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  1. I almost bought a Himiway Crusier in 2020, but wound up with a Rad Rover 5. I’m very
    pleased with the Rover. For any round trip less than 30 miles, the truck stays parked and I ride the Rover.

  2. I haven’t actually crunched the numbers but it surely appears that 80 or 90% of your articles pertain only to direct to consumer products. Are you of the opinion that Ebikes sold through the bike shops are not worth reporting on? Just trying to understand if you have a bias and if so why? Perhaps it’s those companies that are advertising with you? I’m not accusing you of this, I’m only bringing it to your attention in that I hope you would approach journalism as it should be, unbiased…. By the way I’ve been reading you for years. Also by the way, I’ve owned an electric bike store (sales service and rental) for 10 years. I don’t understand the lack of support for IBD‘s in the Ebike world. FYI…

    • We do cover lots of D2C e-bike brands, you’re right there. But we don’t have a bias towards them and they’re not 80-90 percent of what we do. You can find coverage of Tern, Trek, Specialized, Stromer, Riese & Muller, Orbea, Bianchi and more — all brands that sell exclusively through bike shops, plus a few with a hybrid D2C/LBS model like Diamondback, BULLS and some others. We regularly write about these brands and many others at Electric Bike Report, most of which do not advertise with us — though some do. I was raised in a bike shop and have worked in them for ten-plus years, so I sympathize with you call for LBS support. It’s one of the reasons we always shout out brands that, even though they may be primarily D2C, are making efforts to partner with shops or are growing their own network of dealers. I also understand the industry shift towards D2C is a threat to most local bike shops in too many ways to list here. I don’t know the answer to that problem, but I don’t believe we’re going to see a shift back towards bike companies exclusively selling through dealers.

      As to why we spend a lot of time covering D2C brands, there’s a few reasons.

      The first is simple: Electric Bike Report is still a relatively small fish in a big pond. Most of the legacy bike brands, the ones that exclusively sell their e-bikes through local shops, are used to dealing with the established cycling media or large traditional media outlets who have also figured out that e-bikes are the next big thing. There’s only so many review bikes to go around and they don’t send them to just anybody. It’s tough to break into that club and convince them we’re worth sending a test bike to, especially in a year when many of the e-bikes normally in the media rotation have been sold off because there just aren’t enough bikes to meet demand, something I’m sure you’re feeling too as a shop owner. We’re working hard on building those bridges with legacy bike brands, so keep an eye on us — I think you may start seeing more of the brands you’re looking for. And on that same note, though the current form of EBR is less than a year old, this site has been around for over ten years. We were one of the first to write exclusively about e-bikes, so we grew up with many of the D2C e-bike brands that similarly only sold e-bikes. Conversely, these brands are often overlooked by traditional cycling media used to dealing with legacy bike brands. We don’t, so we’ve developed good relationships with access to their bikes and an easy flow of information. It’s taken a little longer to develop similar relationships with some of the larger brands that took longer to fully embrace e-bikes.

      The second reason: D2C brands are not going anywhere, and right now there are few resources for reliable information on what these bikes are and how they actually function in the real world. There’s no bike shop a consumer can go to and no knowledgeable salesperson; the largest source of information is what manufacturers put on product pages. Our mission is to bridge that information gap, so that if a consumer chooses to buy a D2C bike they have much more confidence in what they’re buying and at least have an understanding of how it functions and performs before they open their wallet. This point is core to our mission at Electric Bike Report, especially as more and more D2C brands flood the Wild West-like e-bike market.

      So yea, we do spend a lot of time covering D2C brands, but not because of bias or because e-bikes sold through local bike shops aren’t worth reporting on. This is just scratching the surface, but I hope it somewhat answers your question. Let me know if you’ve got thoughts on the future of the LBS or D2C, I’d love to hear them because I certainly don’t know the answer (yet).

      Long live the LBS and thanks for reading.

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