January 10, 201610 yr I live in an area that I think has a good market for ebike sales, there are huge numbers of commuters near the city that can benefit from ebikes. There is only one other supplier in the area and that is a bicycle shop that sells ebikes at a huge markup. I am thinking of shipping in kits (likely BBS02) from China, purchasing good quality bikes and selling them through newspapers, gumtree and so on... Has this been done before by any other forum members and what is your opinion on it? Have you had success in selling? What kind of price points did you find worked best. Thanks for any feedback you provide.
January 10, 201610 yr I live in an area that I think has a good market for ebike sales, there are huge numbers of commuters near the city that can benefit from ebikes. There is only one other supplier in the area and that is a bicycle shop that sells ebikes at a huge markup. I am thinking of shipping in kits (likely BBS02) from China, purchasing good quality bikes and selling them through newspapers, gumtree and so on... Has this been done before by any other forum members and what is your opinion on it? Have you had success in selling? What kind of price points did you find worked best. Thanks for any feedback you provide. Let's be clear. If you are selling bikes in the UK fitted with that motor, you won't be selling ebikes, you will be selling electric mopeds which your customers won't be able to legally use in the UK. Unless you make that point abundantly clear, by that I mean the most prominent feature of your advert, not an ambiguous statement tucked away in small print, you will be deceiving them in order to make money. I think the Ebike world is littered with failed chancers trying to trouser a quick pound by selling high powered Chinese junk. It's the ethical ones who tend to stick around long term.
January 10, 201610 yr I have a similar business plan in my drawer but it is for building pedelecs i.e. motor is 250 W nominative limited to 25 kph and all the electric bits are to EN 15194, ROHS etc.
January 10, 201610 yr I live in an area that I think has a good market for ebike sales, there are huge numbers of commuters near the city that can benefit from ebikes. There is only one other supplier in the area and that is a bicycle shop that sells ebikes at a huge markup. I am thinking of shipping in kits (likely BBS02) from China, purchasing good quality bikes and selling them through newspapers, gumtree and so on... Has this been done before by any other forum members and what is your opinion on it? Have you had success in selling? What kind of price points did you find worked best. Thanks for any feedback you provide. Cathal.....What is your selling advantage over what the rest of us are doing? My experience is that the bike world is very brand aware,suppliers like Raleigh,KTM,Haibike,Kalkhoff have been making bikes for many decades,customers feel very safe buying these historically known brands. There are newbies like Batribike,Freego,Woosh,Kudos....we are all starting to be trusted after minimum 5 years trading,it takes time to build a good brand. EN15194 and maybe soon type approval are becoming more recognised quality standards,expensive to achieve on small volumes. There are newbies who buy the cheapest e-bikes from China,they usually sell cheaply on e-bay or Internet. They usually 'die' very quickly when they realise that selling electric bikes is not an easy sale,good PDI is important,holding spares,good customer relations,warranties....all eat into the small profits,they give up after the first container. But the biggest hurdle selling e-bikes is how do you market your bikes? Electric bike customers are still rare people,you need a big net to catch a small number,big nets are expensive....shows,brochures,retail advertising are all very expensive. The bike world has an established supply line which is borne out of experience. Customers don't really want to travel more than 50 miles to buy a bike and preferably less than 10 miles....which means local dealers,which need to make a profit-what appears to you as a huge mark up will quickly evaporate when you are on the other side of the counter. I could see a bespoke service where you bought a good quality bike added a motor kit on a one-off basis,producing a e-bike tailored to the customer but it would have to sell at say £1200 (Don't forget £200 vat to HMRC in that)and you would be against established brands....the classic problem,how would you economically market your service? We have all experimented with eBay Amazon selling,but eBay/PayPal/vat/delivery can take 30% plus out of the sale price,it is very difficult to sell electric bikes on eBay and make a profit. Dont forget the Chinese have massive volumes in their own country,they only allow 50 USD to assemble a bike and components are very competitively priced.....Batribike recently experimented with building e-bikes in the UK,has that been a success? Hope that helps. KudosDave Edited January 10, 201610 yr by Kudoscycles
January 10, 201610 yr Author Like you said at the end Kudos I'm looking to provide bikes to the local city that are of good quality already I'm already looking into buying a nice year old Giant and a nice six month old Cube mountain bike. I think there's a market for it. I'd say I'd probably need to sell at at least £1200 or higher to make any reasonable profit like you say. I don't think I have an advantage over anyone else, just that no one else is doing it in my region. It'll be a bit of side income and a new set of projects for me, I'm not looking to retire on it. Time will tell if it is a good idea or not.
January 10, 201610 yr Like you said at the end Kudos I'm looking to provide bikes to the local city that are of good quality already I'm already looking into buying a nice year old Giant and a nice six month old Cube mountain bike. I think there's a market for it. I'd say I'd probably need to sell at at least £1200 or higher to make any reasonable profit like you say. I don't think I have an advantage over anyone else, just that no one else is doing it in my region. It'll be a bit of side income and a new set of projects for me, I'm not looking to retire on it. Time will tell if it is a good idea or not. Actually,with a business model as a side income on a local basis it could work,keeping overheads to the garage alongside the house. Up to £73000 per annum you would not have to vat register. Not sure you would get £1200...I assume you would want to produce a fast road race type bike but you would be competing with the likes of the Woosh Karoo,about £800 from memory. Be careful about making illegals,you would be liable if you watched the customer testing it and if involved in an accident the stress and costs would make you question why you started,I like sleeping at nights. What happened to the guy from Banbury who made 1500 watt illegals? The BPM-CST motor is very torquey and not expensive. Good luck. KudosDave
January 10, 201610 yr ... What happened to the guy from Banbury who made 1500 watt illegals? ... KudosDave Frank Furby of xipi.co.uk? he is still making them. I don't know how he sleeps though.
January 10, 201610 yr Frank Furby of xipi.co.uk? he is still making them. I don't know how he sleeps though. He has been doing that for almost a decade, surely he sleeps well by now...
January 10, 201610 yr He has been doing that for almost a decade, surely he sleeps well by now... You can't get blood out of a stone! KudosDave
January 10, 201610 yr Author Surely if you tell the customer it's not legal to ride on the road and provide this information to them you won't be liable for their offences. I'd say you'd only be open to litigation if you deliberately misled them.
January 10, 201610 yr What is the use of a bike you can't ride on the road? I am interested in building a means of transport. So it has to be road legal.
January 10, 201610 yr Author Im sure there would be people who would be interesting on some off road activity eg cycling trails, through forrests, etc... I'd say there would be those who'd not mind if it wasn't road legal and cycle there anyway, but I'm thinking that it's not your responsibility to look over your customers after you've sold the product.
January 10, 201610 yr Im sure there would be people who would be interesting on some off road activity eg cycling trails, through forrests, etc... I'd say there would be those who'd not mind if it wasn't road legal and cycle there anyway, but I'm thinking that it's not your responsibility to look over your customers after you've sold the product. Its just as illegal for offroad activity... and more dangerous and more likely to cause conflict with other users of these areas. Mountain bikers have long campaigned to get access across the UK, and there is a big concern that illegally powerful eBikes that can't legally be used there will jeopardise the access rights of legal eBikes and normal pedal cycles. If you want to run a responsible business and protect your customers, you need to understand that if the bike has a motor with a nominal power of more than 250w, and/or a cut off speed of over 15.5mph, it can't legally be used in the UK. And I'll stress again, offroad is actually worse, for the individual, the industry and for all other cyclists.
January 10, 201610 yr cathal, the problem is perception. You may think that you have spotted a gap in the market (s-pedelecs), but the gap is there for a reason, it's forbidden territory for the mainstream suppliers. There is also a technical issue. There aren't ready built push bikes good enough for use as donor bikes for s-pedelecs power and speed. You may sell a few before one of your customers has an accident riding a bike unfit for the speed but it's a when rather than an if question.
January 10, 201610 yr Also... just to make you (and others aware). I've recently had it confirmed by Trading Standards (in writing) that if a dongle is fitted to a normal eBike, or a kit is fitted to a standard bicycle, this is considered enough of a change to the bicycle that the person or business making the change becomes the manufacturer of the newly modified vehicle. This means that the company or individual who has made the modification takes on ALL the legal responsibility for that product, and as such if you are making these modifications you really need to make sure your liability insurance is up to scratch... and if you're making a bicycle that can't be used legally anywhere in the UK, check your liability insurance will cover you in the event one of your customers tries to sue you.
January 10, 201610 yr .... some off road activity ....... Oh no! He's said magic words! Here we go again............
January 10, 201610 yr Oh no! He's said magic words! Here we go again............ yup, once again proving the point that most don't understand the law. Which is why its important that people, especially those looking to set up in business know them. Because if / when the Forestry Commission and all local authorities ban all eBikes it will because we've not done something about it BEFORE it becomes a problem. We'll never get the access rights back!
January 10, 201610 yr 3 easy steps to making a small fortune building ebikes. 1 Start with a big fortune. 2 Build and sell ebikes 3 Target reached in 6 months
January 10, 201610 yr Author You know how ebikes > 250w are not considered ebikes anymore and instead electric mopeds or something similar to that. Can you ride them on roads legally if you have all the correct documentation, license and such?
January 10, 201610 yr You know how ebikes > 250w are not considered ebikes anymore and instead electric mopeds or something similar to that. Can you ride them on roads legally if you have all the correct documentation, license and such? Its not currently possible to register them at all, hence the reason its impossible to legally use them.
January 10, 201610 yr you can build and sell 250W e-bikes. There is currently a gap in the market, well finished bikes for less than £1,000. Mainstream Chinese bikes importers can't get their bikes finished to German standard and nobody in the UK builds e-bikes to German standard either.
January 10, 201610 yr Author I was thinking that could be an option. Would I be liable if my bikes were involved in an accident or would it be the customers responsibility, as long as the bike was built correctly. What kind of construction standards are there for ebike creators?
January 10, 201610 yr you would need public liability insurance. You should create a limited company for the purpose of buying, selling and repairing bikes for this activity. It's much easier to get insurance and accumulate earnings within the limited company.
January 10, 201610 yr As far as I'm aware if the manufacture has there own safety testing facility they can carry out there own safety tests.This is my own electronic interference test rig.http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/16/01/10/d39916a4ffa7e2e071fbe0ff6329077c.jpg And pedelec forum members watch on as the load test rig is tried out for the first time.http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/16/01/10/3eaeaf7d26103f084b2702df20d26a11.jpg sorry wrong pic.That was the head of the dft getting the chop.load test rig.http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/16/01/10/55b18fbc5ae7f4813691fbacf80dda13.jpg.
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