Just a heads up that all sales are final and you can’t modify the order once placed. Made a sizing mistake somehow on an item and tried to cancel it immediately after and they refused. Even refused to change it to the correct size item. What’s more annoying is that they’re super behind on shipping and won’t even get it shipped out for 2-3 days. So you’re telling me it will take you 3 days to get the order ready for shipping and you can’t swap out the correct size for me? Not surprising they’re going under.
Lot of lessons to be learned from their journey…first and foremost is straying too far from what was an established role in the industry. A lot of what they tried to do was driven by VC money and unrealistic expectations during the COVID boom.
Grew too big, too fast and lost their way.
There is undoubtedly still a role to be played based on their original concept.
I would love to know where the VC money went. Escape Collective talked about a little over $50m in 2021/2022 timeframe and then another like $6m earlier this year. Did any original owners cash out or has everyone lost their money?
It’ll be interesting to see how discounted they go on things, will we see used bikes 75% off at the very end? I found searching through their site to be so slow to find the deals, as they have very sporadic stock, due to the nature of their business model.
Sorry to bring up this old topic, but I am in the same boat. Interested in an Enve Mog in size 52cm. Does anyone know of any special deals on that? Seems like every shop online has it listed (and plenty in stock) at msrp.
Haven’t seen anything on that specific bike. Lately deals usually show up around November. Some seem to be popping up now so it will be interesting to see if there will be steeper discounts this winter or if this is it.
Based on what I have read, some of it went into buying the Radavist and more went into moving them into arguably unnecessarily big warehouse / distribution facilities. IRC, they closed down one location last year or the year before.
No doubt the post-COVID bust bit them in the butt…they were paying pretty good prices for bikes and then the bottom dropped on the market and they were almost certainly upside-down on those goods.
Combined with rapid expansion (why they ever got into trying to act as a “normal” online retailer of new goods is beyond me) and it was pretty bad combo of events.
I needed some 105 st brifters, and I ordered them a couple days ago from TPC at the lowest price I could find outside of used product on eBay. Phew, glad I pulled the trigger because they are gone now. It’s looking pretty picked over at this point.
And it’s always good to develop a relationship with your favorite bike shop. If they like you (what that entails depends on the shop), sometimes they can let you know when they decide to reduce a price, so you can score the deal instead of someone else.
