I stumbled on to this older post today, so I thought to shed some light on it and “the demo problem” thoughtfully because I can see some impressions that are not in line with reality or our policy and “the demo problem” is an issue that e-bike dealers and consumers face daily when in the market for an e-bike.
I’m the owner here at Motostrano and believe firmly in the power of e-bikes to change people’s lives and there’s nothing I like better than to hear how these bikes have transformed people just weeks from when they leave our store with a new bike. We’ve been selling e-bikes for 6 years or so. In my view that is a lot of “research” experience under our belt that we feel is warrant the trust of our potential customers. Over the years we’ve sold most brands, considered most brands and serviced most brands. We have a lot of knowledge to relay to you and though we’re not always the know-it-all, we have some real first hand experience that is worth your time.
We also do everything in our power to make the buying and owning process as wonderful as possible and one of the ways we accomplish that is by letting you try e-bikes before buying them. We do this in the following list ways:
- 2 store locations to serve you- Redwood City and San Francisco, each with a big sign outside that says “Try An Ebike Today"
- We keep a large inventory of e-bikes on hand for you to look at, try and buy
- We purchase bikes from our suppliers as “demo bikes” with special pricing programs for demo bike purchases
- We keep a designated fleet of demo e-bikes for you to try first hand in and around our store
- We keep a fleet of demo e-bikes that you can rent for daily and weekly use
- We stage monthly factory and store-sponsored demo events with support from our vendors and using their demo fleets
- Bring-the-demo-to-You appointments, where we’ll bring bikes to a trail or path of your choice
- Periodic meet-ups and rides in the local area
- Special order program, where you can back out at any time if it’s not the right bike for you
We’ve always allowed demos on many of our bikes and have more demo e-bikes and more e-bikes in our two store locations (Redwood City and San Francisco) than any store in the SF Bay Area. Currently, we have over 50 e-bikes on the floor. Appx 15 of those I’d say are actual demo bikes. Right now you can test out a Felt Lebowsk-e, a Haibike 29er, a Haibike Trekking, a BH Nitro, EVO Eco, Benelli, iZIP Path, etc. a bunch of others. We put an orange tag on the bikes that are “demo bikes” so you know what’s what.
Our inventory is always changing and our demo practices evolve too! On the plan is to have a demo van that we can set up around the bay area and beyond to bring the party to you. We are always open to ideas about new things we can do to get more people on bikes.
In addition to a full fleet of demo e-bikes, which naturally fluctuates and changes from month to month as we cycle through our inventory, we typically host one major store-wide demo event per month, lasting all day, heavily promoted, with purchasing incentives, featuring one of our brands or many of them. (in fact, we are doing a Valentines Day e-bike demo tomorrow at our store) Our most recent event (
https://www.facebook.com/events/426409244173102/) was just this past month and was a huge success. These are promoted on our social media, newsletters and other outlets and I highly recommend getting connected with us so you can find out about them. At those events, our vendors will usually bring a fleet of demo bikes that have been put through tests already and eager for more. They are not for sale bikes.
Check out our Youtube channel to see video of some our past events.
https://www.youtube.com/motostrano
And, if we can’t get vendors to join in, we do our own events using our own bikes. Events are key to bringing people in the store, trying and buying bikes.
In addition to these store demos, we will also “bring the demo to you”, as it were and in fact, if you are in the market for an e-bike and are a serious buyer and need to test out a bike exactly where you’d be riding it, or on a similar trail, we will actually load a bike or two in the truck and meet you on the trail or path and let you try our demo bike in your neighborhood or even up on a trail if it’s a mountain bike. We love doing this. Any excuse to go ride bikes and get out of the store is a good thing. We just ask that you are serious and committed to buying an e-bike from our store.
We have brought these demo rides to both individuals, families and corporations looking to buy in to e-bikes for their employees. We’ve had demo days at VW Corporation, at Apple Computer, UBER and even at BOSCH HQ in Palo Alto. I’ve brought fleets of e-bikes to hotels and to people’s houses on top of giant hills.
We also host rides out of our store or on trail from time to time, for owners and prospects.
http://www.meetup.com
That said, we do not allow ALL of our bikes to be demo’d on any whim. It’s important that people have done some amount of research so that we don’t have to go through 10 demo bikes to single out a bike to purchase. Any store that allows all of their e-bikes to be tested and demo’d, putting miles and hours on the motor and battery, is shooting themselves in the foot and often screwing over their customers by selling used demo bikes as “new” bikes even for full price. Other stores do this, we don’t. There’s a lot of stores around our area that, when you see their “new” bikes, have upwards of 200 miles on them from previous sales attempts, all demo rides.
Unlike standard bicycles, e-bikes show wear and use differently. They have a speedometer. They have charge cycles. They have motors. A standard bicycle shows wear only on tires. E-bikes wear more like a car and heck, they are priced like one too! And customers don’t want to buy “demo bikes” when they are buying “new bikes”. If a customer is paying full price for a bike, our bike will have near 0 miles on it. Just enough of our technician to ride it around the block to make sure everything is functioning properly before being deemed “ready for sale”.
At other stores, when shopping for an e-bike, make sure the bike you are buying, if sold as “new”, is actually NEW. We know that many stores simply demo out their whole inventory and then try to sell at full retail. In fact, we have customers who won’t even buy a bike that they didn’t see come fresh out of the box! A bike that may have been set up yesterday, tested by themselves first today, is no longer “new” in their view, even though they were the first to test it.
For instance, if you want to buy a Haibike Super Race from us- a $7000 e-bike, but you want to first flog it around the neighbor hood and compare it to an EasyMotion 29er and an A2b KUO, we’re not going to let that happen. As your guide in this, our job is to help you narrow down what you’re looking to do with the e-bike based on what you say your needs are and also get you to test out bikes in real world conditions. So, instead of putting miles on a brand new $6000 ebike, we’d put you on a the same brand of bike using the same motor. Then, come back in the store and sit on the Super Race and get a fitting. If you are really serious about it, have cash in hand, we’ll often even bend this rule, but we look for commitment.
Is it possible to purchase an e-bike without trying it first? Absolutely and it happens all the time. We ourselves buy most of these new models without ever trying them and then reselling them of course. Customers do this too.
If you’re lost in the woods about what bike to get, we hope that we project some element of trust as to what might work for you. We ride bikes daily. Commute on them. Work on them. We know what works, what doesn’t. What comes back for warranty too much, what doesn’t. We know what to advise you on if you want a commuter, or a cruiser, or a do everything bike and you have a budget.
And, if we are recommend a particular brand over another and recommending saving up for higher priced e-bike, because we thinks it’s better, it’s not on a whim, it’s because we know you will be happier for it in the long run, because you won’t be bringing it back in for repairs and because we know it will live up to your needs and expectations. In fact, for some of those brands, particularly a BOSCH powered e-bike - we’ll even take it back within a few days of purchase if the bike didn’t do what we said it would. That said, we're not trying to up-sell you and if it's a matter of cash or budget then we work around that. But we're some times a little too honest too...
A lot of how we work depends on the feedback we hear from the customer, at what stage of the buying process you are in.
In addition to our demo policy we also now rent e-bikes. So, if you need to feel what owning an e-bike might feel like long term, you can rent one of our e-bikes. Of course, not all of our bikes are available for rent either, but many of our demo bikes can be rented.
Given our excellent inventory and liberal demo policy, one thing we are acutely paranoid about, however, is the practice of being show-roomed and wasting time on a visitor to our store who has no intention of buying anything at all. A percentage of the customer base, a small percentage, but still a nagging and real one, feels no remorse at all about taking up the time of staff in a store, perhaps hours of time, taking away time even from customers who are trying to buy things that day, putting miles on bikes, asking questions, returning multiple times, asking more questions, saying flat out “I’m’ going to buy a bike from you”, all the while only leading the store on and having no intention whatsoever about buying anything at the store. Either because they are eyeballing some used bike on Ebay, or Craigslist, or their company offers them a deal, or some small shop has said they can order something for them at a discount once they try out other shops’ bikes or they “just don’t do” Sales Tax and will not ever buy locally, even to the most respected local IBD that has the bike new on the floor at a discount including full warranty and free tune-ups. This all happens and through experience, we can often tell in advance who is serious about buying, has the spousal approval and the needed decisiveness to pull the trigger on something. Other times we can’t tell. Most times there’s no way to tell who’s actively show-rooming us until the hours have been wasted. Even the biggest of retail chain stores can’t afford to be show-roomed and we are far from big.
In spite of the fact that e-bikes have been around for over 100 years, E-bikes are a “new thing” for Americans. Not so much for other parts of the world, but we are slow to adopt e-bikes still and so many bike shops don’t know a thing about them. As such, and with the help of the internet, we find that there are way too many folks out there in a constant "research mode” and to be honest it makes for a tricky and often paranoid relationship between the consumer and the store. You want to test, review and blog about what you’ve checked out online, some times allowing for months of this research activity. We want to sell you what you’ve checked out online in the shortest amount of time possible. If you’re in “research mode” you’re not really that committed to the symbiotic relationship between us, the seller, you the buyer, yet. That’s our challenge.
There’s so many resources out there to assist you when you are in “research mode” that are free to use and don’t take up some one else’s time except your own. This web site is full of reviews, there’s a community, there’s videos everywhere. All great.
In my view, the best research you can do about e-bikes is to get out and own one. Take the plunge. Buy the bike. Take the risk that you may actually not buy the right bike the first time. It happens. It’s ok. If you get it right the first time then great and we dealers can help! We are asked often “what if this thing doesn’t work out for me, what do I do?” Can I return it? Although we don’t typically do returns, unless we made some specific guarantee - which we often do - we do sell bikes on consignment and fortunately the used market for e-bikes is excellent in our neighborhood. So, if you are afraid that if you buy an ebike today and it doesn’t work out for you that you’ll be stuck with it, that won’t happen. If you buy a $3000 e-bike today, treat it well, you could easily expect to sell it in just a few months for $2500, making that a $500 few month rental, which is a great deal and makes sense.
So yes. We certainly do allow demos. Come check us out and let’s ride.
And- RG- I would guess there was some mis-communication going on the day of your visit, because as you can see from others who've been to our store, demo rides are absolutely a part of our store experience. If you're still in the market for a bike, I'd love to help you.
Joe Witherspoon
Motostrano
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