Established specialist sports stores such as Ochsner Sport and SportXX, as well as young store operators such as M-Way and Galaxus, are pushing into the bike market and making targeted use of their purchasing power. Various prominent bicycle brands have changed their sales policy in recent years and started working with such store formats. It stands to reason that this development will continue next season, as the retail multinational Migros is expanding its activities in the bike trade once again with the new Sport XX Bike World store format, writes Stefan Schaer from Bulls Swiss AG, based in Buochs.

Before joining Bulls Swiss AG, Schaer was actively involved in the sale of Bergamont bikes in Switzerland for many years. Bulls Swiss AG has been operating in Switzerland since spring 2016 and offers the Bulls and Pegasus brands to Swiss specialist retailers.

Brand of the specialist trade

According to Schaer, many rumors are currently doing the rounds about who will be working with the new player next year. Two brands are now taking themselves out of these guessing games with a clear commitment and putting their cards on the table: "With our Bulls and Pegasus sales brands, we are clearly staying away from such store formats," says Stefan Schaer from the sales company Bulls Suisse AG.

He justifies this decision with the strategic orientation of the brands, but also with their background: "Bulls and Pegasus were founded as brands of the German two-wheeler purchasing cooperative ZEG. The cooperative belongs to the affiliated dealers, and Bulls and Pegasus therefore also belong to the specialist dealers. The two brands were launched so that traditional specialist retailers can offer their customers attractive bikes with a strong price-performance ratio and remain competitive in the face of competition from large-scale stores."

In Germany, ZEG operates as a strong competitor with almost 1000 independent bicycle dealers who can benefit from the purchasing group with favorable sales and purchasing conditions. ZEG operates a modern high-bay bicycle warehouse in Cologne, where around 41,000 high-quality bicycles such as e-bikes, mountain bikes and racing bikes are stored. ZEG's range includes bikes from Hercules, Kettler, Kalkhoff, Cannondale, Scott, Koga, Pegasus, Bulls, Green Mover, Zemo and Pinarello.

Long-term strategy

For Schaer, the fact that ZEG is committed to specialist retailers is the basis for a long-term strategy that has been cultivated in Germany for years and which he now consistently supports after the sales launch in Switzerland: "Our partner retailers can rely on the fact that we will not be supplying mail order companies, hypermarkets and discounters in the long term either. The fact that Bulls and Pegasus belong to specialist retailers will continue to be the decisive argument for us to fully support and remain loyal to specialist retailers in the future."