I work with the Sibley Bike Depot in St. Paul; we currently have accounts with Quality Bike Products as well as J&B. We are a not-for-profit with a fairly well established retail operation that largely funds our other programs; thus far this year, we've sold about $50,000 worth of used bikes and parts (both used and new). We are stocking more different new items for retail sales and also doing more special ordering of higher end new parts for customers. We generally order about $2500 per month in parts and supplies.

Our mission remains to recycle as much as possible. However, it has become clear to us that things like cables, brake pads (we replace brake pads on about 60% of bikes that come through our shop), handlebar tape, tires, lights, locks, helmets, and more are really helpful for people to have a comfortable, reliable, safe ride.

In terms of setting up distributor accounts - really all QBP and J&B require is a storefront with a sign. In my experience, we've never had trouble getting them to accept orders, even when Sibley was ordering way lower quantities. Contact them - it may be less lucrative on their end, but they have plenty of customers and it isn't a whole lot of extra work on their end to distribute to you. And they sometimes even feel happy to be supporting a socially conscious organization.

If you don't have a storefront or can't get a distributor account, connecting with a Local Bike Shop may be an effective way to get your coop/collective discounts. I've heard multiple instances (including our neighbor the Grease Pit in Minneapolis) where a local shop (in the Grease Pit's case, a worker-owned coop retail shop) offers them parts at wholesale (or close to) price. Most LBS do not view your collective as competition, and are happy to offer discounted parts (i've head like 25% above wholesale cost being used before).

Jason Tanzman Volunteer Coordinator (paid staff)

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:00 AM, thethinktank-request@bikecollectives.orgwrote:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Distributors and interacting with the profit model (Carolyn Braunius)
2. Re: Distributors and interacting with the profit model (R

Points)

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Message: 1 Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 07:45:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Carolyn Braunius brauniusc@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Distributors and interacting with the profit model To: The Think Tank thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Message-ID: 155359.53587.qm@web50301.mail.re2.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi,

We have two small collective shops at Troy Bike Rescue, in Troy and Albany. We are also very lucky to have a major distributor's warehouse nearby who are very accommodating with our order needs.

In our shops we heavily emphasize using recycled parts first. We only were really keeping new cables, bearings, and housing in stock.

We had a special situation in Troy, which made us rethink some of our shop policies on not buying new parts for our customers' consumption. The local police began issuing tickets for not having bike bells or lights, to the tune of like 50 bucks in some cases.

We test ordered some bells, lights, and patch kits to see if people would be willing to give us a more specific "suggested donation" for the parts, since the parts were paid for by us, instead of relying on donations. In our case, there was no local bike shop or even a major big box retailer that was easily accessible for people who use bikes as a primary means of transportation to get a bell or a light.

So far, the change has been very successful. We wanted to make sure, if we were providing people with bikes, we were also providing them with the opportunity to get a bell and a light. People have heard about the ticketing, have been coming to us for bells and are very willing to meet our minimum suggested donation.

With our minimum suggested donation, we try to cover the cost of our purchase, and not undercut the local bike shops to much. So far, this has been cool.

We also let our core staff order stuff when we order from the distributor. No one is paid at our shops, so it is a small reward for a group of very dedicated people. Of course, this is about 10-12 people for two shops, so it isn't to much of an onerous task. Each person is responsible for looking at the catalog, writing down all the relevant information, and then making sure the items are in stock at the local supplier before we order.

Carolyn www.troybikerescue.org

"When shall we live if not now?" - M.F.K. Fisher

--- On Thu, 8/6/09, rachael spiewak rachael@sopobikes.org wrote:

From: rachael spiewak rachael@sopobikes.org Subject: Re: [TheThinkTank] Distributors and interacting with the profit model To: "The Think Tank" thethinktank@bikecollectives.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 6:53 AM

We have an account with Hawley.? Our minimum order is $50, and we only buy things necessary for operating a repair shop (no retail items, nothing for people to take away unless it's installed on the bike as part of a repair; generally tools and consumables costing less than $5 apiece only).? They required from us up front that we have liability insurance and a store front, and maybe a few other things that I can't recall.

We talked about buying benefits for volunteers, and we decided it create too much confusing administrative work, and volunteers have plenty of access to nice donations and other benefits anyway.? And we like to send folks to the for profit shops for parts when we don't have them because that helps us maintain good relationships with the shops.?? Plus, our mission is about affordable repair by way tool sharing, not by way of bulk parts purchasing.

This fiscal year to date, we've spent a little more than $5000 on shop supplies, mostly on Hawley orders, and the rest split between hardware stores and emergency trips to for profit bike shops.? We surpassed our supplies fundraising goals with some grant money, so we splurged a little on some tap and die sets, which have pretty much paid for themselves in salvaged bottom bracket shells and fork threads.

Hope this helps! Rachael Sopo Bikes//ATL

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:47 PM, Rigel Christian rigelc@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I had an interesting discussion with someone who worked at a smaller

distributor today. I had called in order to try and cultivate a

business relationship for our local co-op, which is in desperate need

of tools and consumable parts like bearings and cables. He mentioned

that a lot more co-ops were inquiring about accounts.

He also told me the reasons why co-op/DIY shops were problematic from

his end, and it's a reasonable criticism from that perspective.

Individually, we simply dont do the volume of business necessary to be

attractive to a business interest. The time necessary to administer

and verify an account that does maybe a couple hundred dollars worth

of business a month for the higher traffic shops kind of burns your

profit margins, which are not large at that level. distributors count

on reliable, volume business to stay afloat, and take a smaller cut of

profit on the assumption that that's the type of business theyll be

doing.

I've know that some of the longer running co-ops and collectives have

relationships with distributors, but clearly many of the newer ones do

not.

I'm curious about a couple of things.

1. Does your collective have a relationship with a parts distributor?

2. Regardless of the answer to #1, roughly how much does your shop

spend on tools/consumables/things-that-one-would-get-from-a-distributor?

It seems to me that in the first few years of a

co-op/nonprofit/collective situation, lots or most of these

organizations leverage either existing ties to, or the goodwill of

LBSes.

My suspicion is that in some edge cases, where the bike or DIY culture

isnt all that strong, this can be a fairly significant issue for a

fledgling operation, in terms of both finances and social capital.

The idea that i'm trying to push here is that of a sort of buyers

club. Disregarding for the moment the perfectly valid criticisms of

the legal structure of 501(c)3s, if there was a nonprofit that could

act as a go-between for a parts distributor and a number of regional

shops, that would serve the needs of both the for-profit distributors

AND the co-op shops. distributors wouldnt have to deal with as much

volatility from taking on co-ops as charity cases, and co-ops banding

together could drive the price of a lot of the most necessary

consumables and parts down even further than their current distributor

relationships can offer. in the ideal case, of course.

I would appreciate any input people have. I dont know if this has been

suggested before (I suspect it has), but i didnt see anything in my

archive of the last year or so. If I'm totally off base in my

assumptions I'd like to know that too, where i went wrong, and what

the real deal is.

cheers.

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