When customers enter my shop, the first question I will ask is if they are cycling with their friends. It defeats the purpose of buying a mountain bike if the group of friends you are joining are riding road bikes. Your cycling skills can’t help much here as you will be struggling to catch up on your knobby tyres as your friends sped by on their road bike with 700C slick tyres, heads bent forward on tarred road.
Similarly, size of wheels also matters. In Malaysia, it is now popular to choose bicycle with wheel size of 27.5” or a 29er. So, if you were to buy a 26” bike, you may have a problem chasing after your friends cycling on a 27.5” or a 29er, as with each revolution, it can go a bit further than a 26er.
Once my customers have that settled, they will then have to decide if they would like to consider buying bicycles similar in standard to what their friends are cycling. If they just opt for a cheaper model than there is an issue of "losing face", a cultural behavior that the Asians will understand. That is, the feeling that you have lost self-esteem as “what you have is not better than theirs”.
This is how I help my customers overcome that problem. The general idea of most customers is that better components will be installed on a higher priced bicycle. In order to help them make the right decision, I will let them compare components on one bicycle with those on another instead of comparing price of each bicycle to make the decision to purchase. Sometimes, a less well known brand may have better gearing system installed vs one that is branded even though they are similar in price. Then you will have to decide if you would prefer the brand you are seeking and pay more for higher end components installed, which tend to be lighter in weight.
I let my customers feel the mechanism of the bicycle so that they can tell, for example, the difference of using a bicycle with mechanical disc brake over one with hydraulic disc brake or one with V-brake. I let them lift up a 20” steel folding bicycle so that they can imagine how heavy a steel bike with 26” wheelset or higher would be like. Then they can decide if it is best that they pay more for bicycle with alloy, chrommolly or carbon frame.
The important thing as a customer is that you must ask the shop if spare parts of components on the bicycle of your choice are easy to find and replace. So, even if you opt to choose a lower end bicycle due to current budget, you know that you can upgrade the components at later stage when you understand bicycles better as you ride and are sure that you are serious about cycling.
Once you have cycled on your bicycle (or your friends’) and have a clearer idea of what you really like, you will have reached the stage to be obsessed about components. But this time it is because you want to build up your cycling skills with the right components.
