“Hello, Niner? Yeah, so . . . where’s my new bike?”
I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike. . . . Those prophetic lyrics of the famous Queen song ring truer now than ever before. It’s summertime for Bike’s sake! But, how can you ride a bike that you don’t have? Well we’re gonna take a stab at answering that question for you. It’s one that we’re hearing every day. Trust us, we hear you! We want to get your bike to you just as badly as you want to ride your bike.
So: why the continuing delay in bikes and parts? Well, there are actually several reasons and we can shed light on a few of them here, in an effort at some much-needed transparency. Safe to say, we have been on an uphill grind!
The most consistent reason is the ongoing pandemic. Yes, that pandemic. We are still experiencing significant component shortages because of global lockdowns past and present. Ongoing and intermittent factory shutdowns, volatile availability of raw materials, and shipping delays are ALL crushing us. Container ships are still waiting in port for up to 2 weeks to unload goods. And did you know, the price of space on a shipping container is now 5x what it was 18 months ago? These hurdles are the tallest when it comes to delivering bikes right now.
On top of all this, we’ve been working in the background to streamline our business. In no particular order: we moved our warehouse from Fort Collins, CO to a larger warehouse in California; we moved our administrative office to a new location in Fort Collins; we adopted a new inventory and financial management system; and we are retooling the back end of our website, which includes our sales, inventory, and webstore management. It’s been an uphill grind, we can tell you.
Just ONE of these actions could cause sizable disruption to normal business. We’re working our way through ALL of it. And that is why many of you have experienced unpleasant, unwanted, and unfortunate delays. And we are sorry! It sucks and we apologize.
There is good news. We are totally settled in our new digs here in Fort Collins, Colorado. The warehouse has begun shipping web orders and bikes in the last couple of weeks, and their volume will only increase. And lastly, the website is getting quite close to being fully functional.
We do not take it lightly that you commit your trust and spend your money with us. It is our responsibility to honor our end of the transaction with goods and services in a timely fashion. While we have struggled lately to uphold our end of the bargain, we are working furiously to get back up and running to full capacity ASAP.
We love all you Ninerds out there. We love seeing your ride photos and the smiles of your friends and families as you are out there pedaling! We want to make sure and continue providing you with the best 29’ers possible so that all you have to do is Pedal Damn it!
-Niner Team
