I'm after locals or visitors knowledge of bike shops in New Zealand. We are looking to approach shops with some of our clothing products and have some shops in mind but local information on good shops also helps.
For example: Bike Barn? they seem to be a multi-store company but not sure if they are the Halfords equivalent.
We're looking for quality shops with a good reputation.
Anyone help?
Cheers, Claire.
Bike Culture in Rotorua
Bicycle in Wellington [url= http://bicycle.co.nz/index.php/about-us/ ]null[/url]
Two good shops that I deal with
Where do you manufacture ? Kiwis are quite patriotic, if they can buy kiwi made at a decent price, they will. Ground Effect manufacture in Christchurch and are all over the bike shops (in Wellington anyway, when I was last there). The only foreign brand name that seemed to be everywhere was Endura. It was MEGA expensive I nearly choked when I looked at the price tags. Hate to think what Assos would cost !
As Hels said. Ground effect are v popular but are internet only. Endura have obviously put some effort in as well and certainly have a presence. In Christchurch Basic Bikes and Beckenham bikes and John Bull are good. Bike Barn is a bit halfords but you'll find most customer service in NZ far better than the UK. Scotty Browns just sells overpriced road kit to rich mamils. Currency fluctuations will give you a big headache.
Cheers people. Very helpful including the information on local buying. I'd already found a few of the shops mentioned and will check out the others.
You would be better off getting to one of the main distributors or, heaven help us, Torpedo7. Individual shops will be a ballache in my opinion.
What sort of clothing, how much stock are you prepared to hold in country, pricing will be key etc.
Bear in mind that GE are here and while not cheap are good, T7 sell lots of budgety stuff and the rest is distributed by importers. I own(ed) a clothing co. here and we shut it for various reasons one being it was economically unfeasible to continue without whoring all our production out to China. Neither of us owners was comfortable with that so we shut it. In terms of size we sold about 2000 pairs of shorts p.a. and about 1000 riding tops so really small.
You will struggle to get shops to indent order and PAY FOR stock.
HTH
If you get in touch with Paul at John Bull Cycles in Christchurch he might have some good info. He does/did a bit of clothing distribution.
Another brand you would be up against would be NZO, check them out while doing your research.