LITTLE ROCK, AR (BRAIN)—Orbea has opened up its first concept store in Little Rock, the company’s hometown.
Unlike other concept stores, the Orbea store only sells new but dated stock, demo and cosmetically blemished bikes. No current Orbea product is sold.
“All of us have a problem of dealing with this inventory, and the current ways of dealing with it—sending it to Sierra Trading, dumping it south of the border or forcing dealers to take the product—are not good options,” said Tony Karklins, Orbea USA’s managing director.
The Orbea store will not sell over the Internet or through the mail. Everything has to be purchased at the store and leave through the front door.
Karklins said that Little Rock is isolated geographically, so it will not pull customers from Dallas, Memphis, St. Louis or other big bike markets.
“Believe me, it has been hard to negotiate this with our dealers, especially our dealer in Little Rock. To date we have not cleared out any of our old merchandise. I still have 6,000 old cranksets from 2001 around here. But I have to come up with some kind of a solution,” Karklins said.
“All the bikes sold in the store are available to our dealers at the same price the Orbea Store pays, but the reason these bikes are left over is because the color or size wasn’t selling, so it’s hard to interest dealers in them,” he added.
For more on Orbea’s first concept store, be sure to read the January issue of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News.
—Matt Wiebe
Now I know that this specifiaclly states that ORBEA won’t sell direct via mail or internet. But how long will that last in todays economy?