Build Them, Sell Them, Stimulate The Market

graucho

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Hello all, in the last month I built 2 extra bikes and sold them. Im tring to stimulate the motorbike interest in my area. Besides myself, I have only seen 1 other person riding a MB im my area. I guess I want opinions. Is this a good thing? or is it bad to draw more attention by the city officials by flooding the market place. I have my thoughts. But as my wife says, "your NOT always right" Thanks for any opinions. graucho
 
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I don't see how increasing the number of sane, responsible MBs out there can hurt.

A sudden increase among the crazy might bring the kind of reaction the skater kids' wildness in our downtown got. Banishment to a crappy skateboard park at the very edge of town.
 
Where I'm from I've never seen a petrol motorized bike seen a few old people on electric bikes but thats it. I'm the only person in my area with one and im pretty sure at least for 40 miles. I've had so many people interested in them, i get a lot of reactions from people but mainly they are in awe and wish they had one. However I'm not sure if they would like it enough to buy one. I'm going to sell my bike as soon as I've got it marked (college project) so I can move on to the next project. It would be so good if over here in England it caught on, then I could have somebody to ride with!

But how much would people be willing to pay for them? The kits cost me about £120 ($200) and the bike £90($160) I would at least want to sell it for £290 ($580) giving me a profit of £80 ($160).

How much do you think people would pay for them?
 
Well...

If you work out an installer arrangement with the company that you bought it from, you should get a discount on the kit. Probably, a sliding scale, depending on the number of kits you install.

You might consider having the customer buy their own bike, (as long as it has minimum equipment (front&rear brakes, etc.) That way, you wouldn't have to have bikes in inventory or expend your funds on buying a bike AND a motor before you can install.

Then, estimate your time, misc. expenses, etc., and determine a MINIMUM sell cost which would be adequate. Anything over that is "value added" pricing.
 
Where I'm from I've never seen a petrol motorized bike seen a few old people on electric bikes but thats it. I'm the only person in my area with one and im pretty sure at least for 40 miles. I've had so many people interested in them, i get a lot of reactions from people but mainly they are in awe and wish they had one. However I'm not sure if they would like it enough to buy one. I'm going to sell my bike as soon as I've got it marked (college project) so I can move on to the next project. It would be so good if over here in England it caught on, then I could have somebody to ride with!

But how much would people be willing to pay for them? The kits cost me about £120 ($200) and the bike £90($160) I would at least want to sell it for £290 ($580) giving me a profit of £80 ($160).
How much do you think people would pay for them?

The 2 bikes that I sold, I got 575.00 apiece. If you figure my time (16hrs total) I didn't make much. Im just trying to stimulate interest, acceptance, and getting a new means of transportation out there.

I think if your interested at making money at it, you would have to just build a "bare bones" stock setup. Then do a couple a day. Then be affiliated with a local bike shop to help promotions and sales.

Im only doing it to spark peoples interest, educate, and jump into the "FUN" graucho
 
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I sell mine for $575.00 and take about 10 hours to do a very thorough build on a new bike. I'm raising my price to $600.00. I usually sell 1-2 per month on average. These are novelties that require a fair amount of discretionary income that most folks don't have.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I enjoy building them just as much as i do riding them, if not more! I'm only 16 so any money is good, would want to get at least £70 ($140) profit though
 
Whatever you do, put at least 50 miles on each bike you build. You don't want customers dealing with stretched chains, carb needle valve adjustments, idle adjustments (as engines breaks in and loosens up, idle will increase naturally), harder starts then new, and loose bolts etc....
 
HI all,

I have often thought the same thing....I run a lawn care business and we are getting ready to advertise so I decided to put an ad for the motorized bikes on the back of my regular lawn care flyer ( I call the bikes SuperCycles)....The local newspaper will deliver 15000 copies of the ad locally for me plus I will be handing out flyers also...Probably a total of about 25000 flyers total....It would be interesting to see what the response rate is....I'll keep you posted (they won't go out for about a week).I will either sell the bikes as a DIY kit (I'll buy the bikes and the engine kits and provide a better set of instruction in addition to the factory instructions (factory instructions may be edited a bit tho) or I can have a friend of mine who is very mechanically inclined to build some (he built 3 so far for me and does a really good job on them!
Andrew
 
well, ive thunk it over (lol thunk it) and i called the family attourney, and he said as long as i gat a contract written up, and i state i am not responsible, it would be totallylegal. but my parents would have to be co-signers, and so would the lawyer. just for thought. dont do it, without proper paperwork, or ull get sued.
 
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