Editor's note: Dan Empfield founded and formerly owned Quintana Roo, and founded and still owns and publishes Slowtwitch.com. He identified and coined the bike geometrics stack and reach in 2003, which form the basis for software solutions that prescribe bikes in many of today’s bike fit systems. F.I.S.T. is his bike fit school and system. The GURU fit system was launched using the F.I.S.T. protocol for its fit bike and associated hardware and software.
I read this week about Sean Madsen's new school for bike fitters. My immediate thought was, "Welcome to the fight; this time I know our side will win." But Sean is already a veteran of the fight.
Running a bike fit school is a business, but it's also advocacy. Therefore I don't see those running fit schools (I run one) simply as competitors, rather contemporaries, all of us heading toward the same goal: making customers comfortable on their bikes (and more comfortable making a bike purchase). These schools also help front-line soldiers – bike retailers – do their businesses more expertly and cost-efficiently.
My concern is the posture I think the article takes. "Madsen said with his system most fits can be done with the customer's own bike mounted to a stationary trainer," says the BRAIN author, and Madsen himself is quoted as saying, "One of the things I've seen in recent years is a trend toward shops buying equipment that costs $10,000 or $20,000, and then they feel like they have to charge $350 for a fit to make it worthwhile. I think that's going in the wrong direction."
I don't want to over-criticize because I haven't spoken to Sean about his school. Just, I get a lot of pushback from dealers who kick and scratch against the idea of learning new processes and buying new equipment. But the binary choice isn't between uncomfortable and scary on the one hand, versus the bike business the way it was 15 years ago. It's growth and risk and uncertainty versus the status quo and a scary trend line. Do you remember that Gluskin Townley report BRAIN covered 6 months ago? Bike shop visits by consumers declined 17 percent between 2012 and 2014? If you keep doing what you're doing you'll keep getting what you're getting.
It's monumentally easy to build a bicycle fit system that requires no tooling at all, save a tape measure and a level. Simply harvesting norms from the data a good dynamic fit system provides, translating those norms to prescribed fit coordinates, I've got that now. You want that fit system? Easy to make; I've already made it. The problem is that a fit system like this is easily thrown online. If that's the state of your art, why do we need to go to your store? Canyon has (or can have, and will have) the same system on its site.
What cannot be duplicated online is fitting a rider aboard a very adjustable fit bike, where the process takes place as a rider pedals nonstop throughout the fit process. A proper, modern fit bike can handle that job in 25 or 30 minutes, delivering a set of metrics that makes matching that set of final coordinates to a precise, granular ecumenical set of complete bike solutions.
About that "ecumenical" part: "Madsen's system is not tied to any specific fitting equipment or bike line," says BRAIN's article. Bravo, Sean! Bike fit protocols that only export solutions bearing one headbadge are so 90s. Let's have saddle fit systems that are likewise brand-agnostic!
Does the article announcing Sean's school implicitly say, "You don't need fancy equipment or knowledge."? If so, fair enough. And if you're Springfield Bike, Mower and Skateboard the point is valid. But if I said that you don't need to spend thousands of dollars on point-of-sale software; that a pricing gun and a ledger sheet is all you need, I suspect dealers would reply, "That POS software saves me money! It saves me time in so many ways! It saves manpower and it gives me precise results; it's built for the future, and the more modules I learn the better I understand this tool, and the more it enhances my business."
Exactly. That's what tools, and the expert use of them, do. Still, really understanding in your bones these new fit systems is not crossing the Potomac. It's crossing the Atlantic. I get that. But so was really learning your POS software.
Decisions like these are not trivial and I understand the angst. But in contemplating the journey from a bike shop's past to its future I'm reminded of that line from Lawrence of Arabia: It's only a matter of going.
