Bicyclemall.com - bicycle info on mountain bikes bmx bikes dirt bikes freestyle tandem bicycles electric bicycles and bicycle accessories

Welcome Manufacturers and Suppliers!

Here is your chance to sell bike products to a national audience of consumers AND bicycle dealers... with minimal cost and instant sales.

This unique interactive website has been set up to give you the opportunity to offer your products to hundreds of thousands of bicycle consumer enthusiasts and thousands of Independent Bike Dealers around the country. . . in a simple and direct format which YOU control!

BicycleMall.com also allows you to be at the forefront of cutting edge Internet commerce which is changing the way the world buys products today. BicycleMall.com offers several benefits to you in selling your products on the site:

1.) Your products are exposed to your customers at all levels: The Wholesaler, the IBD, and the Consumer.

2.) Your product and the price YOU set is advertised to a large audience of bicyclists who are sophisticated enough to be using the Internet.

3.) Wholesalers and dealers are very likely to buy additional product in order to be prepared for your national promotion being conducted by BicycleMall.com; some of these will be new customers for you.

4.) New products advertised on BicycleMall.com will give consumers new reasons to visit their local bike shops which may lead to other purchases.

Here's how it works:

STEP 1. The Manufacturer or Supplier places a bicycle or other bike product with BicycleMall.com. All we need is a electronic picture (if you don't already have electronic pictures, we can help you), a description, and the regular and/or deal prices at each level of distribution: distributor, dealer, and retail.

STEP 2. BicycleMall.com sends an email to every distributor in the country alerting them that there are special deals and/or featured products available on the site. When they sign on to BicycleMall.com they are allowed to enter a password protected area. In this room, they would review the products and click "yes" or "no" for each one. If "yes", they are offered an option to email you for more information or to place an order. If they are not currently a customer of yours, they can email or call and discuss setting up an account. The Distributor participation in BicycleMall.com is free!

STEP 3. Bicyclemall.com sends an email to over 1,500 Independent Bicycle Dealers in the U.S. announcing the availability of the deals/featured items. Dealers would follow the same procedure as the distributors. However, when they click "yes", dealers would get one of two responses. If the product is coming from a manufacturer/supplier who sells direct to dealers, they would get an immediate opportunity to email you for more information or to place an order. If the product is being offered through a distributor, dealers would be offered a list of participating distributors. They only need select one and again are given the opportunity to place an order.

STEP 4. BicycleMall.com will advertise the site on major websites. Emails will be sent to qualified consumers alerting them that they can get excellent products and information by visiting BicycleMall.com. Web advertising is THE way to reach these eager-to-buy consumers, rather than relying solely on search engines. BicycleMall.com will also advertise the site in consumer magazines.

STEP 5. When the consumer enters BicycleMall.com and sees a product that they would like to purchase they are prompted to enter their home zip code. BicycleMall.com then directs the consumer to the closest retailer that had responded "Yes" to your products. That is a DIRECT referral to an Independent Bicycle Dealer that stocks and sells your products.

STEP 6. You are so overwhelmed with the response that you sign up to advertise for a year.

As a veteran distributor/supplier, I have been frustrated by the difficulty in creating a special price for our products that actually results in special pricing and/or placement in the bicycle store. With so many specials being offered each month in various fliers, the whole concept of a special has become. . . well . . . less special. Then, on top of this, the cost of advertising in consumer publications makes telling consumers about a discount a very costly undertaking. The BicycleMall.com "deals" section changes all that. The manufacturer sets the distributor, dealer, and retail prices on the special. Distributors and dealers decide if they want to offer the "deal" to their customers for the manufacturers "nationally advertised special price" while that special price is in force. Remember, without the help of BicycleMall.com's Internet and direct email contact, getting national exposure for great deals is tremendously expensive.

If you prefer, we can place your product on BicycleMall.com at full MSRP. The features and benefits of your product or the "impulse to buy" your item may well drive the sale without the need for discounting. Either way YOU make the decision.

Last, but certainly not least, at the end of each month BicycleMall.com can supply you with statistics that will confirm the exposure achieved by your products as well as the quantity of successful click-thru's to your web site and the number of referrals to retailers. Hard facts that confirm the effectiveness of your advertising. No other medium of marketing can do that!

Please contact bicyclemall.com today to find out more about how we can help you sell more bicycles and bicycle products . . . and expand your marketing reach further - and more profitably - into the world of Internet commerce.

Responding immediately, will allow you to "lock in" a prominent position as one of the first products pictured on the site, a hot location that BicycleMall.com can reserve for you permanently. Don't miss this opportunity to gain a significant edge in selling your products on BicycleMall.com.

Some suppliers we have discussed BicycleMall.com with have evaluated this service like they would an advertisement. Others have looked at it like a continuous trade show. Yet others have caught the vision of BicycleMall.com being a conduit for moving product through the distribution chain.

Below we compare and contrast this concept with other types of marketing approaches.

INTERNET ADVERTISING
If those who are marketing on the web have learned anything in the last four or five years, its the simple fact that having a web page, even a great web page, is no guarantee of anybody actually seeing it. As a result, various methods have been created for getting traffic to your online "store." The most visible has been "banner" advertising. Most banner ads are sold on the basis of impressions. You buy bundles of impressions for X number of dollars per 1000. For targeting banner ads you might pay as much as $50 per 1000. The least I've seen is $10.

Banner ads work. However, for most visitors to a web site, the banner ad is something to be ignored. It isn't the reason the visitor came, and most folks try to ignore ads. The banner ad has limited space for information. It is primarily designed to get the visitor to "click" through to your web page. The only information you receive from this activity is the "rate" at which people are clicking through. This can be an advantage over most magazine ads where, unless you have a coupon, you rarely know how well the ad is doing. We would be happy to sell you banner ad space on any of our sites for $30 per 1000.

With BicycleMall.com Product Ads, however, there are some major advantages compared to banner ads. First, you are not paying by the 1000 impressions. Therefore, if you were to take our lowest cost ad of $300, it will cost you $300 whether it is seen by 30,000 visitors (we'll guarantee it), or 300,000 (our projected goal). If 30,000 see it, you will be paying $10 per 1000. But if 300,000 see it, your cost drops to just $1.00 per 1000.

But that's not all. Unlike a banner ad, the visitor that comes to BicycleMall.com is coming to SEE ADS, not ignore them. Therefore an impression really is an impression. This should result in far higher rates of "click thru's" to your web page. If they don't buy your special or featured product, they very well may buy something else you offer.

There's more... We'll give you far more data about your ad. We'll report back just how many dealers signed up for your product. We'll tell you how many consumers visited the site, how many clicked through to the zip code page, and how many clicked through to the zip code page on your product. All of those advantages over banner ads (and old fashioned print advertising), and we haven't even discussed the idea of synergy created up and down the distribution chain.

PRINT ADVERTISING
How much space can you buy in a consumer magazine for $300? How about $1000? How much time and energy, not to mention expense do you have to put into the creative part of that ad? How many times does the ad have to run to be "seen"? Most advertising experts say three to four times. What kind of feedback do you get? How much control do you have over positioning? How many consumers or dealers ACTUALLY see the ad? With a BicycleMall.com Product Ad, the creative cost is almost zero. Generally, you will have a picture we can use. You provide a paragraph of descriptive words that can fit in the space. Most of your planning will be in what kind of price structure you want to use. The click through can go to an existing web page or portion of your web page. If you don't have one, you can supply us with a page or two of your catalog and we'll scan it in. Of course, as stated above, you'll get tons of feedback. You'll have the kind of information you need to do a better ad next month.

TRADE SHOWS
Have you ever tried to estimate how many dealers visited your booth compared to the cost of the show. The whole cost. A single booth with one person operating it will cost at least $5000. If he sees an average of 10 dealers per hour (not likely on the last day), that works out to 360 dealers in four days. Or $13.88 per visitor. Now lets compare that to a $300 Product Ad on BicycleMall.com. We think you will have a minimum of 500 dealers respond to your products at BicycleMall.com. They may only look at your product or special, make a decision and move on. Or they may click through to your website. They may actually spend more time on your product line than if they stopped by your booth at the show. That works out to just $.60 per visitor. Plus, you're also getting 50-100,000 consumer visitors for the same $300. Something a trade show cannot do.

THE VISION
BicycleMall.com should work like this. Suppliers who sell through distributors should be encouraging their distributors to visit BicycleMall.com and sign up for their products. Distributor salesmen, along with manufacturers who sell direct to dealers, should be out pushing their dealers hard to go to the site and sign up. Dealers and distributors should be hammering their suppliers to put products on the mall. Dealers should be asking their customers for emails so they can send out a monthly newsletter (that we can supply them) announcing the current month's hottest featured products and deals. With enough dealer and supplier involvement, we will boost the numbers of consumers dramatically. It is not unreasonable to think we will see 500,000 or more consumers every month. But there has to be enough good stuff going on to keep them coming back.

Convinced?
Would you like to reserve space for your product(s)?
Have additional questions?

Contact us.

Roger Mallett
Marketing Director
roger_mallett@bicyclemall.com
1-888-451-BIKE (2453)