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Do you know about QBP Products and Pricing?
Does anyone have any insight into QBP Pricing and how much lower it is than suggested retail?
Also does anyone know if you can order brands we generally like such as Panaracer Tires and Bike Ribbon Bar tape and Parts from MKS, Nitto, Wald and the like? |
QBP is a wholesaler that serves bike shops. I would expect that you'd need to be a bicycle retailer in order to set up an account with them, they don't sell directly to the public.
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I also think you need to be in business for a year before you can start COD or prepay with them.
also they were great for small odd parts but for most run of the mil stuff they pricing (wholesale) was very average. |
Originally Posted by Bianchigirll
(Post 12824522)
I also think you need to be in business for a year before you can start COD or prepay with them.
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Originally Posted by gomango
(Post 12824536)
A brick and mortar business as they told me.
I got the business end covered. Just looking for info about what they carry and pricing and thought I might get some idea here rather than having to tell my life story to some one in HR over at QBP just to see a catalog. |
Figure less than half of retail. They supply Niagara, and we already know how low Niagara prices are.
Talked to a bike shop guy about getting an account with QBP. Besides the business license and tax number, you needed a business phone listed in the yellow pages. So if you already have a going concern, it is probably doable. I gave up. |
Catalogue (link on their homepage), without pricing: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/...6c#/0f36a06c/6
You'll have to tell your life story to get a look at the prices though I bet. Do you already have a shop? One without a QBP account? |
Lots of online retail re-sellers use QBP as a source, they use the pictures QBP supplies,
and you will note the QBP in the corner of each.. We have a QBP consumer catalog, minus any mention of price, under the counter, here.. You might see what neighboring town's have under their counters. the LBS here, is on a 30 day net, billing. |
QBP has a giant catalog. That's the first distributor account most bike shops open. For applications with other distributors, they often just want to know if you have an account with QBP. If so, they'll give you an account as they figure the vetting QBP did was good enough for them. All of the brands you mentioned, Dan, are in the QBP catalog, but may be limited to just a few products. Not many Nitto products, for example.
What has not been mentioned yet in this thread is that for pretty much any distributor account, you're required to have a resale certificate for sales tax purposes. |
Any co-op's in the area with a QBP account?
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Originally Posted by wrk101
(Post 12824562)
Figure less than half of retail. They supply Niagara, and we already know how low Niagara prices are.
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I work in a shop with a Quality account. Any specific questions? Our mark up is typically 1.7-2.1 (at least that's what the POS system we use tells me when I'm stocking stuff).
For example, I recently ordered a sturdy handbuilt touring wheel for a commuter here and our cost... Nevermind. :) |
Originally Posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox
(Post 12824354)
Does anyone have any insight into QBP Pricing and how much lower it is than suggested retail?
Also does anyone know if you can order brands we generally like such as Panaracer Tires and Bike Ribbon Bar tape and Parts from MKS, Nitto, Wald and the like?
Originally Posted by Hydrated
(Post 12808891)
Culture a relationship with your LBS owner.
I learned this recently as I was shopping for parts to build up my 650b Kogswell. I have been doing business with this shop for the last 4 years or so, and the guys have come to know my tastes in bikes. They do not like to deal with any sort of vintage or even moderately old gear, so they usually hate doing special orders for parts that aren't in the mainstream of what the racer boyz want. So when the owner tired of looking stuff up in his price catalogs, he told me to just find what I wanted... write it on the order sheets... and he'd sell the stuff to me at his cost as listed in the books. Well... lemme tell you. That was an eye opener. Not only was his cost remarkably low, but there is stuff available in those supplier catalogs that I thought was only available online or through Rivendell or Velo Orange. Examples of prices for NEW parts: Brooks B17 saddle - $53 VO Porteur Rack (this rack is $160 direct from VO) - $90 Shimano XT rear hub - $48 SRAM X0 alloy spider cassette - $60 ESGE Pletscher dual leg kickstand - $28 Zefal HPx frame pump - $18 So yeah... get in good with your LBS owner. Saved me many hundreds of dollars on just this one build. |
Thanks very much :) I knew you folks would know!
..I've got scheming to do :innocent: |
Originally Posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox
(Post 12825022)
..I've got scheming to do :innocent:
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A friend of mine started an LBS, ran it for about 3 years, then decided to get out of the business. I talked to them once about what it took to get an account with a distributor like QBP, and it is a fairly involved and drawn-out process, and included a substantial required initial purchase (i.e., you have to buy something like a few thousand dollars worth of stock to get an account). They also wanted to see the shop's business plan, see pictures of their storefront, and were visited by the QBP rep before they got an account with them.
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Originally Posted by Hydrated
(Post 12825066)
You are NOT allowed to do any scheming without us!
There's a former grocery store front that's been vacant for nearly 10 years. I can get a sweetheart deal on a lease and the space is such that something similar to a Collective could be set up. |
Originally Posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox
(Post 12825340)
here's the long and short. Company I work for is gonna go out of business in the not-so-distant future and I wanna be gone and doing something else before that. There's an overabundance of cheap retail space in my area and an underabundance of Bike Shops/Collectives or anything of the sort. I feel like there is room for me to do a bit of business doing repair and some sales of bike consumables while working on my metalworking and brazing skills.
There's a former grocery store front that's been vacant for nearly 10 years. I can get a sweetheart deal on a lease and the space is such that something similar to a Collective could be set up. I like it! |
Originally Posted by Zaphod Beeblebrox
(Post 12824547)
Not a problem, and I have a tax ID as well.
I got the business end covered. Just looking for info about what they carry and pricing and thought I might get some idea here rather than having to tell my life story to some one in HR over at QBP just to see a catalog. Tell me what you want and I'll tell what it costs wholesale..... |
Originally Posted by 4Rings6Stars
(Post 12824745)
I just checked about 10 products on QBP and then did a quick google search of online prices... QBP appears to be more like 65-75% of the prices I saw online. Not very scientific though as the prices I saw online could be sale prices and not a good representation of normal retail.
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Obviously some products will have a greater margin than others.
The purpose of this inquiry isn't to find out how to satisfy QBP's vetting process or try and sneak into QBP with an ulterior motive. All I'm trying to find out is if its worth it in my case to attempt to become a QBP customer of if I'm better off seeking out different channels for the products I want to offer. |
You are going to need to be a real retail bike shop to get accepted, storefront, all the paperwork, resale, business lic., insurance, images of the place, be able to cite and prove new lines you carry. It can be done. Many legit small time framebuilders do not qualify. Just be ready to run the gauntlet.
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The fact that nearly every successful bike shop is a QBP customer is probably an indication.....but. Let say for argument's sake I wanted to offer Panaracer Pasela tires to customers without me having a QBP account. Where could one order something like that at prices that make resale viable?
Or is the answer to that question "QPB"? |
I thought it was a pretty big no-no to share QPB's wholesale prices, especially in a public way, but maybe I will be corrected by someone with more knowledge! Oh, and our co-op had Panaracers, but only had J&B I believe, I know they definitely didn't have QBP.
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Yup big no no to share wholesale prices and catologues with non wholesale account holders... once people know what something actually costs they don't want to pay retail prices. But I'll do it anyway... wholesale for Panaracer Pasela 27 inch tires $16.14 700c range from $14.72 for wire to $21.37 for arimid (foldable non wire wall). These are not QBP prices which I suspect maybe a bit lower since they are the big dog in the world of wholesale bicycle distributors. I'm not going to mention the name of my distributor for fear of them closing my account... not really but figure I should respect their rules a bit since they have been good to work with and have helped grow my small business. I will say this being a bicycle retailer is tough... I've had much more sucess in refurbishing used bikes and selling used parts.
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