I suspect there were a lot of reasons but I can reverse engineer some of them based on the complaints I have heard on here:
- Communication Issues:
- Juiced product line seems to be following the new "Agile" methodology commonly seen in software startups (https://www.versionone.com/agile-101/agile-development-success/) which results in products that go through frequent, mostly incremental improvements
- Over the long term this will result in better products but it has an impact, notably -
- Training and updating a distributed sales teams will be hard and expensive
- A dealer, who deals with multiple products, would understandably have a hard time not miscommunicating features and capabilities of a product that is incrementally changing multiple times a year.
- Customers who visit a dealer Might be misinformed about features because of delays in training of sales staff -- or may be told X because that is what the dealer has in stock - even if X is no longer true if you ordered direct.
- Dealer vs Direct conflicts
- Both Juiced and Dealers have to invest a lot to make it work.
- The advantage for Juiced of having a dealer network is clear:
- Local support
- Buying confidence
- More predictable supply/demand
- But what's the advantage for the LBS unless there is a big markup at the purchase point?
- Dealer stock gets stale when Juice is making incremental bike improvements at the factory and at the warehouse
- Customers who buy direct come into shop and expect support
- Lets not forget that major productions problems (aka Spokes) make the lack of huge markup a bigger risk for the LBS too
When a LBS sells a bike with a $400-700 markup and you need to respoke the wheel, well you made less money than you wanted.
When your markup is $50-75, well that probably barely pays for the Parts+Labor, much less the customer concern that you sold them a bike that needed a respoke.
And is a good LBS going to tell the customer "I opened a ticket with Juiced and hope to have replacement spokes in 3-4 weeks"? No, they will respoke the wheel and then try to get reimbursed.
So as a consumer do you:
- Want a bike for a cheap as you can get it
- Want a bike that has fixed (or tries to fix) any production problems discovered as recently as 5-10 weeks ago?
Or would you rather get a bike that is just updated once a year?
- Do you want to pay an extra 500-1000 at purchase time to get faster in-warrantee service at your LBS (and drive off within 48hrs with your bike)?
I picked getting more Bang for my buck with the cost of some serious WAIT time between paying and getting the bike - and knowing that if I have a problem it will take longer to get fixed. Time will tell if I have analyzed the risk/rewards correctly
-Neil