Are mountain bikes to become disposables? Shall it be possible to replace pedelec parts at will? And which customer demands with regard to an electric bicycle are justified? Bicycle manufacturers and dealers are increasingly dealing with basic issues as to what expectations their products must meet. In Eurobike Show Daily magazine Dirk Zedler published three essays on this.
The past years have brought quite a flood of innovations in the field of sports bicycles and pedelecs. Regardless of the quality of these improvements, they resulted in the fact that the interests of manufacturers, retailers and users in the bicycle industry drifted apart considerably. New technologies and standards changing at a rapid pace have made the maintenance and the use of bicycles and pedelecs much more sophisticated.
The number and type of complaints that have to be clarified in court lead to the conclusion that some manufacturers don’t care a lot about the after-sales of their products. Buyers on their part have a claim that their investment pays for several years. If their pedelec loses range within a year or the suspension fork of their mountain bike can neither be repaired nor replaced after only four years, they are disappointed. The specialist retailer finds him/herself somewhere in between. They are torn between profitability pressure and the responsibility they must accept towards their customers.
Products which do not comply with the requirements of safety, reliability and a long service life are something Dirk Zedler is dealing with every day as a testing expert and publicly appointed and sworn expert. These experiences were incorporated in three specialist articles published during this year’s Eurobike Show. In these articles Zedler describes the current challenges and outlines the risks for manufacturers and dealers resulting from the innovation push of the past years. You can read these three articles by following the links below.