Revolutionary Logistics at Franchising Formula for Bike Shops

BREDA, The Netherlands – A stock-turn ratio of six per year is unheard of for bike shops. However, this is one of the goals that the new hard franchising version of the Profile shop formula from Biretco is set to achieve. To reach this target, a new (partly virtual) warehouse was opened in November.

Biretco invested a considerable amount in the new warehouse, stock and ordering system for the members of the hard franchise version of Profile. It has been set up in close cooperation with the Dutch bike makers Gazelle, Batavus, Koga-Miyata and Sparta. With the virtual warehouse members of the franchising formula are able track down on a real time basis the availability of the bikes in stock and can order them by single unit. The same logistic service is offered for the Biretco private label bikes.
Dutch retail organization Biretco is the world’s first to operate a hard franchise concept in the bike sector. The company introduced the new concept in January 2006 and currently about 30 shops are operating under the hard franchising formula. Under this formula 80% of the shop collection is fixed and will be catered for by strict rules for deliveries by core suppliers. Biretco CEO Ron te Riele said at the launch of his new franchising formula: “The only way to achieve better results for bike dealers at this moment is through chain integration or by an integrated dealer-supplier market approach. Hard franchising enables such an approach.”