Motostrano - a store in the Bay Area closing !!

[Ravi Kempaiah]

Motostrano Store Temporarily Closed for Maintenance

I was a little surprised to see this. I thought they were doing well. Does anyone know what happened?
Why sudden departure??

 

[FlatSix911]

Say it ain't so... one of my favorite local shops is closing when the eBike revolution is just starting to take off.

View attachment 41374

 

[Chris Nolte]

This is sad to hear. Joe is a good guy.

 

[Ebiker01]

Can’t they keep it as an online store only ?

 

[bob armani]

I always liked this location as a discounted go-to site for comparison shopping. Perhaps their other store will stay open...

 

[FlatSix911]

Where is their other location?

 

[bob armani]

Where is their other location?

My bad. I thought it was in Oakland, however, their Redwood City store is serving the "Oakland area". Not actually sure if the other location survived. I remember their website saying there were 2 locations some time back.

 

[J.R.]

It may not have been closed for lack of success. Our local independent Trek dealer closed due to one of the owners had a stroke and his wife couldn't handle running the business on her own. They were great people to do business with. You never know.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

I heard the reason was related to owner's personal life as @J.R. alluded and not the market situation.

 

[FlatSix911]

I spoke with the owner on Saturday afternoon as they cleared out the store.
He is leaving the retail business after 17 years and doing something different.

 

[e-boy]

I wonder if Juiced put the squeeze on them ?

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

A friend of mine who supplied bikes to Motostrano is in deep trouble.
Motostrano owes him $23,000 and they are now seeking the collection agency's help to get their money back. wow!

E-bike business is a difficult one and it is not what it looks like from the outside.

 

[FlatSix911]

Sorry to hear this news... let's hope your friend can find a way to resolve his issues with Motostrano.

Does he have a local or online store that we could patronize to help the situation?

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

Does he have a local or online store that we could patronize to help the situation?

Yes, he has a local warehouse in Portland and the website is: https://www.nwebikes.com/

He is the US/Canada distributor of Gepida E-bikes

 

[smorgasbord]

Yes, he has a local warehouse in Portland and the website is: https://www.nwebikes.com/
He is the US/Canada distributor of Gepida E-bikes

Sad to see that Motostrano is still listed as a dealer: https://www.nwebikes.com/find-a-dealer

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

Sad to see that Motostrano is still listed as a dealer: https://www.nwebikes.com/find-a-dealer

Thanks for finding that. I passed this information to him and hopefully it will be corrected soon.

 

[LimboJim]

Quite a while before he announced its closing, Joe offered me the biz for $300k. Looks like I dodged some bullets...

 

[FlatSix911]

Yes, he has a local warehouse in Portland and the website is: https://www.nwebikes.com/

He is the US/Canada distributor of Gepida E-bikes

Thanks for sharing the link. I had not seen a tandem EBike before... very interesting!

 

[TomD]

I don't know how big of a business Motostrano ran but how do you get that deep in the red barring a coke or gambling problem?

 

[Deleted member 4210]

Expensive ebikes, floor plan terms by OEMs, too many product lines, payrolls, high rents, and they had two store locations at one point. They claimed they carried 300 ebikes, e-scooters in stock ! Thus, Not surprising at all. Especially if their high priced ebikes were not selling well and they had to discount heavily to unload them at low margin, and could not make it up with low priced ebikes on volume against on line , low priced competitors. This happens more than people realize in the bike industry, and in particular can get in big trouble with poor decisions on high cost ebikes.