Canyon Precede:ON CF 8 Review: A Fun, Futuristic Ride Leave a comment
However there’s a extra existential query I battle over with Canyon bikes, particularly as I see extra of them out on my native path (together with the Canyon mountain bike I personal). How do direct-to-consumer gross sales have an effect on the native bike outlets, which might in any other case be serving these keen ebike clients? To search out out, I referred to as Ski Hut, a three-generation, family-owned, bike-and-ski store in Duluth, Minnesota, the place I purchased my first Specialised Rockhopper again within the Nineteen Eighties.
“The primary factor for Ski Hut is that individuals are pleased with the service they get,” the store’s co-owner Dave Neustel advised me. “We deal with each buyer who rolls their bike in right here the identical.” However, he added, there are specific facets of direct-to-consumer bikes that make them tougher to service, particularly that Ski Hut, which is among the largest bike outlets within the Midwest, doesn’t all the time have Canyon-specific components in inventory like they’d with bikes they promote.
Neustel additionally identified one other main downside that occurs when customers purchase direct, particularly that it cuts his price range for local people initiatives and funding. In Ski Hut’s case, meaning funding for COGGS, the main nonprofit mountain-bike advocacy group on the town; Duluth Devo, the citywide youth mountain biking nonprofit (full disclosure, my companion is its head coach); and the Bike Duluth Festival, an annual celebration of biking held on the native ski space, Spirit Mountain. “We put volunteer hours and {dollars} into the group, which is why shopping for from an area bike store is vital,” says Neustel. “It’s onerous, as a result of Canyons are good bikes, however direct-to-consumer manufacturers aren’t on the market supporting the native golf equipment and organizations.”
A Canyon spokesperson countered that the corporate does donate to and help various nationwide bike organizations, together with the International Mountain Biking Association, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, and People for Bikes. In Carlsbad, California, which hosts Canyon’s solely US showroom, the corporate helps three native biking golf equipment, together with the well-known Belgian Waffle Ride, the San Diego Mountain Biking Association, and the native Biking for All department. As well as, by way of biking ambassadors and athletes, the corporate sponsors various organizations all through the nation.
There’s no query that direct-to-consumer fashions are disrupting the long-entrenched provide chains of the bike business, for higher and for worse. There’s additionally no query that Canyon makes a superb product that’s typically cheaper than what’s supplied by its opponents. And in a globalized world, it’s typically onerous to outline what shopping for native means anymore. However the reality stays that it’s nonetheless not possible to purchase the brand new Precede:ON by way of your native store. It’s a must to anticipate that FedEx driver to drop off the enormous field, then get to work assembling your new experience.
