How you get into the ebike business and why?

[The Strong Goat]

Comparatively ebikes business is still something new compared to other business. It will be quite interesting to see how we actually get involved in this in the first place and why.

Personally, I learnt about ebike because of my experience of working in a bicycle manufacturer back to 2016 and at that time the owner introduced the concept of ebike to me. After that, I start learning things about this new field. Without that working experience, I would know nothing about ebikes at this moment. What a coincidence!

So how about you guys? How you firstly get in this business and why? Also some similar experience like me?

Look forward to your story~

 

[Woosh]

I had no experience in any bike related business when the business idea came to me. Sure, I was handy with tools, I could look after my car in my student days and have always looked after my bikes but with hindsight, that was nowhere near enough to go into a new business. The deciding factor had nothing to do with bikes, I was told that I have type 2 diabetes so doing some manual work would help. 9 years later, my diabetes has not got any worse, that's a success IMHO.

 

[The Strong Goat]

I had no experience in any bike related business when the business idea came to me. Sure, I was handy with tools, I could look after my car in my student days and have always looked after my bikes but with hindsight, that was nowhere near enough to go into a new business. The deciding factor had nothing to do with bikes, I was told that I have type 2 diabetes so doing some manual work would help. 9 years later, my diabetes has not got any worse, that's a success IMHO.

Good to hear from you Woosh. Frankly, such an answer is not expected by me. In the past, I always feel your posts are informative and helpful and I always appreciate such sharing of knowledge. Wish you the best!

 

[Woosh]

getting back to the question: do I still think it's a good business? I voted for the second answer, it's getting a bit crowded now.
There is and will always be room for businesses with innovative products but at the end of the day, innovative ideas have limited shelf life, you will still have to fight tooth and nail for your market share. E-bikes have become mainstream in the last 2 years in France and UK, traditionally with smaller uptake than our neighbours Belgium and Netherlands. This has snowballed, all the major bike brands have brought out new models at much greater speed than before. You are looking at more than 3,000 models, 1,000 specialist outlets where you can try e-bikes. Any new product needs to be much better than the average in both quality and price to stand a chance, and that requires much larger teams and budgets.

 

[The Strong Goat]

getting back to the question: do I still think it's a good business? I voted for the second answer, it's getting a bit crowded now.
There is and will always be room for businesses with innovative products but at the end of the day, innovative ideas have limited shelf life, you will still have to fight tooth and nail for your market share. E-bikes have become mainstream in the last 2 years in France and UK, traditionally with smaller uptake than our neighbours Belgium and Netherlands. This has snowballed, all the major bike brands have brought out new models at much greater speed than before. You are looking at more than 3,000 models, 1,000 specialist outlets where you can try e-bikes. Any new product needs to be much better than the average in both quality and price to stand a chance, and that requires much larger teams and budgets.

I agree with your opinion and I feel the same way somehow. Eventually, the ebike business just will become another business. If you want to do good, you have to always have a good price, quality, nice design, dedicated marketing work, optimised supply chain and etc just like other industries. No difference. If you are not able to gain some solid foothold before the big boys throwing money into this game, then it's very likely your business will be devoured by them some day in future. So anyone wants to get into this game need to act fast. Just MHO.

 

[Woosh]

So anyone wants to get into this game need to act fast.

doing what?
buying from China is very difficult with the anti-dumping levy, buying from Taiwan is equally difficult, Taiwan has only a small number of e-bike factories and they require much higher minimum order quantity, assemble in Europe means competing with other producers with huge industrial muscles.

 

[The Strong Goat]

doing what?
buying from China is very difficult with the anti-dumping levy, buying from Taiwan is equally difficult, Taiwan has only a small number of e-bike factories and they require much higher minimum order quantity, assemble in Europe means competing with other producers with huge industrial muscles.

We are used to producing all our bikes in Kunshan China where there are a lot of Taiwanese and we get some useful contacts from there. Thanks to it now, we already moved our assembly lines into Taiwan. Do you have the same plan to move your assembly line to Taiwan as well?

 

[peter.c]

The general public will buy into Ebikes in a big way but most will be disappointed with the purchase [max speed- range- reliability-cost ] mostly due to a lack of poor independent advice

The largest retail outlets you all know who I am talking about will sell it for maximum profit and just push unit total sales .With little regard to the user ,just the cycle to work voucher if the suggested purchase of Evans goes forward by Halfords the market will be controlled by a few big players low cost high profit with many retail outlets

The future market will be online but with a personal touch a good product at a reasonable cost [ mid to higher level products] with customer service in the forefront possibly with local agents/ service centres this might offer a lifeline to independent lbs . People will not want to have to send it back for a minor adjustment /repair or possibly a mobile service

The lower end of the market will be swamped with copies and knockoffs and a price war will follow this has killed many trades and products in the consumer electronics industry

 

[The Strong Goat]

The general public will buy into Ebikes in a big way but most will be disappointed with the purchase [max speed- range- reliability-cost ] mostly due to a lack of poor independent advice

The largest retail outlets you all know who I am talking about will sell it for maximum profit and just push unit total sales .With little regard to the user ,just the cycle to work voucher if the suggested purchase of Evans goes forward by Halfords the market will be controlled by a few big players low cost high profit with many retail outlets

The future market will be online but with a personal touch a good product at a reasonable cost [ mid to higher level products] with customer service in the forefront possibly with local agents/ service centres this might offer a lifeline to independent lbs . People will not want to have to send it back for a minor adjustment /repair or possibly a mobile service

The lower end of the market will be swamped with copies and knockoffs and a price war will follow this has killed many trades and products in the consumer electronics industry

Quite true!!!

 

[Woosh]

although the bulk of the market is torque sensored bikes, most of our customers are still those who genuinely need a throttle!
I see the future as upper mid range products.

 

[peter.c]

Go the lotus 7 way provide a fully built kit apart from the throttle which is included but not fitted free of charge
big problem is the spiraling cost of parts bafangs go up every time I buy one last October £325 now almost £100 more
one off builds are fun but I could never make a wage out of it I wish that it was possible

 

[Woosh]

one off builds are fun but I could never make a wage out of it I wish that it was possible

the key problem with making a wage is marketing. You need something predictable, like an order book so that you can plan your work ahead. You need stable products, supply sources you can rely on, warranty support should you need it etc and a trade discount.
I would have thought that the best way to start is as a mobile e-bike mechanic + doing conversions a couple of days a week.

 

[The Strong Goat]

the key problem with making a wage is marketing. You need something predictable, like an order book so that you can plan your work ahead. You need stable products, supply sources you can rely on, warranty support should you need it etc and a trade discount.
I would have thought that the best way to start is as a mobile e-bike mechanic + doing conversions a couple of days a week.

All that you described is inevitable if anyone tries to get serious about the game. It won't be enough that if you just good at building ebikes, you have to be good at other things like marketing, sourcing, cost control and etc which is quite challenging.

 

[Woosh]

this is a little off-topic but as this thread may be of interest to members who consider going professional, I thought it may be the right place to ask.

Do you use BikecadPro?
https://www.bikecad.ca/bikecadpro

 

[peter.c]

With big players eyeing up the mass ebike sales car manufactures etc the market will be for niche high end builds recumbents and light weight road bikes fs mountain bikes for example
A lot of chancers looking for a quick profit have crunched the numbers and liked what they see but the anti dumping tax will put a large spanner in that

 

[The Strong Goat]

Do you use BikecadPro?
https://www.bikecad.ca/bikecadpro[/QUOTE]

To be honest, I never heard about it before. So does my team.

 

[Jimo]

The one thing that’s in YOUR CHARGE is SERVICE, no matter what product you aim to sell your personal service to the customer is what counts, of course choose your product(s) carefully and DON’t fall into the cheap trap.....
People WILL buy mid to higher range products - especially where they can see a personal advantage in doing so. Go out of your way to offer good service and follow with regular back up.

Before retirement I operated a franchised world renowned carpet & upgolstery cleaning business for 11-1/2 years; After the appropriate training and purchase of expensive tools it was suggested that we offer our carpet cleaning product at a similar price per sq ft as a well known company in south of England ie. 24p per sq ft, we tried this for 4 weeks and soon found we were on a hiding to nothing — after working on some figures I revised our price for carpet cleaning to 55p per sq ft.
What we found was that after just a couple of weeks our business multiplied so quickly (accompanied by high class local regular advertising) that we never needed to worry about the lower end operators again. Our Master Franchise was taken completely agog at our prices which of course changed (upwards) over the years where we constantly served the upper demographic quartile of customers many of whom repeated their custom on several occasions.

The thing is: Always offer and maintain GOOD SERVICE, Value for Money and CONSTANT SUPPORT.
Because you WILL WIN!


Jim