How the world changes. Once upon a time, computer programmers were considered one career step up from the people who mopped the floor at computer centers. After all, in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, designing computers was considered exciting, but programming them was monkey work, easy enough that (gasp) women could do it. (The "father" of modern programming, by the way, is really a "mother" - Colonel Grace Hopper of the US Women's Army Corps.) Today, the world's wealthiest man is a programmer, and programmers zip between their posh homes and posher offices in Ferraris, living the carefree life of the Alpha Geek. Or so it was before the "tech implosion", anyway. But I digress.
The profession of automotive sales has taken quite the opposite path. When I began selling cars in 1994, most of the guys in the business (and make no mistake, it was considered a "man's job") were old hands who earned six figures or thereabouts dealing with a steady string of customers, built up over a lifetime of Elks Club membership, Little League sponsorships, and church mixers. It was a fascinating lifestyle. You always had a new car, and you never did a lick of work. I remember being chastised for going out to put tags on a customer's new purchase. "You don't do that," one of the old hands said to be. "You let the lot boy do that. If there's no lot boy available, the customer can wait. This ain't the service department, it's the sales department, and don't forget that." Even more interesting, most salesmen didn't even bother to learn about the cars. Product knowledge was considered the mark of a geek. As a lifetime geek, I learned everything about the cars and found myself being used as a human product book by the old guys, at which point I started pretending to know nothing. "It's the salesman, not the car," they used to say.
Unfortunately, the age of the car salesman - that friendly fixture who remembers you from your last three Chevies and expects to see you for ten more - is long gone now. Today's "salesman" is more often than not some pimply kid right out of high school who smells weird and can't close a deal to save his life. Instead, a few unpleasant "closers" roam the dealership, putting pressure on hapless customers. The sales relationship isn't important. They assume you'll never be back and even if you are, they'll be somewhere else.
I remember one of the oldest of the old hands, the used car finance manager, telling me he could write ten books about how people have been ripped off by dealerships over the years, but that he wouldn't do it because it would hurt "the dignity of the industry". He's dead now and that dignity is long gone, replaced by "superstores" and "buy today" pressure. Car sales is no longer a lifetime, respectable job. It's another minimum-wage grind, like stacking shelves at the Home Depot. That's a shame.
Uh-oh, five hundred and nine words and I haven't mentioned the actual subject of the column yet. There aren't five hundred and nine words in a whole issue of TWBMX, you know. Okay. Let's get on topic. Speaking of the car business... Another radical change that has occurred in the biz is the attitude towards used cars. The popularity of leasing, combined with the longer-lasting nature of today's automobiles, has managed to flood the market with "nearly-new" cars. Something has to be done with all these cars. Somebody needs to sell them, and somebody else needs to buy them. The manufacturers' response has been "Certified Pre-Owned" programs, CPO for short. With this program, the cars are inspected (in theory, anyway. Some program requirements, like those of Starmark for Mercedes-Benz, are vigorous. Others, like Toyota/Lexus's entry, are nearly non-existent) and the warranty is extended. If you want an S430, but can only afford an E320, CPO might be for you.
CPO has been a popular program because it addresses the primary reason people don't buy used cars - concern over their history and condition. It makes the dealer "responsible" for problems. It's reassuring, and it helps hold up resale values, making it easier to sell new cars. Everybody wins.
As some of you know, I ran a mail-order bike shop in 1990 and 1991. Prior to running our first ad, I took a nearly-new TNT XL frame in trade for a new Badd & Company. I gave the kid sixty-five bucks for the frame - exactly half what they sold for new. I thought that sounded fair. I put the used bike in the magazine ad for $89.99, which also sounded fair to me. When the store owner with whom I partnered for distributor contacts heard what I had done, he called me an idiot. "Used bikes aren't worth anything," he said, "that kid ripped you off and you'll never sell that frame." It made me nervous. Maybe he was right. After all, didn't I see used frames tied to the fence at every race? How often did they sell? Not very often.
The following week our ad came out. I was on pins and needles. What would my first call be? Would it be a sale? The phone rang.
"Squidco."
"I'm calling about the used TNT." And I sold him the bike. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again.
"Squidco."
"Hey, I'm calling to buy that used TNT."
"It's sold, I'm sorry."
"Could you call me if you get another?"
What the heck was going on here? We took nearly fifty calls for that TNT frame before the month was over. I started putting used parts in the ads, and they all sold in the first month I listed them. I got in the habit of offering one-half retail price for used stuff that was in good shape. I took a fair amount of it in and sold it all. When I closed Squidco, I had new stock remaining, but no used stock. It all sold pretty much as soon as people knew I had it.
I started to notice something else happening. People would buy frames from me with the intention of "trading up" in six months or a year. This was the era of Cr-Mo frames which lasted for years, so there weren't really any safety issues with buying a used frame - just a savings for taking last year's stickers.
From time to time I think about getting back into the bike shop business. I'll never do it, because running a bike shop nowadays is too much like selling cars - there's no money in it unless you own the mega-store. But when I dream, I dream of a CPO program. In this program, we would take trade-in frames, parts, and whole bikes. We'd clean 'em up, disassemble and reassemble to suit, and sell them at a thirty percent or so discount off new, maybe more in some cases. We'd combine new frames with used parts to make affordable yet fashionable racers. We'd throw new parts on sturdy used frames to create high-value scoots for Novices. We'd make best-of-everything used rides for the Experts who outgrow their old bikes or just want a change. We'd take micros in trade for minis, minis in trade for juniors, juniors in trade for experts... and sell the micros to new parents who want a low-cost entry into the sport for their rugrats. My shop would warrant the parts we sell and take in trade only the parts we could warrant.
Would the manufacturers welcome this program? Maybe, maybe not. Auto manufacturers created CPO to clear the decks for new cars and stabilize values, but the music industry has been fighting the sale of used CDs longer than they've been fighting filesharing. Their argument is that nobody will buy a new CD when they could buy a used one. Of course, one way to fight that would be to make CDs that people want to keep, but it's apparently easier to bribe legislators than to make decent music of lasting value. Perhaps the most fascinating consequence of CPO programs in the industry would be the change in the perceived value of durable frames. Faced with the choice between paying $279 for an S&M that will be worth $130 as a trade-in a year from now or paying $399 for an aluminum Alliant that no shop will take in trade due to cracking problems, what will riders do? The concept of resale value can be amazingly powerful. Toyota wouldn't get away with charging $32,000 for a Camry with leather seats if their buyers weren't confident they could sell it for $17,000 three or four years from now.
Once we have a used market, it's a short step to bike leasing. If your credit (or your parents' credit) is good, I can sell you a $499 bike for $200... just make sure you bring it back, in decent condition, twelve months from now. I'll have plenty of people lined up to buy it for $349... or lease it for $150. When those people bring the bikes back, I'll have people ready to buy it for $225, or lease it for $99. In fact, I'll be happy to charge your credit card $9.99 a month for that "two careful previous owners" $499 race bike. Maybe I'll get together with the local track and offer you unlimited local racing, plus the bike, for $29.99 a month. In the meantime, I've sold the same bike three times, making a better-than-mail-order profit on each transaction and assuring recurring contact with customers.
These are the kind of powerful ideas that could make BMX affordable and enjoyable for a currently untapped class of riders. It's even environmentally friendly, as it prevents people from throwing their old bikes out to rust away.
BMX Basics readers are, in many ways, this sport's elite. If we aren't the fastest guys and gals out there, we are often the best educated and most upwardly mobile, judging from the letters I get and people I meet. Any bike shop that could gain the attention and favor of my readers could make a lot of money. That's why I don't sell advertising or put banners up - it's too valuable a trust for me to abuse. But I'll tell you what. The first bike shop which begins an honest, accountable used-bike program will get plenty of publicity, in these pages and elsewhere. All you have to do is:
That's not so tough, is it? A strong CPO program could make a lot of people happy. And it might even restore the luster to the title of "cycle sales consultant", a title I held way back in 1985, working at a Schwinn shop... but that's another story entirely.