Closing Stores...Opening doors
When we decided to open a second shop to sell and service family bikes in downtown Tenafly, here were our thoughts:
We had outgrown our space on 175 County Road. 1500 square feet wasn’t enough to serve our customer base.
The bulk of our sales profit came from high-end bike sales and service. We needed dedicated space to serve those customers. We decided to convert 175 County Road to a dedicated space and move family bikes to a more centralized location.
As a 40-year-old business, the community had come to know our shop, and generations of customers were loyal shoppers. We felt obligated to continue to serve families in our community. Those dedicated customers had no other good bike store options.
As a supporter of the concept of the Northern Valley Greenway, we were hopeful that there would be progress with this project. We figured a 3-year lease was minimal risk to see if this project had wings.
Here’s what we learned in 3 years of having this second shop:
in 2020, Trek Bikes, our key “partner” misled us, telling us that they weren’t opening any new shops outside of their newly opened Edgewater and Paramus locations. Their Closter Store was announced after the ink was dry on our lease and the fixtures and equipment had already been ordered and were arriving at our new store. “We have no intentions of opening any more stores” turned out to be a complete lie and they had signed their own lease months before saying those words. They of course apologized for the “miscommunication” on the matter.
County Road in Demarest was closed for almost 18 months after Hurricane Ida. Getting to Cresskill and Tenafly from the heart of our sales territory became inconvenient. We often heard customers from Demarest, Closter, Haworth, Alpine, etc comment about the bottleneck in traffic on Piermont Road. We just weren’t a convenient location anymore for many shoppers.
The pandemic changed the consumer market. Buying online is at an all-time high. Let’s face it, “click and ship” is so easy. Who needs to go to a store when it comes to our homes and we can cut out the “middle-man” and save some money?
Bike sales have dropped. The market is oversaturated from the pandemic bike boom. There are too many bikes in garages thus over-saturating the market. Manufacturers have way too much inventory and are selling bikes heavily discounted.
With sales down, bike manufacturers have sought out more channels for sales thus the consumer direct model has trickled into many of our key brands. We currently have two brands in our pro shop that don’t sell directly to customers. Many of our brands sell “click and collect” through shops providing us with just enough margin to break even on bike sales. Not enough to grow the business but just enough to keep the doors open.
The Northern Valley Greenway hasn’t made much progress in 3 years. We’re still waiting on NJ Transit, CSX, and the project leadership to find the legs of this very viable project. We are confident it will happen, it just may be beyond the terms of a lease.
Family bike sales and service aren’t profitable. As a stand-alone business, it was obvious to see this. Under one roof, the high-end sales actually cover the loss of low-end sales. People just aren’t buying kids and adult “bread and butter” bikes at local independent bike stores anymore. In order to be profitable in this market, we’d have to be doing the volume of Dick’s or Walmart. Most bike shops don’t know this because they keep everything under one roof and although sales and accounting can track certain statistics, others can not be tracked unless they are independent and separated.
So what's the next phase for the WORKSHOP? To get back to our roots and sell and service high-end bikes build trails and support the community in different ways. To fall back into our passion for bikes and focus on what works for our customers. To serve up bikes and beer and friendly faces to like-minded folks who are as stoked about bikes for life. #bikesdoneright