Last couple of months we have all been bombarded by marketing attempts by #Temu or projects similar to these.
Personally I have been fed up with, which got me thinking about what is actually going on here.
Working in the bike factory first and now for the bike component manufacturers I am well aware of the demands from the market to be able to produce a certain product.
First you have administrative demands from the governments in terms of taxes, specific paperwork to prove the origin, customs procedures, worker treatment and compensations and so on.
Secondly we must adhere to a certain standards in production, being this ISO standards or product safety standards.
Third we are required to do follow up on the products, being this the serviceability, parts availability or end of life recycling.
Fourth we are having massive trend of sustainability administration and standards racking up on all production based (meaning value creating in Europe) companies.
All of the above points cost so much money. In my prior articles I was investigating why are we not competitive in production when our wages are not so far from Asian ones…well I got some answers from few people afterwards 🙂
The thing is that I completely agree with most of the requirements, although the idea of successful economy is to make the business more simple. But, the first problem I see here is different standards for some importers and then even worse for the direct to consumer “Temu” style deliveries from Asia.
Most importers are here to stay and they do a good job at following up with their products and I appreciate these very much.
But in the last two years there are importers who are just popping up and selling underpriced bikes and components to the market and that’s it. Nobody asks: how are these products made, what is the origin, was there child labor involved, are they up to the standards (in real life not on paper), will there be parts for repairing afterwards, how sustainable are these products made, what are their CO2 emissions and so on.
There are some actions to protect the market from these kind of products, similar to the fat bike seizure in Netherlands. But they are to late and too little. It takes years before any actions have been taken and this should be all done at the root of the problem. This meaning when they arrive here and before being put on the market !
And you know what average people buy these attractively priced bikes because they get to have a choice. Sometimes they get disappointed and sometimes they are happy because they saved some money.
Even worse is when the government gives out subsidies, financed by our production companies, to people to buy these kind of bikes !
On top of everything written above even these importers, who are playing the system, are getting kicked out of equation by online direct to consumer sales. This way none of the value is made here, even the retail margins are being left with the original seller. Who is checking these bikes and components when they arrive here in Europe ? How safe are they ? Would you let your children use these products that you order online without knowing anything about its origin ?
I see the destruction of entire ecosystem with this last move of cutting out production, import, distribution and retail if this isn’t stopped right away.
The conclusion :
No need for crazy taxing which every government falls back to, we just need to implement the standards for others we require from ourselves !
