Biggest German Dealers Leave ZEG

MUNICH, Germany – The world’s biggest dealer cooperative in the bike business, the German ‘Zweirad Experten Gruppe’ better know as ZEG, is suffering from the loss of ten of its biggest members. On  December 31, 2009 they officially announced to stop their membership.

The notice that these ten biggest ZEG members gave at the end of last year means that by the end of 2011 their membership will be terminated.

These ten biggest ZEG members that operate 14 stores formed an alliance called ‘Fahrrad’-XXL Gruppe, or Bike-XXL Group in 2006. Each store belonging to the Group employs between 30 to 70 people.

General Manager Peter Feld of the Bike-XXL Group as well as of the Bike-XXL store in St. Augustin near Bonn, states: “We thank ZEG for the good cooperation we hade over the years. Without the ZEG we would not be where we are now.”

Next to Feld the following German dealers are Bike-XXL Group members: Peter Born, Emporon (with four stores), Franz (with two stores), Hürter, Kalker, Marcks, Meinhövel, Reischl (new member since July 2009) and Walcher.

On why Bike-XXL Group is terminating its ZEG membership Feld says: “Over the years we became aware of the fact that a modern bike store should not be only big, but also good and different. As Bike-XXL Group our future goals are in the slogan ‘experience – testing – ready to go’. Such goals can be also reached without the support of a dealer cooperative.”

Further details on the membership termination were not announced. And it is widely believed that there will be no further comments from Bike-XXL as well as from the ZEG until the membership of the ten dealers is finally terminated on December 31, 2011. However, what also seemed to have spurred the ZEG membership termination is that the Bike-XXL Group views on modern bike store concepts are not expected to be fulfilled under the ZEG umbrella. Moreover, it’s an open secret that there have been several occasions where there were differences between ZEG and the Bike-XXL Group.

“Next to a wide range of branded bicycles as well as P&A the Bike-XXL Group also operates a successful private label Carver Carver Bikes’ engineering is in the hands of Peter Voitl, former founder of high-end brand Votec.”

While in Germany Carver is exclusively sold directly through the 14 Bike-XXL Group stores; in Austria and Italy they are sold exclusively through Sportler AG’s 20 sporting good outlets and its virtual store Sportler is owned by the Northern-Italian family-runned Oberrauch Group founded in 1848. Among others Oberrauch Group is the parent company of Oberalp AG, owner of the mountain and wintersports sports premium brands Salewa, Silvretta and Dynafit, among others.

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