Demo question

[Kimosabi]

Has anyone ever tried starting their own business for trial bikes? have you got any advise for me? I'm thinking of starting up shop in a country that, to my knowledge has nobody doing the sport.

If you have any advise or similar I'd appreciate your input. If you can help or want join in let me know.

Cheers

[jaimer]

I wouldn't start a business where the surrounding area has no interest in the product or service you're offering.

[Biketrialbrasil]

i started my online trial store 1 month ago in brasil.you must to be trusty and you´ll make the sport grows in your location.
good luck and be trusty.
there´s many riders around london...

[eturt9]

Doesn't make much sense selling trials bikes where nobody rides trials... I hear theres a good market for surfboards in antarctica

[Kimosabi]

Hi, I'm thinking more like in the Southern H. Thanks for the advise sofar.

[Acolyte]

Definately make sure there's interest before you sink money into it. I'm sure some people are into it, and if not, you'll just have to do lots of promoting. The less interest there is, work harder at promoting, and with a business, always be patient.

[Kimosabi]

There is a massive downhill community there and BMX is big too. So why not trials? It sems to be like that in any country or place. Trialbiking is growing in my opinion! Hey I earn UK pounds, that goes a long way in other countries... so I wouldn't have to fork out that much of my hard earned cash but I'll defo be sure to make sure it'll work out first. I think I'll need to check with the bike companies if they are interested. You never know but I have a feeling they are an unfriendly lot..

[RT Wolf]

With passion, hard work and dedication (and some smarts) you can do anything.

I'm assuming that you mean creating a real world store, rather than an online one.

Since you're not trying to serve an existing market, you are essentially creating your customers. I would suggest having either an online arm of your shop, or being online entirely (where you could compete with the likes of tartybikes), to help you get through the time of essentially not having customers. To create your customers, you'd have to find ways to get people interested in trials, including holding demos, trials classes and the likes. Now, keep in mind something called participation rate, which comes from demographics and economics. Basically, participation rate is the percentage of the population who is into trials, in this case. Now, think of what percentage are actually "trials riders". Trials requires a set of fairly narrow skills, and those people who have those skills AND the interest will consider getting into trials. Which I will call the Potential Participation Rate. You would probably want to go to places where there are concentrations of people who are in the PPR group (I've always thought that engineers and engineering students would be into trials at a higher rate than normal people). Basically, you want to go where the soil is fertile for planting trials.

Another thing, my understanding is that real estate is expensive in and around london (england, I presume), so you might take that into consideration. Consider how much you would need to make to break even (expenses = income) and how you can get there, etc.

[Kimosabi]

Thanks for that. Some very interesting reading there. I need to do research into it. I wonder if there are any kind of stats somewhere that shows what kind of person a trials rider normally would be, e.g. job / age / interests / salary blaa blaa. Like you mention the Potential Participation Rate or marketing related stuff? has any survey ever been done, anyone know of such a thing?

[mekanic305]

I'm starting a business to promote small unknown sports. I'm starting with trials and will expand from there. Basically the idea is to link local gov't with, riders, with spectators, with sponsors. Sponsors I would expect to be local businesses both bike shops and others as well as manufacturers such as maxxis, magura, etc.

I don't really plan on having a shop but maybe provide advertising for other shops both local and online in trade for their support.

I don't know what exactly your wanting to do but my vision is to have lots of riders and spectators at regularly held events or comps and expand across the nation until trials is well known. Then get into other small sports and do the same thing. Then maybe one day start a bike manufacturing company and a few bike parks and retire.

As for surveys or other info...I've had a really hard time finding any info. Talking to other hosts of events has been my best source. What I'd really like to see is the financials/logistics behind something like the x-games or the bmx backyard jam.

[netto]

i thought you wanted to do demos for monies, but then i saw your other tread with the double brake pads and i figured that cant be it:momaru:

[RT Wolf]

Thanks for that. Some very interesting reading there. I need to do research into it. I wonder if there are any kind of stats somewhere that shows what kind of person a trials rider normally would be, e.g. job / age / interests / salary blaa blaa. Like you mention the Potential Participation Rate or marketing related stuff? has any survey ever been done, anyone know of such a thing?

Not a formal one, as far as I know. However, there are threads every once in a while here on OTn and turns out everyone is an engineer/into comptuers/etc. Of course, that's probably greatly affected by self selection bias cause people who would be into comptuers and tech would have an easier time participating in an online community.

Trials requires highly developed visual/spatial skills, though, and it always seems like engineers are high in that kind of.

Basically, you're about to walk into a situation with lots and lots of uncertainty. Which is fine, don't think of that as discouragement, it is what it is. If you really, really, really want to do this, you can do it. Just ask yourself what costs you are willing to pay (including physical, mental, psychic, emotional, relationship, etc), decide to pay them and go for it. I keep hearing that guys who run online shops work ridiculously long hours, I can't imagine a real shop being any less demanding. Still, its awesome to be your own boss.

Not a lot of information, a tiny-to-nill market that you'll have to create and grow, uncertainty about how long it'll take to create that market, probably not a huge amount of sources. Sounds like a challenge. :D

You could do a bootstrap and cut corners in the beginning. Do you have a house or an apartment? You might be able to run a small shop out of your house/apartment/backyard, depending on your location. Start handing out fliers, business cards and basically market like crazy (but cheaply). Start holding free demos or free trials "sessions" in parks or somin and teach some moves to interested people (and market these like crazy, too, posters at local bike shops, events, etc, or even do this near or at events/bike shops). You could burn a bunch of your favourite trials videos on dvds and start handing them out, or selling them at cost (you would probably like to get permission of the people who made the videos first).

You could do the above stuff before openning up your own shop, too.

Good luck if you decide to go ahead with this!

[Kimosabi]

Thanks RT_wolf. Again excellent info. Some good suggestions on your last post there. Just a reply like that motivates me even more. Like I mentioned before, it'll be in another country (not the UK) and I have family there so I'll ask them for help etc. and scope things out first before taking a dip in any spending spree.
I have posted other weird (maybe to some) threads on this forum but I'm a guy that thinks laterally, eventually some good will come from it. Even if it's helping others get into the sport, making life easier for trialbikers or just letting me be my own boss!

[decline]

i have hands on experence with the whole nitch sport thing. i have worked at a few climbing gyms and one of them was privately owned in oklahoma. and for you who dont know oklahoma...it is pretty flat as far as rock climbing is concerned. there fore there really isnt much interest in the sport. my boss esentially made enough money to keep the gym open because he loved rock climbing. and his wife made the real money. so expect to live poor...no mater how far your pound will take you. then on a dealer side of it i have an uncle who started sellin offroad parts threw his shop. with that comes the big dealer buy-ins. you either get stuff at msrp from the dealer or another business and then try and jack the price up. (this often doesnt work long due to the use of internet options) or you do a deal buy-in type thing. for offroad parts this was like having to buy tons of parts or so many dollars worth of parts. for example to buy into a particular manufacure my uncle had to purchace $5000 dollars worth of parts initially. and he had to do this with multiple manufactures. that ads up. reason being it prevents Joe Blow from just buying one part at dealer cost and makes him invest into that company. and im sure that it works the same here. now anyone in the online business correct me if im wrong. but the initial cost is huge.

what im trying to say is 1)start you business in a place that has trials 2)dont do it 3)expect to live rather poorly

i dont wanna discourage you but its a fact of business and sales.

[RT Wolf]

decline brings up another point, your costs will be higher (and that's before you try to take any money home) than online shops, so you'll have to necessarily price your products a little higher. You'll need to do a few things just to stay afloat. Market like hell to promote something that you have that online shops don't have. Probably face-to-face contact. Cultivate a way of dealing with people that makes them go "Wow, this guy is AWESOME." Another thing is to have a bunch of higher margin stuff to compensate for the lower margin on your main goods. You can do this a few ways. One would be to sell some stuff that regular bike shop sell and have a decent margin on. Another would be to have some high margin products of your own.