How will you serve customers in these non-European locations?
To keep the consumer-direct approach and maintain our very good price-value ratio by cutting out the middle man, there was only one way to deliver the bikes and still offer great service. We have built up a partner system for these new countries and we have made sure those partners are people just like us – people who love mountain bikes. The business in New Zealand and Australia will be run by Solon Payne and for North America it is no one else but Cam Zink and his brother Howie. Cam and YT felt very positively about each other since we first started working together and he loved our bikes right away, so we decided we want to stay together for as long as possible. But instead of just signing a lifetime sponsorship contract Cam had the idea that he wants to help bring our bikes to the States.
Explain to us a little bit about how these businesses will work. Are you still selling direct in these new markets? Will bikes be stocked and/or serviced in-country? Since you are using business partners in these new markets, how is that different to normal distribution/retail? Will the prices in these new markets be more or less equivalent to the current European prices?
Yes we will also run our direct sales business model in those new markets exactly the same like in Europe, but bikes will be stocked and delivered in-country. Cam and Solon, our partners in North America and Oceania, fulfill sales directly to the end consumers and take care of the service and local marketing. Due to different tax and VAT issues our consumer prices will be slightly higher than in Europe, but not by much. Honestly the big challenge for us was creating this partnership concept to keep the pricing close to our European market pricing all while offering highquality customer service through a local ambassador in those markets. We´re pretty proud that we managed to pull it off!