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New company offers order fulfillment, purchasing and e-commerce help for IBDs

Published May 5, 2015

BEE CAVE, Texas (BRAIN) — Cycle Commerce, being launched by a Texas bike retailer, will offer bike shops three services related to profitability and efficiency. All three services essentially let a shop farm out aspects of their businesses that aren’t directly related to customer service and sales.


Cycle Commerce was co-founded by Rick Applewhite, owner of Crank House Cycles in Bee Cave, Texas, outside Austin.


“We are bike shop people,” Applewhite said of the team behind Cycle Commerce. “We recognized many areas of inefficiency in our shop’s operation, due to lack of information, lack of access to products, lack of tools to minimize cost and create opportunity … so we looked at creating tools that really leverage relationships and technology in an effort to increase margins for bike shops.”


Cycle Commerce is getting ready to launch in the next few weeks.


The company’s three key services are:

  1. Order Fulfillment. Cycle Commerce will ship directly to online customers on behalf of the retailer, so a dealer doesn’t need to have a shipping department. 

    
Applewhite said a component of the shipping service is being offered in partnership with SmartEtailing, which sets up e-commerce sites for bike shops. SmartEtailing customers will be able to request fulfillment directly from their administrative screen from the top suppliers in the industry.

    
Cycle Commerce is offering to purchase the ordered product on behalf of the dealer, then ship it directly to the consumer, with the shop’s labeling.

    
The company will work with multiple vendors to source the products. 

    
“We are supplier agnostic: we will utilize the top suppliers and aggregate orders based upon lowest cost, so the retailer always gets the best price,” Applewhite said. The dealer of course must have an account with supplier in order to make the purchase.

  2. Purchasing. Cycle Commerce can take over a store’s purchasing duties, which frees up time for the shop’s staff and also allows access to better pricing through consolidated orders. 

    
“Most shops can’t afford to hire a dedicated purchasing manager,” he said. “It can be a nightmare for store managers to spend hours dealing with purchasing, trying to find the best pricing and meeting shipping thresholds. To meet the thresholds they end up buying products they don’t need or they buy at higher costs.”

    
Cycle Commerce will consolidate orders and receive the products at its facility, then consolidate shipments to the retailer. 

    
“We are getting the best pricing and passing the savings on to the dealer.”

  3. E-Commerce. The third service is to set up and manage an e-commerce business for a brick and mortar dealer. Cycle Commerce will build a professional, fully cataloged websites and handle order fulfillment. 

    
“For dealers, e-commerce has gone from non-acceptance, to more acceptance, to, ’It’s happening so let’s be strategic about it,’ to being seen as just a legitimate channel that bike shops have to make use of to succeed.” 

    
By taking over the site building and fulfillment, Cycle Commerce will allow dealers to focus on advertising, customer support and advice, and product selection.

    
“I wouldn’t recommend a shop take on the traditional shipping and receiving operations — that’s time you should be spending with your customers. (By using Cycle Commerce’s service) you can continue to market and sell and don’t worry about the operations stuff that takes you away from your mission.”


More information: cyclecommerce.com.

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