BRANDS
While deciding on how its UK operation might look, PNW was contacted by Sandy Plenty of The Trailhead bike shop in Shrewsbury - a conversation which resulted in Plenty taking on distribution of PNW products in the UK in January. Kerson said: “We’ve been realy stoked on that, it’s been working very well. “In the UK market the weather is generally similar to here in
the Pacific North West - similar types of weather and similar types of riding conditions.
digital presence. We needed to figure out how we get in front of customers, so that when they were looking for product reviews or new brands we were coming up. That’s an area we really focused on. “And then the remaining piece was that we needed to have a dealer network. “In the US, we have around 2,000 bike shops that we’re working with and these shops are coming to us looking for parts, because typically customers are asking for stuff, and that’s been incredible for the business.”
Why the UK?
While PNW does offer its products directly to consumers, Kerson believes its dealer network is key to the business, and the brand has plans to expand in the UK. On UK expansion, Kerson said: “It’s long overdue, to be
totally honest. “We’ve been shipping from the US into the UK for years. It costs us more to ship, there’s duties, there’s import costs, but to me that’s an investment in that market, to get people thinking about the product and talking to their buddies about it. “Quite honestly, we’ve kind of dragged our feet because any time we forecast product just for the UK, it’s been eaten up domestically because we’ve been growing very quickly.”
“I know the UK is very diverse, but there’s a lot of rain, a lot of mud, a lot of roots, a lot of really steep stuff. “Riders from the UK are telling us that it sounds very similar to what we’re dealing with, and we’re developing products for these conditions.” “You guys are focused on reliability as well as affordability, so that goes a long way.”
Slowdown Like most in the bike trade, PNW has been pinched by the sudden decline in demand following the coronavirus cycling boom.
“It’s been challenging for sure,” said Kerson. “The thing that helped us was that as we’re on the direct
to consumer side, we were able to see that the market slowed down. We were also getting some insight from factories that work with big OEM customers - they were starting to slow down, so that made us think something is going on here and we need to adapt, so we started reducing our orders and really tried to move inventory. “If you’re going through a distributor, the dealer first
tells the distributor that things are slowing down, the distributor tells the brand, and then the brand has to tell the factories, so there’s additional pieces that take longer. “By having a more simplified business model, working directly with our retailers as well as our customers, we’re able to react much faster.”
The US picture
The UK trade has been hit hard by the recent slowdown in demand, with the closure of a number of distributors and brands, but how is the picture in the US? “We haven’t seen anyone going bankrupt yet,” said
Kerson, “but we have seen a lot of inventory. “I don’t think that the market has crashed, I think that there’s just too much inventory so people are trying to catch up, move products, and get those dollars back so they can buy product again from brands. We’ve seen the dealer side has slowed, but it’s not dramatic. “We’ve also been hearing that the high-end bike side of things like complete bikes really hasn’t been impacted that much. I think it’s mainly the mid and low-end bikes that are the areas where there’s tons of overstock and not as many people buying.”
48 | August 2023
www.bikebiz.com
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