Performance: The End Of An Era?

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, as a teenager, I discovered the mail-order catalogues.  They had all sorts of exotic bikes and parts, most of which I couldn't afford and weren't found in the local bike shops.  I pored over those catalogues the way other kids devoured comic books or teen magazines--or the way some young person in a remote village might indulge him or her self in magazines filled with images of the latest fashions from New York or Paris.

Before the '70's Bike Boom, there was Gene Porteusi's Cyclopedia, that printed cornucopia of, seemingly, all things bike-related.  He was one of the old-timers who kept the flame flickering during the Dark Ages of cycling in the US.  

Somehow I don't think much of anything changed in his catalogues during their history.  For most of his career, he was dealing with a small audience--few American adults were cycling during the quarter-century or so after World War II--and a limited selection of goods.  Actually, in the later years of Cyclopedia's run, he limited his selection:  He didn't offer any Japanese parts, not even a SunTour derailleur, even after people started to choose them for custom-built frames.

For making those wonderful V-series and Cyclone derailleurs, and other great stuff from the Land of the Rising Sun, widely available, much of the credit goes to the mail-order companies that launched in the wake of the Bike Boom.  I am thinking now of Bike Warehouse, which later became Bike Nashbar; Bikecology, renamed Supergo; and, possibly the 800-pound gorilla among them:  Performance Bike.

Well, it looks like Nashbar is the last catalogue standing.  Well, not exactly:  Nashbar still exists, but I reckon that hardly anybody shops from its catalogue anymore. For all I know, they might not even have a printed catalogue these days:  I'd guess that, save for their outlet store, all of their sales are on the web.

And the web, ironically, is one of the things that destroyed the other two.  Actually, Performance took over Supergo.  But now it looks like Performance is nigh:  Its parent company filed for bankruptcy protection last fall, and all of its retail stores will close next month.  In addition, over 100 staff members have been laid off at Performance's Chapel Hill, North Carolina headquarters.

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Although you could buy stuff from Performance's website, it never seemed to generate business in the same way that other retailers' websites did for them.  Plus, the web made it easier to order from overseas retailers when they offered better prices or the exchange rate was favorable. As an example, during the past few years, it's often been cheaper to buy Shimano components--Performance's bread-and-butter, if you will--from UK retailers like Ribble or Chain Reaction because, in addition to the favorable exchange rates, US customers benefited from not having to pay the value-added tax (VAT) levied on purchases made by native or European Union customers.

The coup de grace for Performance, though, might have been tariffs the Trump administration imposed last year on bikes, e-bikes and products related to them.  An already-reeling Performance was hit with higher overhead costs and, from what I've read, had no choice but to raise prices.  That, of course, would drive away an already-dwindling customer base that was attracted mainly by the company's low prices.

So, for better or worse, we may be witnessing the end of an era: the one of the mail-order catalogue, in the bicycle industry as well as in other businesses.   

ASE Is Not an Ace After All

By now, you've probably heard that Advanced Sports Enterprises--the company that owns Performance Bicycle, Bike Nashbar and several well-known bicycle brands--has filed for bankruptcy.

According to ASE, it means that some of Performance's brick-and-mortar stores will close, employees will be laid off and Performance's and Nashbar's operations will be scaled bike.  The company did not, however, give any indication that any of the bike brands it owns--which include Fuji, Kestrel, Breezer and Tuesday Bicycles--will be discontinued.  According to Patrick Cunnane, ASE's CEO, sales of those bikes have been "steady" but overall sales and profits didn't grow enough to sustain their retail operations.

Translation:  The company over-expanded.

Company insiders, not surprisingly, laid at least part of the blame for the company's woes at the doorstep of Amazon.  It's difficult to discount such an analysis:  Most bikes that aren't custom or specialty machines, and most bike-related stuff, can be found on the online omnivendor, usually at a lower price than Performance or Nashbar offered, and almost always with free shipping.

There is, of course, a certain irony in all of this.  When Performance, Nashbar and other retailers--which sold through mail-order catalogues and took orders by telephone as well as via the post office--were growing in popularity, mom-and-pop bike shop owners lamented, "They're killing us!"  And there can be little doubt that Performance, Nashbar and the like were responsible for the demise of many smaller shops, which simply couldn't compete price-wise because they never could order the same quantities of merchandise as the mail-order megaliths.

I wonder whether any of ASE's or Performance executives heard the cries of  brick-and-mortar bike shop owners.  If they had, it's hard to imagine why Performance opened any physical shops.  Perhaps those execs thought that people had enough "brand loyalty" to Performance that they'd go to one of those shops.

The folks in charge at ASE probably had no idea of how expensive it is to operate a bike shop, which needs more space than most other kinds of retail establishments.  From what I read and heard, Performance used to buy whole boatloads of Shimano equipment and store it in huge warehouses which they owned.  So, until they opened brick-and-mortar shops, they didn't need a showroom or an area for bike repairs.  Also, since they had a worldwide customer base, their merchandise didn't sit for as long as it often does in a smaller bike shop.

They also probably had no idea that, essentially, Amazon could beat them at their own game, which could be spelled in five letters--  p-r-i-c-e--in part because its overhead was even lower than that of Performance or Nashbar.

I'm not a business person. But I know this much:  Whatever game you play can be played by someone else.  And if that competitor finds a new method, tactic or technology, watch out!

Before Nashbar

Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

If you've seen "The Glass Menagerie," you might recall seeing "Ou sont les neiges" projected on the stage.  It's comes from a line in Francois Villon's Ballade des Temps du Temps Jadis (A Ballad of Ladies of Times Past), which is part of his Testament.

When you're around anything long enough, you might start to wonder where its "snows of yesteryear" have gone.  There is the bike on which you took a particularly memorable or important ride, or some part or accessory you liked but hasn't been available in ages.  

Also, as in any other endeavor, some cyclists miss the old catalogues and brochures.  Sometimes people think everything was better in the "good ol' days"; the truth is, the forgettable stuff is mainly, well, forgotten.  But it's hard to deny that some things had a style that simply can't be emulated (without seeming to be a parody, anyway) today.

A while back, Bike Snob wrote a post in which he said, in essence, that even if the world were to end and you were in an underground bunker, a Nashbar catalogue will find its way to you. Of course, he was being his snarky self, but we all know that snark works only when there's at least an element of truth in it.

Believe it or not, I can remember a time when Bike Nashbar catalogues weren't as difficult to evade as bill collectors or Inspector Javert.  In fact, in those days, the catalogues, and the company itself were very different.

For one thing, it was called Bike Warehouse.

They indeed offered some of the lowest prices on bike-related stuff, as they do now. However, in those days, they sold mainly current-model, high- (or higher-) end equipment, such as Campagnolo Nuovo Record components, SunTour Cyclone derailleurs and rims from Super Champion, Mavic and others.  

If I recall correctly, Bike Warehouse was the first mail-order company from which I purchased any cycling equipment.   I had just begun reading Bicycling! magazine on a regular basis, and Bike Warehouse advertised in it. Like many other people, I was drawn in by their selection and prices.  

Plus, believe it or not, they had a particular kind of quirky charm that you don't see today. 

 This page comes from one of their 1976 catalogues.  By then, they'd been in business a couple of years.  Even if I didn't give you a year, you probably could have guessed the era from which it came by its graphics. Actually, those graphics were even a bit dated by that time.

There is one aspect of that catalogue that added to its quirky charms but which, alas, I cannot render on this site.  You see, those early Bike Warehouse catalogues were printed on newsprint.  Almost no newspapers in those days had color, as the technology was prohibitively expensive.  So those early Bike Warehouse catalogues had all of the black-and-white glory of a pre-WWII film.

As the saying goes:  Ils ne font pas comme eux pas plus.