Like the assembly grease on every shop’s workbench, Industry Grease is designed to help each part of the Bicycle Industry come together and work more smoothly… for the long term.
The end result isn’t about the bicycle or our industry. It’s about providing our consumers with the best experience possible.
By working together through better communication & planning, we will work to re-establish our loyalty to the consumer… to earn theirs in return.
What is Industry Grease?
Industry Grease is a private, collaborative platform where individuals from every segment of the Bicycle Industry come together to ask questions, share ideas, and learn from each other on a grand scale. No matter the size, shape, or age of the shop or business, the discussions, content, and PEOPLE found here focus on things we can all benefit from. This platform is designed so that each member has an equal opportunity to share & receive feedback we can all learn from. From retail shop rats, mechanics, sales, & management, to Supplier buyers, customer service, product managers, & upper management, no one is above anyone else here. Having worked in pretty much every position in the Bicycle Industry, I can attest to the lack of information & understanding between the different industry channels and even the individual positions within them. Simply learning more about each other as a whole will nurture the right kinds of discussions with less wasteful assumptions.
Articles & Podcast
Up-front, there will be discussion-induced content on current affairs in the Bicycle Industry designed to nurture real & manageable solutions. Articles will fall under one or multiple key categories like D2C & eCommerce, Marketing, Education, Community, and THE CRYSTAL BALL, along with many others. I feel it’s arrogant for one person to advise an industry as a whole so rather than tell you what I think the Bicycle Industry should do, I want to get everyone together to discuss solutions, compromises, and opinions. Below each article will be an organized comment & reply section and very week or so, I will produce a Podcast to summarize & expand on the articles & juicy discussions that follow. Even for the silent types out there, the insights gained from a wide range of perspectives, all in one place will be of great value.
The Forums
While the face of Industry Grease is the homegrown articles & podcasts designed to spark the spicy discussions beneath them, the really really REALLY good stuff can be found in the community & private discussion forums.
The Industry Hub
This is the main forum for all members on every side of the Bicycle Industry to collaborate. Members with Retailers, Suppliers, Service Providers, Non-profits, and Media folk can all come together to ask, discuss, and learn about anything related to both business and personal growth. This is the grand central station of Industry Grease where individuals from businesses of all shapes & sizes can start, participate in, and view countless topics that fall under several well-thought-out subforums. A dozen or so subforums include: D2C – It’s not you, it’s us, Data & Forecasting, Job Lookers & Seekers, and even one for Surveys where anyone can easily build surveys on just about anything. There is even a Photo Gallery where everyone can share photos from behind the scenes and an ‘I Need a Part‘ subforum for those needing an obscure or out-of-stock item they desperately need. Let the entire industry be your warehouse!
Retail Chatter
This is a private forum that only members with retailers have access to. I can’t stress enough how valuable I think this little space is. It was in fact the only feature I originally planned on having when I first began planning this platform. Once eCommerce took off, I knew retailers needed to become more unified in order to better adapt to both shifts in consumer behavior and the supply channels’ reactions. Having experienced the struggles, both as a retailer & supplier, I saw how quickly things went in unpredictable directions and how vital it became for retailers to form a more uniform voice to suppliers. Under Retail Chatter, there are subforums for just about everything. Marketing & Sales, Forecasting, Service Dept Operations, Service Tech Discussions, D2C Retailer Discussions, Retail Stories & Solutions, and more!
Supplier Row
Members on the Supply & Service side of the Bicycle Industry have access to this forum. Here, suppliers will network and seek solutions others may share and perhaps already solved. There are multiple sub-forums like D2C Discussions, Import/Export Challenges (tariffs, eBike regulations, shipping, general resources etc.), Manufacturing, Domestic Shipping & Supply, Retail Education & Training, and others. This is not only a great place for established suppliers to network & share ideas, smaller or newer suppliers can gain some extremely valuable insights on how to get their products out there (the processes, challenges, & expectations involved with product development & distribution are almost always misunderstood by new companies… especially in the Bicycle Industry).
But wait… There’s more!
Dear Bicycle Industry
Have questions you want to ask but don’t want anyone to know who’s asking? Need relationship or parenting advice? Looking for a louder Bluetooth speaker for the trails? Perhaps you or ‘a friend’ is a triathlete but deep inside, you… err, they are conflicted about desiring mountain bikes, baggies, and oversize burritos.
That adorable little morsel up in the top right corner was initially my solution to getting people to ask difficult questions without risking their reputation, job, or what dignity they had left. As much as I want to this site to be taken seriously’ish, I began to see this take the form of an advice column that should be as entertaining as it is informative. Members can send in all kinds of industry-related & personal questions to be answered by eclecticly random Industry Buttinskies… as in special guests chosen from our beloved Bicycle Industry. The best part? All questions will be posted ANONYMOUSLY!
Private Messaging
Just like it sounds, I felt it was important to have as many useful means of communication within a formal platform that focuses on the Bicycle Industry. I want everyone to have as many resources as possible, and I consider the most important ones… YOU. I imagine there will be several here who want to discuss some things off-grid so I implemented a private messaging feature that integrates seamlessly.
Profile Pages
Here, members can list as much or as little information as they want and we only require that you provide your name, company, position, and a profile pic so others can identify you. Of course, you’ll want to probably list more as your profile page is an easy way for others to get to know you. Industry Grease is all about people networking and that first impression always counts!
Free Supplier Directory (coming soon)
While I don’t permit advertising, I do want to give suppliers & service providers opportunities to increase their presence with retailers. I have some other, much bigger things coming soon that will benefit suppliers & retailers alike but for now, members with a supplier or service provider can add their company to the Supplier Directory at no additional charge.
Why?
Why do I think my fellow Bicycle Industry would be interested in what I am doing? This isn’t my first attempt at trying to find a way to share my experiences, hoping it would help others. My mistake & realization was that one person couldn’t do much more than help one person or business at a time (effectively). Admittingly, I feel that no single human has the bandwidth or knowledge it takes to help such a broad range of businesses & careers, much less an entire industry’s health.
Over the last few decades, the Bicycle Industry’s various retail & supply channels have scrambled to solve their individual challenges that too often don’t align with each other’s. This has led to us becoming less organized as an industry and more vulnerable to the growth of larger corporations, outside industries entering ‘our space’, and all that is eCommerce. We’ve become accustomed to adapting to the marketplace rather than setting the pace and it’s distracted us from leveraging the advantages we do have… especially when it comes to servicing our own communities and going after the consumers we don’t yet know about (ignore), but should. We’re also having to quickly adapt to methods like direct-to-consumer programs and online fulfillment sales that either aren’t refined or are just confusing to all involved because of the multiple, ever-changing processes.
Not to state the obvious, there are a lot of loose ends the Bicycle Industry needs to tie up before we can move forward and that begins by having some overdue discussions on a massive scale. Regardless of how much experience or knowledge a person or small group has, ideas & decisions can become a bit monolithic without the involvement of a diverse & widespread resource of information… and each member here is a part of that. Industry Grease opens the doors to all involved to add a broader & more valuable set of perspectives, with the intention of guiding us towards a healthier & more sustainable industry.
But don’t listen to me…
To be blunt, I don’t want anyone to listen to me. You will hear me say this repeatedly but I think one person or group telling everyone else what they should do is as arrogant. Even after spending 35 years in & out of every corner of the Bicycle Industry, my knowledge, experience, & perspective is a virtually unmeasurable fraction of what members of our industry possess as a whole. What I do know revolves around sparking the right conversations and bringing people together. I feel that many of the issues we face can be avoided & even solved by having the right conversations at the right time… rather than after the fact.
Who is it for?
In a sort of ironic plot twist, Industry Grease isn’t here for retailers or suppliers in the Bicycle Industry. Industry Grease is for our consumers. In today’s marketplace, we need to reverse-engineer how we did things over the last 20 or 30 years and work from the consumer up. If we better serve consumers, they will better support us, improving our profitability & long-term sustainability. Okay… maybe that isn’t entirely true. In reality, Industry Grease really is for ALL of us because consumers need us, as much as we need them. The more we increase our understanding of the consumer, the more they’ll be able to recognize the value we offer. If they win, we all win!
So who should sign up for this?
EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. within every single business in the Bicycle Industry. I’m sorry, that did sound a little hyper-capitalistic… but let me be frank while hoping to boost my membership numbers. If there is a topic covered here that you would like to discuss with your employees, we all know how effective a cliche management meeting is where only about half of what you preach gets processed, (and you’re lucky if it sticks for more than 48 hours). I intentionally designed the platform & its content to be inclusive so imagine if you told your employees to read up on some of the topics found here, ahead of the meeting. Suddenly, you have multiple perspectives, ideas, and opinions that may not have even crossed your mind. However, the real value will come from how engaged your team is in both you, the business, and each plan that is put in place. Despite the overwhelming suggestions to charge much, much more, I priced memberships here to cater to this very team-centric culture. Between being a business write-off, the likely return on your investment, and the low-risk cost, I hope everyone sees the same value I keep imagining in my head.
No advertising and absolutely NO selling/sharing your private information
Plain & simple: Industry Grease is a platform designed to bring everyone together for the sake of professional & personal growth and not slinging the latest products, services, closeouts or pop-up adds to restore your sex life. While, like every single website you visit and/or subscribe to, we have to ‘share’ certain information with the website services we use to function, (you can bore yourself with all the lawyer speak on our Privacy Policy, Cookies, and Terms of Service pages if you want to know how that works), we will never ever share your information with others who can leverage that information to increase their business.
However, we recognize suppliers can be a great resource to retailers and will soon have opportunities for them to increase their presence to retailers & reachability. We’ll have more information on this soon but the focus is to offer suppliers of all shapes & sizes an equal opportunity to be as much of a resource as they want to be to retailers, on a level playing field.
Who is this guy?
I’ve been called a lot of things. The first person to drag me around on a bike and accept 17-year-old me in a bike shop called me Tomac. Some call me Tex based on where I was raised (and how I say the word guitar/gee-tar). On Strava & amongst my local bike friends, I’m Steeze McQueen. To most, I’m just Trey… a self-proclaimed Industry Rat who just won’t leave. You can find more dirt on me under the About tab by clicking on The Head Mechanic but you’re probably wondering what possessed me to create Industry Grease in the first place. In short, I’ve walked in most of your smelly shoes over the last 30+ years and am fluent in, or at the very least can relate to, what each of us is up against. Thanks to the unexpected pleasure of having a number of perfectly-timed experiences, I’ve gained a wider perspective than the average bear… yet admittingly, like every human, I don’t possess the bandwidth to know everything, hence why I chose this format for Industry Grease.
One thing I do know… the Bicycle Industry is more than ready to have the conversations it has desperately needed to have for some time. For those who know me will tell you, I listen… but I tell it like it is, whether you want to hear it or not. In other words, Industry Grease is here to bring each of us closer together so we can have some great conversations without feeling like we need to blow GT-85 up each other’s cable housing. We’re here to discuss the good, the bad, and even the dreadful so we can help guide each other in a healthier & more sustainable direction.
What does it take to join? *(launching Spring 2025)
This is a massive undertaking that I’ve determined is important enough to make my full-time job. Since this is a platform designed for professionals in the Bicycle Industry, rather than capitalize from advertising or other intrusive data-sharing means, I’ve decided to put my entire worth in your hands. To gain access to everything listed above, there will be a comically cheap individual membership fee that depends on what segment of the Bicycle Industry you belong to. So yeah, I’m literally putting my money where my mouth is. Besides, consult with your tax person as in most cases, your memberships are probably considered a business write-off.
Retail Individual Memberships – $36/year (yeah, like a $3/month average)
Suppliers, Service Providers, & Media Individuals – $50/year
Non-profit Individuals – If you are employed by a 501(c) non-profit associate with the Bicycle Industry, I will comp your individual $50/year membership fee. It’s the least I can do.
So yeah, that’s it. I have a few things to finalize on the backend but Industry Grease will launch here shortly (Spring 2025). For those who were waiting for this to be done a few months back, thank you for your patience and I hope the additions I made are worth the wait.