Moving our motorbike business to Ireland

Hillybilly4

Hi all. My partner & I are both lifelong bikers and we presently have a long-established motorbike shop/business in the UK - secondhand bikes (predominantly offroad), a motorbike workshop (my partner is a bike/quad mechanic), a shop selling parts, spares, helmets, clothing etc with an online ebay shop as well as a "real" shop...again all predominantly aimed at the offroad market (my partner is heavily into evo motocross and enduro racing).

We are moving our business to Ireland at the end of this year (we are presently in expensive rented premises but have been fortunate enough to be able to buy suitable premises in Ireland where we can both live and trade). We plan to continue to do what we do here - bike workshop for engine rebuilds, servicing etc, a retail/online shop for parts etc and possibly a trade stand with which to attend races. We already, through racing, bike selling etc, have some useful contacts in Ireland, but obviously will be "newbies" (and English ones at that!) on the trade scene. My partner will be fully participating in mx/hare & hounds events just as soon as he can, that's for sure!

I am hoping that you biker people on here would be kind enough to offer some advice, particularly with regards to online buying in Ireland. From what I have been able to see, ebay.ie seems poorly frequented...would I be right? Whereas here in the UK ebay is the main "shop window" for pretty much any business, inc bike sales, more so than our own website for example. I know there are the done deal, adverts.ie etc sites, but, again, there doesn't seem to be a lot on them.

One of my questions I suppose therefore is, is online shopping for bikes, parts etc not really that popular in Ireland? Or is it that sellers simply don't bother to try to sell their wares that way?! Is it in general preferred to deal face to face with a real person in a real shop? How do people buy and sell their secondhand bikes? Is it mostly word of mouth?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any insight!

designbydan

I'm obviously only speaking for myself here,

and I'm sorry if this offends anyone on here with their own store..

But as a biker and a web designer:

Online facilities for bike shops in Ireland are a joke, I'm not going to bother mentioning Irish ebay, the online shops I've seen so far for the Irish market are pretty cr** to be honest,
if shopping online I'll use English stores because they are so much cheaper, and regularly updated.

I've no problem supporting Irish/local stores and would prefer to do so.

But when you're told by a particular place " Oh THAT helmet, that ones top of the range, you're looking at 630 for that" and then I go home and find the EXACT same helmet in an online English store for 250. . delivery within 3 days. . . "

maybe it's just because I'm in the web industry but right now I think any improvement online would be welcome.


I've bought and sold my bikes on both done deal and adverts.

I've no idea if that answers your question or helps at all, hopefully it does.

burstbuckle

Try biker.ie also for info

Hillybilly4

Thanks designbydan.
So, price is, ultimately, king in determining where/how you shop. Do you buy off ebay.uk or direct from English suppliers' websites?
Pssst. Wanna build us a good website/online shop then?!

Hillybilly4

burstbuckle wrote: »

Try biker.ie also for info

Yes, thanks - have been trying to become a registered user of that site for some time lol but have never received my activation email so am stuck in some sort of biker.ie limbo where I am unable to post. Have sent numerous emails to admin to no avail!

designbydan

Hillybilly4 wrote: »

Thanks designbydan.
So, price is, ultimately, king in determining where/how you shop. Do you buy off ebay.uk or direct from English suppliers' websites?
Pssst. Wanna build us a good website/online shop then?!

I've bought in Irish shops when its not double the price, I don't mind paying an extra say .. 50 for a helmet, bought in a local store rather than shipped from England. But as an example I bought a very good textile jacket, trousers and leather gloves on sale for under 150, at full price I would've paid over 400 easily,

I shop direct and rarely use ebay.uk only because it can be a hassle sometimes with shipping as many sellers don't ship here.

And thanks for the offer but I didn't post to try and drum up business, I don't think it's allowed to on here anyway. I'm sure you can just change certain parts of your current site for the Irish market.

If not however, then I should be free around June so hit me up then haha

Hillybilly4

designbydan wrote: »

And thanks for the offer but I didn't post to try and drum up business, I don't think it's allowed to on here anyway. I'm sure you can just change certain parts of your current site for the Irish market.

If not however, then I should be free around June so hit me up then haha

LOL.
Our current website is a dot co.uk one so am thinking it would be preferable to have a dot ie one?

designbydan

Hillybilly4 wrote: »

LOL.
Our current website is a dot co.uk one so am thinking it would be preferable to have a dot ie one?

Buy a .ie domain and just forward it it the .co.uk site, add euros and shipping info ( along with any extra T&C's needed for Ireland) and boom, job done

650gs

I buy off ebay.co.uk and find it great I also buy up North and UK shops on line or by phone its as said before rip off Ireland always comes up even ordering parts its a joke.
As for Biker.ie a complete waste of time done even go there and if you need a good site I can recommend a company that will be only too happy to sort you out and very reasonable too PM me for that one

Richard tea

I would say price is the most important thing with the Irish market. It really is a rip off country for most goods and services. A good trustworthy relationship is high up there also when it comes to doing business either from a shop or online. I couldnt imagine buying a bike for a few thousand euro online/ebay without seeing it in the flesh unless there was a no quibble 7 day money back guarantee if anything went wrong with the bike.

If your prices are competitive with the prices from the uk your business could do well alright. One of the major negatives about ordering from the uk is the postage sometimes so keep the costs for postage down if you can.

Where are you going to be based? May I have a link to your uk website? pm if you wish.

Hillybilly4

Richard tea wrote: »

Where are you going to be based? May I have a link to your uk website? pm if you wish.

We'll be in Co Cork, on the N72, about halfway between Mallow & Killarney.
Sent you a PM.

burstbuckle

650gs wrote: »

I buy off ebay.co.uk and find it great I also buy up North and UK shops on line or by phone its as said before rip off Ireland always comes up even ordering parts its a joke.
As for Biker.ie a complete waste of time done even go there and if you need a good site I can recommend a company that will be only too happy to sort you out and very reasonable too PM me for that one

Fair enough on the biker.ie comment, I haven't been on it in over a year. just thought it would have a bigger audience. Hope the business works out for them could do with some decent competition here. I was looking at a helmet few weeks ago it's £200 from the U.K. lets just say two shops in Dublin not a million miles from each other one was charging 245 euro which is spot on with the exchange rate,the other was 300 euro.When I told the salesman he said he would match cheaper price. Too late I'll buy it off the shop that wasn't tryint to fleece me in the first place.

Max Headroom

I buy most of my stuff on Ebay UK....having said that, most of it comes direct from Asia, even though its the same stuff as from UK sellers but cheaper...

the cats pajamas

are ya's gonna have one of those helmet xray machines to see if a helmet has been damaged?

Hillybilly4

the cats pajamas wrote: »

are ya's gonna have one of those helmet xray machines to see if a helmet has been damaged?

Who me? Good grief no! If your helmet's had an impact - replace it. What price your head?

sean61

I haven't much experience of ordering online with Irish shops. UK sites are generally cheaper and have more choice but I will say morrisons and lee's are great for most service parts. Going to the local shops is a disaster. Ordered leathers with one shop and they couldn't get them after several weeks. Ordered different leathers in another shop and they couldn't get them either. Ordered pads in the same shop last Friday week and was told they'd be in on wednesday, went back on Friday and still didn't have them. I could go on for the night with stories of being let down by shops. No one wants to be making 2 or 3 trips to a shop looking for stuff they've ordered. That's the biggest problem in IMHO

Cuddlesworth

designbydan wrote: »

Buy a .ie domain and just forward it it the .co.uk site, add euros and shipping info ( along with any extra T&C's needed for Ireland) and boom, job done

Thats a horrific idea, it would completely screw up their SEO and ruin any natural traffic from Ireland.

gbob

Almost everything I buy for the bike is sourced from ebay.uk, the main reason is price and choice. However if there was a local dealer that didn't charge stupid prices I'd gladly support it. Also, I certainly wouldn't be worried about any negative impact of Englishness to your business, whether bricks and mortor or otherwise, as I'm sure you know price and service is everything.

Best of luck with the move, shame I'm no where near Cork as I'd gladly pop in for a browse.

Oh, irishbikerforum.com is a far more friendly place to visit.

cojomo2

I'm currently looking to buy a 1-2 yr old bike...hardly anything suitable here so will have find one on ebay.co.uk head over, check it out and bring it back.

It would be so handy if there was a trustworthy reliable company offering this service i.e view the bike on my behalf, check out all the paperwork etc and arrange to have it transported back to me.

Not sure such a service exists but I'd say theres an opening for one. With all your contacts in the UK, this could be a service you could offer on the side? Just a thought.

professore

designbydan wrote: »

Buy a .ie domain and just forward it it the .co.uk site, add euros and shipping info ( along with any extra T&C's needed for Ireland) and boom, job done

You will have to keep your business registered in the UK and ship from there for that to work, as the VAT, among other things, is different here.

professore

Irish consumers generally are very web savvy, and will buy things online if they are CHEAPER.

The biggest obstacle in my opinion to selling stuff online here is the euro ... for example you look at an item on Amazon for £25 and it's €30 here on an Irish website. That €30 is already less than the £25, and factor in shipping (which could be another £10 easily) and the item in the keenly priced Irish shop looks a lot dearer, even though it's a lot cheaper. If your prices are keen I'd suggest having a sterling equivalent price of equal size beside the euro one so people can compare directly and make a big thing of the price being the same or cheaper.

Also give a "collect instore" option for free as shipping is what kills the price too.

Having said that I would second the idea that the likes of Irish biker shops would charge €60 for the €30 item above, therefore giving them no hope of selling it online. I really don't know how they expect to make money online doing that.

I also do online shops by the way. Based in cork though

Edit: Just saw you are actually the far side of Mallow.

iamtony

I've ran a business similar to yours for a few years and I can tell you the market for anything like that is much much smaller over here which will affect everything from the discount you can get from your suppliers to the price of shipping parcels etc. and this plus a couple of percent extra vat and also the smaller turnover means you will have to charge more. As for your Ebay store I would try keep that going from the uk if it's at all possible as it's very hard to convince anyone from the uk to buy from Ireland and have to wait an extra couple of days for delivery and buy in euro's etc. plus the fact it won't be easy to compete on price.
Another thing worth considering if you have agencies for certain products over their, there may already be an irish distributor appointed and you will loose the agency once they find out you've moved.
I could go on all day about this one....

serious3

Oh and answer emails! All Irish companies and bike shops don't do email! I emailed an enquiry last week about a bike in a shop in Dublin, attached pics of mine for trade in what I was realistically looking for for it, phone number etc etc..... The silence is deafening! To be fair tho the bike shop I use in Galway she will do her best to match prices from the uk as for waiting for bits... Well it's my fault for riding ducati's and a ccm! Good luck with your venture!

Hillybilly4

cojomo2 wrote: »

I'm currently looking to buy a 1-2 yr old bike...hardly anything suitable here so will have find one on ebay.co.uk head over, check it out and bring it back.

It would be so handy if there was a trustworthy reliable company offering this service i.e view the bike on my behalf, check out all the paperwork etc and arrange to have it transported back to me.

Not sure such a service exists but I'd say theres an opening for one. With all your contacts in the UK, this could be a service you could offer on the side? Just a thought.

Hi cojomo2. Yes that is most likely a service we will be offering actually...we will still be sourcing bikes (offroad) for ourselves in the UK and be transporting them over along with bikes for our existing Irish friends who can't resist an English bargain and presently have to make a costly trip to the UK to pick up often just one bike. We will have the capacity to transport up to 6 bikes at a time so it makes sense to fill that van space!

Hillybilly4

professore wrote: »

If your prices are keen I'd suggest having a sterling equivalent price of equal size beside the euro one so people can compare directly and make a big thing of the price being the same or cheaper.

Also give a "collect instore" option for free as shipping is what kills the price too.

Thank you for those tips!

Hillybilly4

iamtony wrote: »

Another thing worth considering if you have agencies for certain products over their, there may already be an irish distributor appointed and you will loose the agency once they find out you've moved.

Thanks iamtony...fortunately all of our existing suppliers have said they'll be happy to continue to supply us...just that shipping will take an extra day or two.

Hillybilly4

serious3 wrote: »

Oh and answer emails! All Irish companies and bike shops don't do email! I emailed an enquiry last week about a bike in a shop in Dublin, attached pics of mine for trade in what I was realistically looking for for it, phone number etc etc..... The silence is deafening! To be fair tho the bike shop I use in Galway she will do her best to match prices from the uk as for waiting for bits... Well it's my fault for riding ducati's and a ccm! Good luck with your venture!

LOL.
And thanks!

ArnieSilvia

I don't have a business in Ireland but have business degree and have run my own business in the past in another country. Once you do that you always look around from business perspective.

It's my lifetime ambition to have my own business again and have been looking into it for the last 10 years here but Ireland has its specifics and while it's suitable for multinationals selling say, a pallet of processors or vaccines for 100k $ it's not really suitable for small business (please don't burn me for that:D). Or if it is, it would yield much better profit/satisfaction elsewhere. I'll put it this way - if I was about to start the business of the type you're doing I'd first look into UK or mainland Europe.

I've been looking into garage/workshop idea myself (passenger cars) and In this specific business (quite similar to yours) the con's are:

1. Very different motoring culture to UK, just look at those poverty spec cars with smallest engines possible. More so, people's obsession with property or massive negative equity makes them holding onto cash and spending it on investment rather than fun.
2. Relaxed attitude to maintenance and skimping on paying for servicing. I don't know anyone at work who would have any sort of service history to their car. Unfortunately, mostly (we talk about low/middle class) people drive cars until they are dogs and sell on. My supervisor told me that by the time there are any problems with their car, it would be sold anyway. Look at recent thread "how long you got away without changing timing belt", title says it all. Or the guy on this thread asking about helmets involved in accident.
3. Not sure how it works in enduro market but how many places are there to actually do it? I had this problem when I finally built my drift car, that closest tracks closed and I had only option of 400km return trip to Mondello for 200 euro per few hrs - I wasn't THAT crazy into it It's better now but not ideal. It's typical for Ireland that people own things but don't get to actually use them (jet ski, classic cars etc etc)
4. The market here is very, very small. Not only because there's few people living here and density of population is very low. It's also because the trading links are very reduced. Without checking I can guess than postage and courier costs are cheaper in UK. Posting something to continent is very expensive. Compare ferry cost from Dover-Calais to Dublin-Holyhead and you get what I mean. Things got a lot better with service from ParcelMotel but if something doesn't work as intended or isn't as described I toss it in the bin rather than sending back. Little parcel to UK and you're talking about 15€. What's the point?
5. I'd be particularly worried about starting the business in the area you're looking into. Maybe you could get away with starting in Dublin but good luck in remote countryside. There's just not enough people living there.
6. Online trading is dysfunctional here due to mentioned very high postage costs and appalling service from the post and couriers. How come I had 20% parcels lost when people from UK were sending to Ireland and I've had ZERO missing parcels since I started using ParcelMotel. Over last 5 years I bought about 700 items from ebay uk. Due to ParcelMotel I bought about 150 items in last 2 months!!!
7. When running the business consider various hidden charges you might not be aware of. One shocker was mandatory council rates (charges), for a small unit on an average industrial estate it was 1200-2000 euro/year, plus different water charges etc etc.


To summarise, when I was about to start my business 2 years ago I was going to buy a running tyre business in UK and be done with it. I got a very well paid job so these plans were postponed but not forgotten.

Whichever way you go, good luck!!!

ArnieSilvia

I need to double check but the council rates are way higher than what I said, just quick google brought that (see the post in comments section):

http://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-city-council-commercial-rates-927232-May2013/
"Dublin city council have doubled their rates up 50% from last year. An annual cost of 3500euro gone up to over 7000euro now for the year 2014. Its a joke, how can a business survive"

Muahahaha

I've bought bikes off both Adverts and Donedeal. Ebay.ie has dam all on it so at this stage I rarely check it. For biker gear I'm most likely to go to Ebay.co.uk or Amazon as there's far more choice and much keener prices than buying in a bricks and mortar shop here.

OP if motocross is what you guys specialise in then that's a pretty niche sector and you should really research your location in Ireland well to ensure there are enough motocross riders / clubs in your area to sustain your business.

If you've built up regular custom through your ebay.co.uk shop then I think you should look into ways of keeping that running, even from Ireland. I wouldn't try to ship from Ireland as UK buyers might be put off by increased shipping times and increased postage costs for an international shipment. To avoid that it might mean placing your goods with a UK distributor who ships them for you from the UK to UK addresses. Don't forget that Ireland is only 4 million people so we wouldn't have anywhere near as many motocross riders as in the UK so if you are doing well online in the UK then you'd be crazy to throw that away. Keep it going and run your mechanic shop here, best of both worlds

Best of luck with it:)

Hillybilly4

ArnieSilvia wrote: »

1. Very different motoring culture to UK, just look at those poverty spec cars with smallest engines possible. More so, people's obsession with property or massive negative equity makes them holding onto cash and spending it on investment rather than fun.
2. Relaxed attitude to maintenance and skimping on paying for servicing. I don't know anyone at work who would have any sort of service history to their car. Unfortunately, mostly (we talk about low/middle class) people drive cars until they are dogs and sell on. My supervisor told me that by the time there are any problems with their car, it would be sold anyway. Look at recent thread "how long you got away without changing timing belt", title says it all. Or the guy on this thread asking about helmets involved in accident.
3. Not sure how it works in enduro market but how many places are there to actually do it? I had this problem when I finally built my drift car, that closest tracks closed and I had only option of 400km return trip to Mondello for 200 euro per few hrs - I wasn't THAT crazy into it It's better now but not ideal. It's typical for Ireland that people own things but don't get to actually use them (jet ski, classic cars etc etc)
4. The market here is very, very small. Not only because there's few people living here and density of population is very low. It's also because the trading links are very reduced. Without checking I can guess than postage and courier costs are cheaper in UK. Posting something to continent is very expensive. Compare ferry cost from Dover-Calais to Dublin-Holyhead and you get what I mean. Things got a lot better with service from ParcelMotel but if something doesn't work as intended or isn't as described I toss it in the bin rather than sending back. Little parcel to UK and you're talking about 15€. What's the point?
5. I'd be particularly worried about starting the business in the area you're looking into. Maybe you could get away with starting in Dublin but good luck in remote countryside. There's just not enough people living there.
6. Online trading is dysfunctional here due to mentioned very high postage costs and appalling service from the post and couriers. How come I had 20% parcels lost when people from UK were sending to Ireland and I've had ZERO missing parcels since I started using ParcelMotel. Over last 5 years I bought about 700 items from ebay uk. Due to ParcelMotel I bought about 150 items in last 2 months!!!
7. When running the business consider various hidden charges you might not be aware of. One shocker was mandatory council rates (charges), for a small unit on an average industrial estate it was 1200-2000 euro/year, plus different water charges etc etc.

To summarise, when I was about to start my business 2 years ago I was going to buy a running tyre business in UK and be done with it. I got a very well paid job so these plans were postponed but not forgotten.

Whichever way you go, good luck!!!

Thank you ArnieSilvia.
To respond to some of your points...
Yes, Dublin. Love it. As a place to visit. But have no desire to live there. No offence to any Dubliners lol, just personal preference. Also, couldn't have afforded to buy a suitable premises there even if we'd wanted to!
Parcel Motel...is that popular in Ireland? Only ever seen one here in the UK and saw...none in Ireland.
Hidden charges? Not sure what you mean by this? We've spent not inconsiderable time in the County Council offices (and very nice they were too!) determining the commercial property and water rates etc so assumed that we had everything taken into account on that score...are you saying there are other charges of some sort?
Thank you again.