Taking full advantage of my degree earned over five years I took a job at a bike shop a few months ago. I’m planing on only working here while I work on my MBA, then I’ll upgrade to used car salesman. Trey, Chris, and I spent a large portion of our time in junior high and high school mountain biking. None of us had enough money to buy nice bikes, but we made due. We rode at Southside quite often and had a great time doing it.
The shop that I’m working in now deals mostly with high-end bikes that cost on average $1,500 to $2,000. When I first took the job I figured that maybe one customer would come through daily. I could not imagine that there were a lot of people that were willing to spend that much money on a bicycle. A few weeks after starting my job I was quite surprised to learn that we average $10,000/day in bike sales. This got me feeling good.
If the US economy is so poor, how are people are still able to spend $2,000 on a bicycle? The economy can’t be that bad right? That’s what I thought until yesterday.
Let me backtrack for a moment. Living in Denver puts me 5 hours away from one of, if not the best mountain biking locations in the world. People literally fly from all over the globe to come and ride at Moab, Utah.
So yesterday a young girl, probably around 21-23 came in the shop. She was eying a $500 used road bike that was on the rack outside. She came in and asked to see the bike. As soon as we walked outside and she pointed out the bike it was obvious that the bike was much large for her. After talking for a moment I pointed out how big the bike was in relation to her size. She immediately told me that she didn’t care. She lives in Melbourne, Australia and with the exchange rate and scarcity of bicycles, she would be able to sell the bike for at least double what she paid for it. So in a matter of a minute and a half she purchased a $500 used bicycle.
Then today I’m opening the store at 9:30. About 9:45 two gentlemen with Scottish accents come into the shop. They are on there way from Scotland to Moab and want to buy a bike. After a few minutes of looking, one of the gentlemen settles on a $1600 Trek Fuel Ex 6. While ringing the gentleman up I asked him what kind of bike he rides in Scotland. He said that he rides a similar style bike. I found it odd that this guy would come all the way to Denver to buy the same kind of bike he already has at home. When asking him why he didn’t just bring his bike with him, he told me that he can buy this bike in the US, have it shipped home, sell it, and still make more than double what he paid for the bike and the shipping.
I didn’t think the economy was doing well, but I didn’t know that it was as bad off as it is. Now we all know as soon as we get our $600 check everything will be fine again… thank god for the genius of the Administration. If you’re waiting for a conclusion to this just be patient…
April 30, 2008 at 2:55 am
I like that you including me in your mountain biking team even though I was only allowed to come for comedic purposes.
Also, I should point out that inflation here in South AFrica is going crazy and their economy is about to hit the skids, and the only foreign currency that isn’t moving to a crazy high exchange rate is the US dollar.
I’m not an economist, but it would seem that we are doing just as bad as they are if we can’t pull away from a country that has rolling blackouts and raised the gas to to the point that food prices are skyrocketing and are going to have to raise the price of gas again, this time 50cents higher.
May 4, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I think it’s extraordinary that the US has fallen to the point that the euro is stronger than the dollar. And that I have a four year degree and make the average salary in the US and can’t afford to put gas in my car.
I also work in an environment where we are convincing students that they really do need to spend $45k on an associates degree and close to $100k on a bachelors degree. The statistics of job placement are amazing, and the students are going to get jobs if they put the effort into it, but when the average starting salary for a graduate it $30k, how do a I justify them taking out $80k in loans?
Also, why do foreign students come here and pay cash for a US education when our economy is plummeting? They are also buying our everyday goods (Tupperware is apparently not available in MANY countries) and making a LOT of money off of them.
Where have we gone wrong?
May 5, 2008 at 3:21 am
I know this is the standard hippie thing to say when asked, ‘where have we gone wrong?’ but here goes.
The corporations sold us out.
Now you know I’m not some petruly stank hippie who hates corporations, I just understand that corporation are paid to think about society issues, they just want to make profit. And that’s how it should be, except that the government then has to reign them it so as to ensure that social issues don’t get trampled in the name of profit.
But bc govt sucks ass, they just let the corporations do whatever. So they shipped our lower income jobs over to china and then shipped our middle to lower income jobs to india.
So now all we produce is … ? Nothing. We produce nothing. Maybe you can say ‘ideas’ or ‘inginuity’, but ultimately the guy that came up with teh ipod got paid and then the jobs for people who make the ipod go overseas.
So why does our economy suck? Bc we don’t make anything. We just borrow against ourselves like one of those dumb chicks you see on a talk show who went to college, got a credit card, and then ran up a huge debt that can never be paid off bc she was too stupid to realize that you have to take in money to pay for things.
As a country, we are all going to end up crying on the Tyra Banks show bc we are finacially screwed for life.
May 15, 2008 at 4:20 pm
This might be much to simple a reply for all the eggheads that read and write these blog things… but Jim, I would like to buy 10 of those bikes right now while I am booking my flights to Scotland and Australia on the way to a free vacation by unloading the bikes there for double the investment. Thanks for the tip and trip! Good to hear from you!