Hello and where have all the sellers gone

[flecc]

the location of those internet based sellers is determined by the home town of their founders - the bulk of sales is through traditional distribution, some 500 LBS that do both sport bikes and e-bikes and about 50 e-bike specialized retail outlets. The last few openings are in London, that proves my point.

Don't agree Trex. Those remote "home town" sellers have for years done most of the sales. Back when this forum started the biggest selling quality e-bike was eZee, from Loughborough. More recently the Kalkhoff brand has been one of the biggest sellers, also from Loughborough.

The first specialist e-bike seller opened in Cambridge, population 124,000, while during their early years there was no specialist e-bike seller in my London borough and the immediately surrounding boroughs with 1.16 million population. Cambridge became a major e-bike supply centre with other companies based there as well, while my London borough with three times the population of Cambridge had a discounter with a couple of the old heavy Powabykes on offer and a very large bike dealer who sold one Giant Twist a year on average and didn't always stock it. Neither could be tried. Even today South London is, in relation to the 4 millions living there, an e-bike desert for supplies.

That first specialist seller in Cambridge, Electric Bike Sales, went on to open branches in Oxford, York, Bristol, and only last of all more recently, London. And of course Cambridge and York have long been the country's major cycling centres, with Oxford and Bristol also being cycle popular areas. As a result of the congestion charge London has also become a cycling heavy area, hence the recent growth in suppliers here that you mention.

Clearly population has not been the driver for supplier location, it's always been where cycle commuting and general purpose cycling is popular. If population had been the driver, the suppliers would have always been here in London instead of only turning up recently. Even today in my Borough of Croydon which is London's largest borough with over 370,000 resident, my best bet to try some e-bikes is to go outside London to the (fortunately close) Surrey town of Coulsdon, population 25,000.

 

[Cyclezee]

I'm not so sure about that Trex. Those who sell through the internet and phone can be anywhere and are in such places as Buxton, Loughborough, Kidderminster, Presteigne and Plymouth, hardly centres of high population density.

Not forgetting the rural backwater that is Milton Keynes with a population of over 250,000 although we do have the most densely populated areas of the UK within a 70 mile radius and are located roughly midway between London to the south, Birmingham to the north, Cambridge to the east and Oxford to the west.

 

[trex]

The electric transport shop was started by Jamie McAlley (Anglia Ruskin 2000), 50 cycles by Tim Snaith (Oxford 1995) He was living in London when he started selling e-bikes - their shops were in their home towns.
The last opening is in Hampton Wick, very nice showroom too. London has more specialized e-bike shops than anywhere else. Electricbikemag listed 5 (their list is not complete by any mean) e-bike shops in London, 16 out of 38 are south of Watford Gap. Sellers are under pressure from two sides: profit and volume. Only large cities can give them both. I reckon more sellers are going to follow Volt to London.

 

[flecc]

The facts stand, e-bikes sell best where utility cycling is most popular. Recently that has started to be true of London due to the congestion charge as I've already pointed out, but before that artificially stimulated cycling growth no-one wanted to sell e-bikes in London despite it's 8 millions population.

Of course population is needed for sales, but if that population doesn't cycle in the first place, flogging e-bikes is a dead end. It's the new popularity of London cycling that's very recently brought the businesses here, not the population size which has always been here.