No, I’m not out riding yet. Had a long night last night, as I finally figured out some of this Blog/Twitter/Facebook stuff that everyone says is crucial to the future of Chain Reaction Bicycles (“personal” marketing to customers). There’s a certain irony that I, of all people, have fallen far behind others in this regard, since we were one of the earliest and most-comprehensive and frequently-updated websites in the bike world. The genesis of this blog, the “Almost-daily diary” was my attempt to let others know they weren’t the only nuts out there with an irrational passion for cycling.

So up until 2am last night, and starting again at 8:30 this morning, I’ve been plugging away at integrating things like APIs and Keys and PHP versions so that I can send stuff backward and forward via blogs, tweets and even Facebook postings. If I’ve succeeded, this very post should show up on the new @crbikes account on twitter. I’ll know as soon as I send it. Pretty exciting, although I won’t be surprised if I add an addendum to this shortly saying the attempt #1 failed. 🙂

Addendum #1 of 3287 10:08am- First post isn’t showing up in Twitter yet, but don’t know if I’m misconfigured or it’s an issue with the Twitter service, since I’m getting “overcapacity” messages every other time I try to check it out.

Addendum #2 of 3287 10:41am- Still not posting to Twitter. Tried a few more things, looked at alternatives to “Twitter Tools” but haven’t found anything else that might be better (or more understandable). Film at 11.

Addendum #3 of 3287 12:35pm- Giving up for now; time to ride. Rain or not. It will be less frustrating than dealing with Twitter for a few more hours!

I’m an active participant in the NBDA’s (National Bicycle Dealer’s Association) e-list, where we discuss all manner of things that affect the independent bicycle dealer and our industry in general. Someone had created a long & well thought out post about how far behind we are in the actual selling process of a bike compared to, say, a Dell computer. His point was that we don’t have enough gee-whiz and don’t dazzle enough with tech stuff. Which, I think, is missing the point. Below is my post in reply-

At some point we get a bit distracted by the gee-whiz and lose sight of the bicycles’ elegant simplicity and transformative power.

The miracle and wonder of the bicycle comes from its ability to transform the average person into superman or superwoman. You can look at a far-off hill that would be way beyond walking in a reasonable time, and get there in just a couple hours. It’s a liberating experience. You don’t have the windows rolled up with the stereo blasting away. You see things as you go by. You smell things. You can take the same route a hundred times and see something new each time. Life goes by at just the right speed on a bike.

All sorts of fancy ways to sell and customize the bike will likely detract from that. There will be a niche market for it, but I still believe that it’s the experience of riding a bike that will lead to more sales. Look at what Team in Training has done to make cycling popular. Look at what opening up trails does for mountain bike sales.

I think we, as an industry, suck at selling the cycling experience. We choose to focus on spec & graphics & tech and we miss the point. We attract a subset of the possible market. We’ve gotten so far away from what the bike can do for you that no manufacturer dares run an ad that says “You’ll have more fun on an XYZ bike.” They’ll list a bunch of specs that most customers don’t understand, or focus on the wrong things and miss out on the utility of the product. How are people actually USING their bikes? How has their XYZ bike changed their life?

OK, so Sharp now has TVs that have quad pixels. How much of my life do I want to invest to figure out why that matters? How many potential customers are willing to spend the $$$ for something that could change their lives but they get discouraged by all the tech stuff?