Now, as earlier mentioned, last year I was involved in starting a proper tri club aimed at MOP and BOP’s. And myself that can be observed way behind the pack. This club sort of was just the thing, and we have now 55 members, which makes us more or less the biggest club in Norway. And with a web site that is the only active triathlon web site.
Ok, this makes us just a little bit interesting for those who imports bikes and stuff. And now there are two shops who has been in contact. One imports Cervélo, Ridley, FSA and Rotorcranks and the other imports HED and power cranks. The last one would probably be able to cough up more money for advertisement, and we absolutely need the money. On the other hand the first one has the potential for being the first norwegian triathlon shop and will give our member just the thing they need.
So if you had to choose one over the other and not both I would ask a few questions.
What are the current costs and troubles with getting the triathlon specific gear that you have now over the internet?
Would it make it easier to get those things via a brick and mortar store or just more expensive? How many people on this board complain about getting higher prices with less service from the local bike shop.
Would it be possible for your membership to form kind of a co-op that would open its own store so as to cut out the cost increase from a middle man. This co-op could be funded in part from your second advertiser who is willing to spend more money. This obviously would be more work required…
The costs and problems by importing the stuff we think we need is substantial. There is freight costs of course and then there is import tax (10-15%) and value added tax (25%). We have been trough this problem when it comes to wet suits. One can allways go over the border to the more developed kingdom of Sweden and take the chance of not being stopped by customs.
The co-op is an idea, but the work involved would be to much I think. To much paper work. And I doubt that we would get a good deal from Cervelo, Felt or QR on the volumes we could order?
sarcasm? not at all!!! and the answere is yes on the customs question
Don’t talk about the swedish customs please… As a Swede it really hurts to pay so much taxes… You buy stuff really cheap from places like trisports.com, but then you can really count on to get 25% customs…
I think it’s really nice that your Tri-club have already got over 50 members!
Thanks: Yes we are very pleased with it. But in order to grow further and to keep people in triathlon I think that it is very important that some of the stuff we “need” is available in Norway. The most important is wet suits, but also tri-bikes would be nice to get in a LBS.
Dave, some from Oslofjord triatlon are coming to Gøteborg, are you?
It isn’t that bad actually. because of the Gulf Stream the water temperature is much better than you probably would expect. With a warm spring (like the one we have now) water temp in the southern part of Norway will reach 15-17 degrees centigrade in two- three weeks time (it is 13 now). I hope and with a normal summer the water temp would be between 17-21 till the end of august, start of september.
Sadly not, my goals are the ITU-World Championship (AG) and Järmannen (Swedish Champ. Ironman). So I won’t have time to compete in Göteborg!
Hope you do well there! Visit www.lewasport.se (Lena Wahlqvist). She’s sells Ironman Wetsuits and give really good support/services, maybe she could help you out.
and with a normal summer the water temp would be between 17-21 till the end of august, start of september.