required to install bike racks if they don't want to.  He is quoted as saying, "We should not be making businesses put in more bike racks if they don't want to." and then claimed that bike racks are too expensive (the article quotes a cost of $100-$450 each).

I admit, I don't know how much resurfacing a parking lot costs, but I'll bet that $100 (or even $450 more) is pretty damn nominal if you get to reduce the number of parking spaces provided.  Plus the city already requires that businesses provide a certain number of parking spaces. So, how is requiring bicycle parking any different? A point made by Eric Auensen, chair of the Berkley Environmental Committee.  (oh yeah, I know how... its cheaper!)

Ok, ok, I likely won't win many friends in the business community with this opinion, so since we've already tossed out the ordinance, and we're starting over, then let's make it a requirement for the DDA area.  Hey, if you're a lawyers office or insurance agency locating in a "high traffic" area, then you should have to provide bike parking.  Plus, 12 to 14 bikes fit in each singular parking place, so you lose one space and gain 14 "spaces" - seems like a pretty good trade off to me.  All for 100 bucks.

As long as I'm complaining about this, might as well complain about the lack of bike lanes to safely get to businesses on Coolidge and 12 Mile Road too....    And HEY, how come our existing bike routes END at the city's edge?!?  Why doesn't Berkley, Southfield, Royal Oak, and Oak Park play nice together on bike routes?!?

Battles for other days, methinks.

Photo Credit: Cyclelicio.us

Handmade Bicycle Show - Part 2

Ok, so it took me a little bit longer than a day or two to write part 2... But no worries, I haven't forgotten.

I'm going to kick off this post with a review of an oft overlooked part from many mainstream bikes: fenders. Wood fenders were all the rage at the Handmade Bicycle Show this year, and its easy to see why. They are beautiful and stylish


These photos are of Inglis Cycles (from Napa, CA), Keith Anderson Cycles (from Grants Pass, OR), and DeSalvo Custom Cycles (from Ashland, OR), respectively. All have a slightly different style to their wood with graphic designs, inlays and custom stains. There were several others as well, including from Naked Bicycles and Design and Rich Adams.

Continuing down the component path, I talked last time about the slick new electronic shifter from Shimano. Well, SRAM's not about to be outdone by Shimano and they were showing off a slick new HammerSchmidt internal front gear from their Truvativ group. There's only one chainring on the front and the internal gears give you the feel of a higher gear. On the lower gear, the gear spins with a ratio of 1:1, shift it and the gear spins 1:1.6 (you pedal around once and the gear goes around 1.6 times). They had a demo bike set up and I can tell you, this was a really smooth gear and it would be GREAT in muddy or snowy environs.

The rep was explaining that once a year you do have to take the thing apart and regrease the gears (depending on how much much your ride through, I'm guessing), which seems like a lot of maintenance to me. But I suppose your shop could probably do this for you without too much of an extra charge. I'd hope, anyway. At about $700, this won't be cheap, but it was so slick that for a tour or race where flawless operation was required, I think this definitely could be worth the money.

Another cool bike/component combo (note the sequey back to bikes...) comes from Kimori from Japan, with their very unusual suspension system.


The bikes themselves don't have 26" wheels, so they look a little, um, delicate for someone of my, um, stature (I'm not a diminutive guy). But they are definitely interesting.



Finally, let's get back to those bikes with a few of my other favorites from the show:



Bilenky Bicycles who does a lot of tandems and tandem recumbents was showing a very slick long-wheel base utility bicycles. I'm partial to these to begin with, so its no surprised I liked it. KirkLee had a road bike that they had incorporated hand painted canvas onto the top layer of the carbon fiber. Up close it was easy to tell that it was canvas and it made for a very unusual and stylish appearance on the bike. It was really not like anything else at the show (in a very good way). And finally on the track bike side of things, Vanilla Bicycles was showing a couple of very cool Speedvagen track bikes that were so light, you would think they were carbon (but they weren't).

Again, lots more to see from show on my flickr.

2009 Handmade Bicycle Show - Part 1

I enjoyed the Handmade Bicycle Show in Indianapolis this past weekend. I was relieved to hear from almost everyone that the recession has only been a minor blip in the world of cycling. Most builders that I talked to were positive about their year so far and were looking forward to the spring. As Lon Kennedy's wife at Nova Bicycle Supply said, "This spring will be our stimulus package."

I was unable to connect to WIFI at the convention center (didn't feel like paying the extra charge for it). So, here's a rundown on the highlights, post event...

Mark Nobilette of Nobilette Bicycles used to live here in Ann Arbor, MI, but now resides and builds in Longmont, CO. He has been building for about 30 years. His bikes were very well put together. He was showing steel bikes, mostly road/racing bikes.



I spent a lot of time talking with the production manager, Lloyd, of Independent Fabricators from Boston. IF has been building since the mid 90's They were showing a wide range of bikes including this very stylish “Year of the Ox" Track Bike.


IF was showing the only stainless steel mountain bike that I saw at the show with some very cool etchings. There were several titanium bikes that were polished with no paint so they had a similar appearance, but this was the only stainless steel that I saw. Lloyd told me that one of the great features of stainless steel is its durability. It won't rust and it won't dent in a crash.

My next visit was to Alchemy Bicycles from Austin.

I spoke at length with builder James about his bikes and learned that he launched Alchemy about 3 months ago and he’s been have some pretty good success. You can see why, his design is well thought out with some very small but important unique touches - like how he has inverted the stabilizing bars using “holes” on the chainstays instead.

I was looking forward to talking to Calfee Designs about his bikes. I was not disappointed. He has developed a program of building bamboo bikes in Africa and selling them here to fund more bike building education in Africa. A very ambitious program to improve the conditions in the third world. The program is called "Bamboosero". The bike he was showing was built in Ghana (buyers will eventually be able to request which country their bikes come from).
One of my favorites (who also won a People's Choice award at the show) was Naked Bicycles and Design from Guadra Isl, BC Canada (north of Vancouver). Builder Sam Whittingham talked for quite a while about how successful he's been. He said that he's facing a happy problem - his sales have grown to the point where he's needing to expand, but expansion at his level is big and expensive. He wants to make sure he's still able to build, and doesn't want to be relagated to "managing" other builders. That's a problem that a lot of entrepreneurs would love to have. But unfortunately for Sam, it's a real problem too. Hopefully he can get that balancing act worked out, because his bikes are very creative and interesting. One touch that I found particularly brilliant is that he uses headsets (where your handlebars attach to your bike) as the hinges on the rear suspension. Makes them easy to maintain/replace, and they are durable. Pretty ingenious.


Serotta had a huge display at the show. Ben Serotta has been building since the 1970's and has built a successful business through contract frame building. Currently, Serotta is partnered with the Carmichael Training Systems to provide carbon fiber bikes for their training program. Serotta was showing several carbon fiber and steel racing bikes.




ANT (Alternative Needs Transportation) builds bikes for urban riding and commuting. Their bikes featured built in racks and generator hubs for powering lights. The philosophy behind how Mike builds his bikes is fantastic (again a builder since the 70's), but I found the designs to be a little too utilitarian for my taste. Don't get me wrong, utility is great, but if I'm going to spend that much on a bike I want it to stand out... dramatically. But that's just me.












I also got my opportunity to try out the newest tech from Shimano and SRAM. Shimano's new Dura Ace Di2 is basically an electronic shifter for road biking. It is very quick shifting and requires almost no effort to make the shift. It's basically like pushing a button, rather than pushing/pulling a lever that pulls a cable. I got to test it out and for me, it was good, but not worth the extra $750 or so extra that it will add to the price. I suppose if I were racing I'd be more interested.




There's plenty more to see on my flickr set from the show. I'll have more details on the show tomorrow as well.

Some atypically good stolen bike news

Photo ©: SF Examiner

I had heard the other day that Lance Armstrong had a bike (along with a few others too) that was stolen out of the back of his team truck at the Tour of California. This bike was a one of kind track bike, so I expected that it would be returned, because really, unless you've got access to an out-of-country sale... who's going to buy it? Oh, who am I kidding, unfortunately, someone probably would.

Anyway, the interesting part of this story is what happened after it was stolen. So, the first thing that happened was that Armstrong tweeted the theft. Then someone started a Facebook group "1 Million Citizens Looking for Lance Armstrong's Stolen Bike". A few days later, the bike turns up. While that's good news obviously, the other bikes that were stolen with it have not turned up yet. While I'm sure they are high-end bikes,they probably aren't one and only custom bikes and therefore, are a lot less likely to turn up. This is the fate of many bikes in America (3,000 bikes in America are stolen every day (pdf)).

I will be interested to what impact the facebook and twittering had to do with the return of the bike (and hopefully, the other bikes as well). This interconnectedness should be a boon to the National Bike registry, it seems. Hopefully, better coordination comes from the NBR, social networking, and sales sites such as craigslist and ebay.

I am hopeful that perhaps this greater awareness and usage of these networks to will help to better cooridinate on bike theft and help others have more luck with returned bikes.

Photo ©: Sacramento Police Department via cyclingnews.com

ThisWay

I've neglected to mention my new favorite blog for funtime reading (not that it's a new blog, I'm just new to the party). Bicycle Design is essentially exactly what it sounds like - a blog about Bicycle Design. It is written by James T, "an industrial designer who has a slight (but I think healthy) obsession with bicycling and cycling." It's entertaining in part because of his clear passion for the bicycle, but also because there are so many others that share that passion, but not necessarily his opinions about bicycles and their design.

Anyway, he held a design competition recently for a "commuter bicycle for the masses" that concluded in late January crowning the "ThisWay" bike design by Torkel Dohmer the winner.

©Bicycle Design

It was considered controversial by several who left comments in the blog because they felt that not only will the roof make it heavy, expensive, and difficult to use with public transit, but also because of the recumbant (sitting back, not on) positioning. However, there were many who liked it and felt it was more likely to draw interest from non-cyclists for its more car-like shape, style, seating, and roof. But as with all things, it's often difficult to project yourself into someone else's shoes.

As James said:

"Many of the people who work in the bike industry are in those positions because they are really passionate about bicycles. They absolutely love cycling, and that is great, but it also means that sometimes they have a hard time looking at the product line that they offer from the point of view of an average person. "

My personal thoughts are that it's a beautiful design and would be fun to own, but I don't see it as driving masses of people to give up their cars for it (not as I sit here in a 14 degree, windy, February in Detroit, anyway). However, I do think there's a niche for it. And that's where our marketing thoughts for today come in...

As someone who has dealt with automobile manufacturer vehicle teams in the past, I've seen a wide variety of vehicle designs, good and bad (um, some very bad), that get marketed and sold. How? It almost always comes down to finding the niche. A lot of the complaints about the design from the comments seemed to be focused on the bike not being "right" for all commuters (which may be justified since that was goal of the original competition). As James said, the bike industry needs to think about "reaching the people who currently have no interest in the products that they already make." Big manufacturers have got this (literally) down to a science. Identify a niche, develop a complex profile of that niche, and develop products that fit that niche or answer issues raised by the research.

In this case (and this is just off the top of my head without any real research into the niche at all and no mechanical background at all), I could see ThisWay being a great start to the development of a design for new parents. Some tweaking and I could see a child's car seat fitting in front of mom or dad, facing them. Add the storage on the back, and you have a fun little run-about for neighborhood errands with very easy access to babies (which parent's need), with the added security of a child's seat.

Ok, so that's not really the point of James original competition (and sure the width of the child seat may offer some additional design problems) but the point is to think about the niche first, then develop a bike to fit it. There is an outstanding video of Trek Bikes development of the Lime bike using this process: http://www.solidworksmedia.com/Trek/screencast/trek-screencast.html (click on the "Non-expert" video for an example of how to develop a bike to fit a niche).

A logo that says something

If nothing else, this logo and name are entertaining:



I am not sure that I really need to add anything else to it. I saw this will reading Urban Velo and thought to myself, "that is a very logical logo."
Aggressive and targeted... those offended by this, probably aren't the target audience. Hardcore skiers, runners, bikers, workers, and others who might need this are unlikely to be offended. They are also likely to know what it does without even reading any further (fyi: its helps those who "suffer from chaffing and want something made from natural ingredients like beeswax, coconut oil, almond oil and vitamin E.")

Do-It-Yourself

Yesterday, I spent some time reading about how to build a bicycle frame. Basically, I was reading how the angles, tubes sizes, etc. are all calculated and drawn out. This led me to read about how weld and how to make carbon fiber. All of this has me thinking that I need to build my own frame.

Sure, that's a nice dream, just like the brewery I'm going to build, and the solar powered coffee roaster I'll be building.

Anyway, this had me wondering what it is about these three things that really attracts me to these activities. I'm self-delusional but not so much that I believe that I ride well enough to justify a lightweight carbon fiber, high-end, mountain bike. And contrary to popular belief, I do not drink enough beer to justify building a brewery that produces a quarter barrel of beer every month.

So, why am I drawn to these? They all have in common are three things:

1. they are "projects" - the act of doing - setting these items up and then working the projects (building the frame or brewing the batch of beer) is what really draws me to them. The physical act of making something.
2. they all very different from how I spend most of my day - they are more hands-on, compared to the research and computer work that I spend my days on
   
3. they are social - none of these projects are projects that I can do 100% by myself. Either though learning from someone else, or just getting help in assembly, I'm going to have to bring in a friend to help.
   

This trend of "DIY" (Do-It-Yourself) is becoming a very big force in our marketplace (similar to your Dad's woodworking "shop" that he had in your childhood garage). Industrial suppliers are finding a new market of small retail customers (a new market for copper tubing, aluminum extrusions, wiring harnesses, solar panels, etc.). Cities and banquet halls are finding new shows in DIY or handmade shows. All of this spells growing trend. And its a trend that I suspect will accelerate as dollars get tighter and the social media allows even greater collaboration of ideas to work around problems that inevitably come up with DIY projects.

And with that, I better get back to tracking down where my next bike's aluminum head tube is going to come from....

Sales Peddaling Away from the Shop

I had a conversation with a shop owner near my home the other day who was complaining that he is starting to lose more shoppers to the internet over bike pricing. He was telling me that margins are so thin that he can't match the pricing information that customers often have when they come in.

I wondered about this. Is there really an epidemic of shoppers who visit shops then buy bikes online instead of at their local shop? This owner was actually complaining about a specific shopper who was looking at a very expensive tandem, used a lot of their sales time doing test rides, getting price quotes on various options, then just disappeared. The shop owner happened to run into the guy at a charity ride with his wife on their brand new tandem they purchased online.

I wanted to find out if this is a true epidemic or just a few (really annoying) instances. In my search, I found a consultant to bike industry, Jay Townley, who is very well respected and does a lot of speaking engagements with various bike business expos (including Interbike this year). He's been in the business for years, and has some very interesting market research and well thought out retail strategies that he shares with shop owners and bike industry execs.

I ran across a webpage of his that appears old (2006, I think) that discusses the challenge facing bike shops of "Over Educated Shoppers (OES)". I couldn't believe what I was reading. The basic premise is that:

"An overly educated shopper profoundly reduces close rates and diminishes the effectiveness of an under-educated sales staff.

The OES (overly educated shopper) walks into your store knowing more about your products than your staff does! Because of internet search engines like Google and Yahoo, your average shopper has spent over 10 hours educating himself on your products."

He also mentions that:

"The predominately brick and mortar bicycle shop is now challenged by the new information age where anybody can be a retailer because of the power of the Internet. At a recent conference, a representative from eBay presented research showing that the Internet will influence nearly one-half of total U.S. retail sales by 2010!"

Of course, as I mentioned this is old, it's a sales page, and perhaps he would choose to rephrase this now. But the idea that the problem with retail bike shops is that their potential customers are "over educated" makes my skin crawl!

The problem is exactly the opposite. If you have customers walking into your shop that are spending more time getting educated on bikes than the staff that you have on the sales floor, you are doing something wrong. Will your sales staff have all answers to all the questions? No, most likely not, but the answer is out there and a good sales staff will find it for the customer (preferably while the customer is there).

There are two shops that I know that both started as online shops only and then as sales grew, they got a bricks and mortar space. They have customers (as most businesses do) that do a lot of their information gathering online, then visit the shop when they've narrowed their choices. Both use their website as a funnel to bring in more qualified shoppers. Neither have ever complained to me that their customers are "too educated."

But getting back to the case of the shopper who buys online....

I guess the answer to my question, is basically, yes, there probably are a lot of folks who buy are shopping brick and mortar then buying online. And, yes, this is probably something that's growing. But it is all going to come back to service. Shops will never get all the sales (for example: the one sale described above, its obvious that shopper was planning to buy on price. period. He just wanted some test rides first. Annoying, but part of the business).

The best bet is to offer service and a sales experience that will make folks want to spend their money with you. Arm your sales staff with the tools to answer questions (or find answers) and provide value add recommendations that can't be done via a webpage (such as custom fit, custom build-up, after sale service, etc.). It will also help for sales staff to stay on top of Internet pricing and be prepared to defend your pricing to the customer that may (or may not) challenge it.

Personally, I can't imagine buying a bike online, but then I love the shop experience. (When its good.)

Bailing out bicycling

This weekend I was catching up on the variety of things that have made their way into the bailout package, and I found one very interesting little tidbit: Congressman Earl Blumenauer had a tax incentive for bike commuting that got included in the overall end package. This unrelated addition was presumably to get Congressman Blumenauer to vote for the overall package (which he did not end up doing).

This added provision provides a tax incentive to employers to provide bikes and cover expenses related to riding to work. This new bike commuting incentive joins incentives that employers currently have for encouraging carpooling or using public transit. This is potentially a boon for commuting by bike, as it means that now employers have an incentive to provide the facilities to bike to work.

So, what's the challenge? Awareness. There ended up being so much in this new bailout bill, that its highly unlikely that employers (particularly smaller employers) are going to know all the different aspects of the bill or take advantage of some of the cycling incentives. The best bet is for bike shops to make sure that their staff is well educated on this incentive. When individuals are shopping for bikes that they could use to run errands or use in some transportation form, then pass along the incentive information.

Building awareness of policy changes like this are often left up to the community organizers and enthusiasts, which is why I'm writing about this here, and hopefully, you'll talk to your employers about it as well.

Interbike 2008

This week is the Interbike Expo in Las Vegas. It is the premier bike industry show and showcases new products, people and trends in the bike industry.

This year they are doing an Urban cycling fashion show to showcase the equipment and clothing for the increasing cycling as transportation trend:
"A self-propelled cycling art and fashion show, Interbike's latest addition brings the cutting edge of urban cycle culture to life"

This is another example of business lagging the trend. I can tell you that just from the communities I interact with here, this trend of urban cycling has been growing for a couple years now (and if I can see that from my seat here in auto-centric Detroit, what does that say about the trend in forward looking cycling communities on the west coast!)

I applaud Interbike for adding this LONG overdue fashion show, and I'm looking forward to the seeing reaction to this show.