Beach Cruisers and Online Stores
Beach Cruisers and Online Stores
Here is what I know about the Beach Cruiser bicycle industry and the customers that purchase them.
Unlike Mountain Bikes customers wanting to purchase a Beach Cruiser rarely want a thousand dollar plus bicycle that they will keep a lifetime. Gone are the days when a bicycle was a major purchase or something you looked to maintain for years and years. Like everything else in our society Beach Cruiser bikes have become a disposable commodity that is typically purchased for a single beach cruiser season.
As a result customers of beach cruisers are looking to get the most for their money now. They aren’t looking for a long term investment and although they may shop your store today they aren’t necessarily ever coming back for upgrades, warranty service or lube and tune. This means almost no follow-up money to be made from these customers in the way of post sale work and little to no profit to be made from the initial sale.
Stuck with this dilemma many traditional manufacture have elected to not produce beach cruisers and have remained sole distributors of the high end very popular and profit driven Mountain Bicycles. Simply put brick and mortar dealers make very little profit on a beach cruiser selling for $100 – $300 when they can sale a Mountain Bike for $1500 - $2000.
As a result gray or offshore marketers began selling beach cruisers over the internet. These manufactures were really not traditional manufactures in that they owned no plant and had no manufacturing employees. Rather these “manufactures” had their own designs produced in plants located in Taiwan, Korea, China and other off shore locations. The only thing these plants had in common were the ability to navigate the import rules dealing with off shore companies. Sales were brisk. The cheaper beach cruisers were very popular and sold like hot cakes. This resulted in two events;
First, the Chinese and Taiwanese plants sent their own staff to cut out the middleman and sale Beach Cruisers to the consuming public. Companies such as Micargi Bicycles sprung onto the USA market. However, many of these companies failed because they did not understand the USA distribution channels, did not understand revolving credit, and new in the bicycle manufacturing business produced beach cruisers with serious manufacturing defects.
Second, the traditional plants realizing the loss of dealers and sales began to distribute their own beach cruisers. Brick and mortar dealers attempted to sell these cruisers for the higher asking price but faced with stiff competition they failed miserably.
This pattern of the market dominated by Offshore marketers has continued with slight alterations.
First, traditional manufactures learned that they truly could not compete against offshore marketers and changed strategies from producing similar bikes for higher dollars to producing specialty bikes such as the Hello Kitty Beach Cruiser from Nirve Bicycles. Good intentioned the traditional manufactures wanted to protect their dealer network. The problem was their dealer network was crumbling. Hit hard by lower margins beach cruiser dealer were being driven out of business by discount stores and the demand for these “specialty beach cruisers” was low.
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Beach cruisers; Ladies Midnight Blue is a stark difference to the usual womens Pink and Green Beach Cruisers. This bike comes with fenders and upgrades throughout. By far one of the nicest womens Beach Cruisers on the market you can click the pic for more detail and pricing on this model.
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Beach cruisers; Mens Black Beach Cruiser comes with fenders and upgrades throughout. Black Beach Cruisers are the second most popular color (Chrome being number one) so why not order yours today. Click the pic for pricing and more details for this model and other Beach Cruisers.
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Second, the Off-Shore marketers had developed a network of both brick and mortar stores as well as on-line dealers. Missing the opportunity to successfully launch a new line of profitable beach cruisers traditional manufactures withdrew back into the old profit hog – mountain bikes.
Today, there is a strong presence of off shore manufactures that produce beach cruisers for primarily on-line dealers. Quality by these remaining dealers has grown as companies such as JustBicycles and PT Cruisers have risen in the market place selling thousands of bikes each summer.
On-line stores have likewise risen and fallen with new on-line stores opening every year. Prices have continued to drop for Beach Cruisers consequently over the last five years benefiting the buying public. However, there is one word of caution for purchasing a beach cruiser on line. Beware of price alone. That is to say that because of the limited off shore marketers that allow on-line sales be weary of the internet store that is advertising most of their bikes far below other on-line store prices. Also, be leery of Internet stores that accept only Paypal as their sole method of payment. Paypal is great but merchants using Paypal are doing so (paying higher discount rates) because banking institutions would not approve them for merchant accounts. There is a reason for this so my advise is stay away from on-line dealers who only accept Paypal as their method to process credit card transactions.
Otherwise, compare prices, compare brands and be sure to email the store and get verification that a particular bike is in stock before ordering. Many of these stores do not or are unable to update in stock inventories as fast as manufactures stocks change. Don’t rely on what the site says and if you can’t email the store or don’t get a response within 24 hours purchase elsewhere.
Hope this helps. See you on the beach.
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