Sad to see
I heard rumors a year or so ago.
That is a bummer. Nice way to get somewhat affordable used stuff and have confidence in it. And really easy to sell your stuff. I always thought the ease of sale was worth the reduction in $$$ you got.
Might have to buy some stuff I don’t need.
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they were selling used bikes at new bike prices, I assumed this would’ve happened sooner…
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Not shocking at all to this stressed/distressed company investor.
Private equity/VC pours capital into a company when the cost of capital was essentially 0%. Tries to dominate business by losing money (who cares when money has no cost) as focusing exclusively on growing revenues due to companies being valued on revenues and not on free cash flow.
Add a COVID demand bubble that anyone with some business sense could see would not last forever and then mix in higher interest rates and pretty soon you have an unsustainable business model.
Waren Buffett put it best: “when the tide goes out, you get to see who was wearing a bathing suit”. Clearly there was some skinny dipping going on in the bike business.
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My thoughts exactly. Maybe I can get an XL bike at a steep discount now though.
Picked up a Vision Metron 5D Integrated Carbon Handlebar Ă— 1
120x440mm, -6° for $158 with free shipping. The MSRP was over $600
Yeah I am surprised as well that they lasted as long as they did. I get that TPC will verify the bikes they sell, but you could get a much better deal going through a Facebook group. As long as you pay with paypal, they’ll generally side with the buyer if there is an issue.
Some people want a better deal when they buy a car. They want to negotiate, do the research, etc.
And some people want to go to CarMax. Do you pay more than what you “should?” Maybe. But sometimes there’s value in not having to deal with searching through a bunch of other listings, and chancing it in the event that PayPal decides not to side with you.
The only time I didn’t like a TPC decision is when they decided not to give me credit for a bike I wanted to trade in. Otherwise, I had a bunch of very fair transactions with them. My one “bike that got away” (AKA the bike I regret selling) came from them.
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I remember Dan raved about this place. I kept looking there for a sweet deal in case I ever wanted to waste money and they had some good ones. But most of the time I felt a lot of bikes were overpriced.
WAIT, they were around for 18 years? Had no idea. Thought they were barely a couple years old.
Dan’s article wasn’t that long ago. Their prices for used bikes always seemed a bit high to me.
I used to hit the site every couple weeks, looking for rim brake clinchers for my tri bike. Never really found anything in my range. Eventually found stuff on CL instead. But perusing the site just now, I see a 2020 Argon 118 in XS for under $2000. It’s hard to find sizes that fit me so very tempting. Don’t really know that much about Argon other than I see them often in the events in which I participate.
Tempting, tempting.
@vagasjen Argons are great bikes, and after 12 years of use i just moved on from me E114. Service even after all this time was very good when a couple of years ago they helped me track down a mech hangar. But. The E118 is the UCI legal TT bike, the E117 and E119 are the one intended for tri. It’s not jsut the storage, its the geometry that is more extreme. Now that may well still fit you, but it will be longer and lower than the equivalent tri models.
Last year bought a set of brand new SRAM RED rim brakes for my California bike $72 for the pair shipped to me from TPC. I would say unheard of deal but I heard and bought. Even came with carbon pads.
My California bike is at my daughter’s home in El Cerrito for when I visit.
Most of us would never have heard of them before they got VC money and went on a huge marketing blitz, which probably coincided with the article by Dan linked on the thread. Guessing in a few years we’ll have a similar thread about The Feed.
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My guess is no one is wearing a bathing suit at the Feed either.
Bike-room.com is still around if you need a similar site. Only thing is you pay import tax since they are Europe based
I sold a bike to them through a bike shop. Local dealer wanted to only give me 2000 for a trade, went to another dealer out of town who said they take trades but through TPC. They requested I take photos and submit to TPC, TPC came back with an offer of 3,500 all within an hour. Paid full price for the bike, the bike shop packed up my bike and shipped to TPC, they verified condition and bike shop credited my account 3,500. Very easy process and I got 1,500 more than I was offered locally.
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I can make a long list of businesses I was assured were “killing it” that are now dead and buried. And more than a few of the ones still around are zombies - they are dead but they just don’t know it yet.
Places like TPC have done immeasurable damage to so many of the folks out there still trying to scratch up a living in what should be a truly awesome business to be in. There are lots of great folks in the bike and run biz. There are also lots of charlatans.
I posted this in the other thread but it will get more eyes here:
The race to the bottom claims another.
TPC did a LOT right. But that doesn’t really matter.
I predict the industry will continue to suggest seminars on merchandising, diversity, and differentiation will somehow heal a fundamentally broken model that has retailers and distributors competing with each other.
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Ya, once I ended up on their site and got hammered with ads like crazy after that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 100k a month or more in advertising. Anyone know what their spend was?