Madison Opens Online Shopping Platform to All UK Bike Shops
In a bid to give independent bike shops an online presence to serve more customers, Madison is opening up its Freewheel platform to all UK bike shops.
Madison is a UK distributor that carries brands including Shimano, Saracen, 100% and Park Tools. Their Freewheel platform is an online shop with a difference - whenever a customer makes a purchase on the Freewheel website, they will be asked to designate a local bike shop and from then on all commission or collections will go to that bike shop.
The idea is to merge the best of brick-and-mortar and online shopping to allow bike shops to compete with the e-commerce giants. Bike brands such as Trek and Specialized have similar schemes for their bike sales but Madison would crucially allow customers to buy through any participating shop, as opposed to just those aligned with a particular brand.
Freewheel was soft launched with select retailers in August 2018 and currently has 59 participating shops. The service is being fully rolled out at Madison's in house show iceBike*, which takes place in Milton Keynes in February, where there will be seminars on how the system works and how retailers can get involved at different levels.
A Saracen Traverse from last year's iceBike* show
Dominic Langan, Madison CEO, said, “We are really pleased to now be at the stage of being able to open Freewheel up to all of our specialist independent bricks and mortar customers. This is an initiative we truly believe could benefit all local bike shops with greater customer awareness, improved footfall and additional sales with no cost of entry.
“Freewheel is a sophisticated website with complex capabilities to deliver an effective customer experience for our specialist retailer network. Madison has invested significant sums of money and resources to facilitate the creation of a nationwide union of specialist independent bicycle retailers. Together we are stronger. You can find out how it all works at iceBike* next month and we look forward to welcoming you to Arena:MK.”
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40 Comments
It grates though, when you go into your LBS, who don't have the space to keep reams and reams of stock, and the part you want (and have psyched yourself up to take a 30%+ hit on the price) needs ordering in, which takes 3 days and another ride or drive to the shop.
Hopefully this will go a long way to mitigate this.
Its the manufacturers / designers that need their heads banging together to solve this one. With all of the ever evolving standards and slightly different fitments (that often provide no benefit at all) that they seem to relentlessly push into reality how can any independent LBS possibly hope to carry parts that will fit - its almost impossible.
I mean just to stock one brand in each size is probably 15+headsets now, 10+bb sizes, 8 different sizes of tyre (plus etc) god knows how many hub sizes, about 50+ chainrings, seatpost diameters, two bar types etc etc
The small LBS is going to become a service centre in my opinion who just make a small margin when they next-day order parts from distribution, aside from super simple stuff that they can actually afford to stock.
The Freewheel catalogue was Madison’s trade and mail order operation. It also spawned franchised bike shops of the same name - there were 30 of these shops at one time, with the last one, being Freewheel of Nottingham, which is no longer trading. Freewheel sold and promoted Madison own brands such as Pakit pannier bags, Aztec brake blocks and Grab-on sponge handlebar pads. The catalogue also introduced Revell touring bikes (made by Mercian and Dave Yates) and Ridgeback mountain bikes.
not my opinion, but I think its of many..
I keep spare pads anyway along with other consumables
As another example, you can purchase / lease etc a car online at a discount and have it delivered to your home, but you wont get the test drive, to ask the dealer questions about the product and the options available etc (unless you are the kind of arsehole that goes into a dealer and lies, gets the info and leaves to order online that is - but take note, they are wise to this f*ckery)
So really your comment is pretty irrellevant to the topic, carry on doing what you like to do, but dont feel smug just because you choose to spend your money with a venture capitalist owned online giant.
And as for the LBS aiming advice towards the products they can supply, are you absolutely mental? Are you suggesting your shop stands with you for 15mins advising you to buy a product from elsewhere, you do realise a bike shop is an actual business, dont you? Thats almost comical.
Please toddle off Audi and ask them about BMW for a while, or your indian for advice about the local chinese, or any shop for that matter and ask them to discuss products they cant sell you.
xt brake from CRC £74
Do you not see the point that others value purchasing items in a different way to yourself?
BTW, I have not shopped in an LBS for over 5 years and dont plan to do so, but im not going to campaign for others to stop going or state the obvious, that you can get things cheaper from CR.
On your last point, do you have any idea how CRC sell some products so cheaply? Its called grey imports, products purchased bypassing the distributor network, they buy at the distributors (or cheaper than) rate. If the distributor sold parts to the shops cheaper they wouldnt make a profit.
If you are going to preach online about something, at least dont be so ignorant.
£44 from Freewheel
Not available on CRC, no ETA,
Can't help but think this will be handy if you need spares as a distributor will carry far more depth of stock than most websites.
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