Blood Bath for Motorcycle Gear This Christmas?

It's been a while since I posted. The shop picked up business as it finally got a little cooler outside. Been doing real good the last month. So, what is in store for consumers looking for motorcycle gear during the upcoming holiday season? I've been talking and gathering information from suppliers for the last couple of months and here's what it looks like:

Business is DOWN, way down from just a couple years ago and the suppliers of motorcycle gear, both leather and textile gear, are sitting on HUGE inventories. At least two prominent online leather & motorcycle merchants have gone out of business this summer and from what I hear, more are about to go out of business. The bad thing about websites going out of business is they leave a seed of doubt in Internet Shoppers minds. One website selling leather left a lot of people holding the bag and is featured at my three cents, http://www.my3cents.com/productReview.cgi?company=MotoBahn+USA . I expect more carnage either during the holiday season, or at the crucial January return season.

It's not just the online wholesalers that are sitting on large amounts of inventory either, but local distributors that supply local motorcycle shops also are in this bind. Motocross Bike gear is especially long on inventory and prices have already dropped to compete with other suppliers. Sport Bikes and Cruiser pricing at the wholesale level still remains strong despite the inventory crunch.

So what can consumers expect? There is good and bad in this news. Consumers should see a great degree of competition on the web this year and pricing may never be better. In store sales should also be quite competitive with wholesalers discounting items get rid of 2007 inventory.

Bad News? Unfortunately the shoe can drop the other direction also. If you purchase items during the holiday season and want to return them for either refund or exchange...the website you were dealing with may no longer be there, leaving you stuck! During the past 3 years, competition on the web has been ruthless and most folks starting web stores on the web are going out of business in droves, if they had any business to begin with. The world wide web brings common products down to a unprofitable price in a matter of months or even days. I found a website called "dropshippingsucks.com" and here is a little excerpt from his sales spiel but in effect, it is correct:

So, a product that started with a market value of $25 on ebay is now quickly down to $15 bringing your profit down from $13.20 each to $3.80 each. But it doesn't stop there... The cycle continues until the product is no longer profitable to sell and it seems that everyone is selling the product for less than cost and trying to make a little profit back with outrageous shipping & handling charges.

Sound like a familiar theme for ebay? What happens to people who are selling items but not making any money off of the products, even money to cover their costs? They go out of business and often times, their customers get the shaft with undelivered product or no place to return and item.

My advice to you: Purchase from a local store, where you can try on the items and see the quality and you can be pretty sure the store will still be in business after the holidays. Oh, like my store at the corner of Woodland Ave and Carpenter Roads in Modesto, CA. If you don't have a local store that sells at realistic prices, you can try the web but use a website that has been around a long time and has real testimonials to back it up! Oh, like my website, http://www.discount-leather.net/ since 2003. We may not be the lowest price on the web, but we stand behind what we sell and customer satisfaction is what it's all about.

Have fun this holiday season