BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Mobile security, both for the bike and for the rider, is often an area of business that is underrepresented in store. Whilst there is some logic for stores to go for big-ticket items, this should never be at the detriment of P&A sales.
The answer to the question “do you sell a lock with every bike?” is only a yes around 20% of the time in most stores. Extra wants to help retailers capitalise on the true bread and butter of P&A sales by investing in various ways of driving the attachment rates in-store to increase the average spend.
“To have a 100% attachment rate for bike sale versus lock/helmet would be a situation where everyone wins, not only the dealer and the brand, but also the consumer – for protecting things of value, from their bike to the rider’s head,” said John Harris, ABUS brand manager.
“We are working on the launch of having an obvious, logical range that makes the consumer journey as easy as possible. We all know too much choice can end up confusing the customer, net result is them walking away to ‘think about it’.”
By using the well-established and proven retail practice of good, better, best, with obvious differences between product families, Extra is confident that it can identify the best range to suit each store in the UK and help drive the average spend in the lock category up.
From a brand perspective, a real frustration in recent times has been a handful of stores predominantly sticking to low-priced, high-volume locks. This, unfortunately, goes against the sales model of good, better, best, allowing the customer to make an informed choice as to what price point they feel appropriate.
ABUS is quite different from the competition, with less drive towards creating the cheapest Sold Secure rated lock in the market. For the dealer, Extra found in the long term this tends to reduce average spend in the lock category.
This seems like an approach that some people will be happy with, but at Extra, we want to support the dealers with cash in the tills and further increase brand credibility with customers who place high value in the security of their bikes.
ABUS has been working with the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) on its recently published report, which gives real insight into bike thefts. Some of the statistics confirmed initial thoughts when related to residential thefts.
Often, high-end retailers will say they don’t sell locks, as all the bikes sold are kept in secure garages. This can be quite a flawed approach, not only to business, but also has the assumption that thieves aren’t becoming more sophisticated with their approach. The NPCC report shows that 29% of reported thefts are from a residential property!
This highlights a real opportunity to again capitalise on heavy-duty chains and ground anchors. Extra has trained all area sales managers to identify gaps in the stores ranging plans and help drive their average sale price up. Extra has created bespoke UK specific point of sale to engage and inform consumers in their choices – please get in touch with your extra ASM to explore any potential opportunities.
ABUS manufacturing processes
ABUS makes 95% of its product in Germany, with the remaining 5% of products being made in the far East, enabling price points to be met that exclusive European manufacturing simply couldn’t meet.
However, ABUS is unique in that it owns its factory in Asia, allowing it to maintain ultimate control over quality and supply on all products made.
This ties in with ABUS making strides towards more sustainable practices within its business, focusing efforts on keeping production as local as feasible, sourcing raw materials from Germany as much as possible for its European production.
ABUS also has a multi-year plan to phase out single-use plastics in packaging and has pioneered its metal-forming practices that recycle and reuse water used in the manufacturing process. Some of the processes developed have since been adopted as a legal requirement in Germany.
All products are now 100% Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) compliant with zero harmful phthalates (plasticisers), PAH chemicals and heavy metals used in anti-corrosion treatments. ABUS is constantly looking at improving its manufacturing processes to be more sustainable and environmentally-friendly across its entire mobile security range, including exploring the use of more eco-friendly materials in its future helmets.
For all ABUS help, information and guidance in both helmets and locks, please get touch with your Extra ASM or visit Extrauk.co.uk.
