Saddleback on Cannondale: “We’ve been preparing for this for a long time…”
We’ve not been short of seismic news in the industry recently, but the arrival of Cannondale and FOCUS at Saddleback has been a big welcome good news story, as well as one of the most significant distribution stories for the trade in years. The arrival of the big bike brands with the Yate, Bristol-based performance bike product distributor marks a new phase for the firm, and likely a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Saddleback and its partners. Boss Andy Wigmore speaks with Jonathon Harker…
It’s been quite a time for the trade and of course for Saddleback more recently…
Saddleback was 20 years old in May last year. We’ve had a number of challenging years, which haven’t been pleasant, but at the same time, we had a great belief in what we were doing and that our strategy was the right one. We kept reviewing it and questioning it as things got more challenging: Are we doing anything fundamentally wrong? Should we be doing things differently? And we kept confirming that, no, we’ve done the right things. We’ve got the right brand partners, the right relationships, the right dealer network with many years of successful trade together… We have to believe that this will come good again, whilst maintaining this business so that it’s fully operational.
We’ve not let one person go over the last three years or downsized in any way. We’ve continued to invest in everything we used to invest in. We were confident that there would be brand movement in the industry, and opportunities would present themselves as a result of that. We talked to lots of different brands, but this was one [Cannondale] that perhaps we didn’t necessarily see coming. They approached us back in July and had admired us from afar. They liked what we did, they liked our performance side and that was really important to Cannondale, particularly as they globally are a performance technology leader.
If they were going to change their approach to market, then it needed to be with somebody who could enhance that, so it was very flattering. Obviously, it took a number of months to be able to see whether that could actually be a possibility. We’ve certainly got the experience here of being able to sell premium brands, promoting them in the right way and managing them in the right way. We have a great team of people and the space – we had a purpose built 40,000 ft2 facility and the showrooms. These are things that we take for granted, as the normal way of doing business, but they’re quite unique in our industry. Not so many invest in these. We see this as a great opportunity to not just increase the size of our business, but actually to increase our value to the trade in terms of our proposition.
We’ve had retailers come from all over the United Kingdom and Ireland to our Q1 house show, because they see Saddleback now as not just a niche supplier of Performance Accessories, but suddenly now as a volume supplier of premium performance products. That’s the game changer for us. It’s really exciting, with a tonne of work, obviously. We’ve hired additional people – six initially – including three new reps (two of which came from Cannondale and have been doing the job for a number of years). We’ve brought in Clive Gosling in Marketing who obviously has a great history with Cannondale, and additional people in customer service and in tech roles in the workshop.
We will need to add more in the warehouse and customer service as the business continues to grow, but we expect to double our business this year, which is just looking at the historic Cannondale numbers for 2024. Obviously that was in a suppressed market but by adding that level we’ll double our business. So we’re super excited and trying to keep our feet on the ground.
Is the bike trade going to get any busier? Well, we like to think so, and everybody feels like it’s about to, but the
economy is something we’re not in control of. But our proportion of the industry cake will this year and going forwards be significantly bigger, and that’s a fact. We’ve got to make sure that we do that honourably. We need to do that in a way that is respectful and take people with us.
It’s been great over the three days of the Open House seeing a lot of new retailers come that have historically been big Cannondale retailers, some who have focused more on bikes than parts and clothing, maybe. We’re increasing our dealer footprint significantly. We’ve had other retailers come who are traditional Saddleback customers that have never done Cannondale, and that could present opportunities for an increased Cannondale footprint in the UK. And then we’ve also had those that have done some business with us whilst also stocking some Cannondale product and who have said we’ll now be a much bigger part of their spend, show what else you’ve got as you’ve now got my attention. That’s been really nice. It’s exciting to see new opportunities and where they’re going to come from. We’re just going to make sure we deliver.
That’s the next big step for us, to maximise this once-in-a-generation opportunity. The last time anything of this sort of size happened probably was when Giro went from Madison to ZyroFisher. Nothing of that scale has happened ever since, and it says a lot.
What we’ve seen is that it’s been tough, for the last three years, but we’ve dealt with Castelli since 2006 we’ve dealt with ENVE since 2010 with Sidi since 2012. Lots of our brands we’ve worked with for a long, long time, and we’ve all supported each other throughout this process. All of those brands are going to grow now off the back of this increased exposure, and our value really to the trade. So, that’s exciting and I think it has justified the view that we’ve taken over the years. We’ve had our own vision on who we are and how we do things. The investments we make in facilities like this one and people, which are costly when trade is hard. But when there are opportunities for success then we feel it’s the right thing to do. We like the fact that we are different, and that we are premium. This opportunity has come our way because of these things. Will it mean that other things will potentially come away as a result of that? Yeah? I think it’s likely. I mean, I think, you know, our head is probably a bit further up over the parapet now than it used to be.
One thing that we’ve always done is to try to limit the amount of brands that we represent to about 15. If you sell the super premium brands, they require a lot of attention, a lot of touch points and a lot of investment. I’ve never personally believed that you can do that over a much wider group of brands without missing opportunities and failing in some areas.
We need to be careful now that we, because of our increased profile, don’t suddenly kind of step away from our values. Like dealing with brands that all interconnect. That’s part of our strategy… somebody who wants to ride a Cannondale Supersix is likely to do it with Castelli shorts on and Sidi shoes, and the same with Troy Lee and Pivot. These brands connect, and we need to make sure that we don’t fall foul of the opportunity we have now.
We’ve been able to take some of the ex-CSG people on, which is great. They’re enjoying working with new colleagues and in a different environment, but with a brand that they love.
And through this process, it has become apparent just how much love there was for Cannondale in the Saddleback business. When you look in the staff bike cage downstairs, what bike was there that people had paid for with their own money? Inevitably, nine times out of 10, it was Cannondale. The large proportion were already massive Cannondale fans and had ridden them for years. When the opportunity came along, it was a brand that just naturally fitted. It wasn’t a brand to try and develop a passion for, not just a revenue opportunity. As the bikes started to arrive for the show and the showroom was rebuilt to be a bike showroom… it was amazing to see how many people who don’t really need to be in that showroom found a reason to be there. I guess that’s ultimately what it’s all about, right? It’s great for us as a business that other brands, even of a similar magnitude, might not have been.
I guess everybody’s going to be watching you…
I guess so and that’s flattering, but we must remain true to who Saddleback is.
[At Open House] we’ve heard about some of the operational modifications you’ve been making to the warehouse and elsewhere…
The other warehouse used to be bulk storage and that’s now been brought into the main warehouse. We’re modifying how we store things, locate things and how we pick. There’s been a lot of changes to our processes here to make us more efficient. The warehouse next door has been modified and is now a complete bike warehouse. We’ve got scope but I think if our budgets are realised we’ll run out of space. Within a year or so, we’ll need additional warehousing for storage of bikes, which is a nice opportunity and a nice thing to be thinking about, as opposed to, you know, we’ve got all this space and all these people and the phones are not ringing.
What is your view on the market overall? At the moment I’m hearing a lot of cautious optimism.
Well, we traditionally run our House Show every year in September. A lot more people came in the September just gone than in the last two years and the general enthusiasm about the season ahead was evident. Now, almost six months on from that time, to put this event on at relatively short notice, to see people come when, frankly, they are already ‘showed out’, having just been to COREbike for a few days and probably also been to iceBike*. Now we’re asking them to come down here to Bristol to spend a day with us. We put the show on over three days to try and be flexible and each day we maxed out the capacity with the volume of people is safe to have here. It’s evident that people are prepared to go and view product and to have business discussions, because they do feel some confidence.
It might seem a bit much to say you’ve been preparing for this moment, but in a way, you sort of have as a business…
I think that is absolutely the case. We had this place built in 2016 and a similar sized unit was built next door at the same time. We wanted to have the right facility to be a leader, so we took on that unit at the same time. It was double the lease, double the rent, double the everything. But it was because we were preparing for this opportunity. You can’t control everything, but you can set your stall up to be in the right place. And when Cannondale came here, they could see the facility that we had, they knew that their brand would work here.
Ultimately that gave them the confidence, along with the people in the business, to make that decision. So, we have been preparing for it for a long time, and we probably already had more people than we needed, because we wanted to offer good service and went above and beyond, which comes at a cost but all of that has been justified.
We’re very grateful to all the people that helped us along the way, the retailers, the media… everybody’s been so supportive of what we’re trying to do. And we’re very grateful for that.
