Lusty Helps Boost Your Store and Workshop Profitability
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In these tough times for the complete bicycle market, the Lusty Industries team knows that dealers need to increase their workshop and P&A profitability and they’ve developed a great range to help their dealers achieve these goals.
Lusty Industries is far more than a wholesaler that simply imports products and distributes them to dealers.
They’re a rider owned and operated company, coming into the industry from a mountain biking heritage, but now also embracing gravel riding.
“We haven’t come from a pure road background, but gravel is a beautiful blend of everything,” explained Lusty’s founder Johnny McLean.
“That’s the way we’re looking at it as a business. We’re doing the North American mountain biking version of gravel!”
As you’ll see below, Lusty are also heavily involved in product research and development and their closeness to riding has helped them develop their own winning product ranges. Listening closely to their customers, both end consumers and independent bicycle dealers, has also been a key element.
Albek
Most major wholesalers have their own house brands, but in Lusty’s case it is literally in house – Albek is named after founder Johnny’s kids, Albee and Beckett.
Johnny and his team have been building the Albek brand, starting with bags, for only a few short years in the peak of Covid and it’s now sold globally.
“It’s all designed here in Australia,” Johnny said. “We’ve tested it with many global athletes including Jack Moir, World Enduro Champion from our own back yard.
“We’ve recently launched a hydration pack range called the H20 Haul Collection that we’ve been working on for a few years. It’s super lightweight – form, fit and function with a lifetime warranty, in three, four and eight litre sizes.
“We use an X-strap fitting system which we tested for years to fit various body shapes: men women, large, small and kids. My ulterior motive was for it to fit my kids, Albee and Beckett.”
Champions Choice
Champions Choice is a much newer house brand than Albek, with a single product range focused upon building a better mousetrap when it comes to tyre sealants. This has become a huge market with the ever expanding popularity of tubeless tyres.
“We developed Champions Choice here during covid,” Johnny explained. “We were talking with bicycle workshops about pain points. Shops are becoming more proactive in minimising waste. Churning through lots of small plastic bottles of sealant is expensive and it’s generating unnecessary waste. Workshops also had an issue with Sealant shelf life, we developed a product that has an opened shelf life and in-tyre life of at least 12 months!
“I wanted to develop a good product, made in Australia, that reduces waste, at a margin that gives value to a workshop, because it’s a commodity item.”
This workshop focus is reflected in Champion Choice’ sales. Although they offer a 500 ml bottle for consumers, that dealers can order in six packs, their best seller by far is their 10 litre workshop container that includes a tap.
“Some of the premium products have a very limited shelf life once opened due to the mix of ammonia and latex,” said Johnny. “Champions Choice lasts more than 12 months after it’s opened, which we’re pretty proud of.
“We partnered with an Australian motorsport company that does a lot of work with high end motorsport racing. They helped us develop the product.
“We wanted to make sure that it worked in cold and hot climates, so we sent some to Canada to be tested in show and to South America to get tested in heat.
“We had some pretty cool racers test it. I can’t publicly say because they’re sponsored by other brands, but they still use Champions Choice!”
Boosting Your Margin
Busy bicycle workshops go through a lot of tyre sealant, so savings here can make a big difference to your bottom line.
Johnny elaborated, “It’s a really good product that is the cheapest sealant per serve. It comes with a little 50 ml cup. It’s all about margin. There will always be some customers who want the premium brand product, I believe our product serves that purpose anyway.
“But if you’re a store, fitting a lower level tubeless ready tyre, do you really want to spend all your margin putting in a sealant that the customer won’t necessarily benefit from?
“You can make more profit in your workshop and reduce your waste and have a longer shelf life with Champions Choice.
“We’ve been in the market for 15 months and the sales growth has been phenomenal. We’re doing thousands of litres per week.”
Maxima
Staying in the workshop, Lusty offers a complete solution for oils, lubes and related products through Maxima. This 30 year old southern California based company make their products in the USA. Starting in motorcycling before expanding into mountain biking.
“It’s a premium brand and a huge OEM (original equipment for manufacture) supplier,” explained Johnny. “They supply all of the oils and lubricants for RockShox, Fox and more or less all of the OEM products for Trek and Bontrager.
“We can cover end to end bicycle workshop requirements: suspension, chain lubes, greases, washes, degreasers, dropper post lubes, brake fluid and waxes.
crankbrothers
Although it wasn’t their first product, crankbrothers’ breakthrough product that put them on the world stage was their egg beater pedal, launched in 2001. The company, that started in a California garage, is now owned by the Selle Royal Group and boasts a wide range of products, including shoes.
“I think we’ve probably cemented ourselves as the number one shoe in the mountain bike after-market,” Johnny said. There’s now a Crankbrothers gravel bike shoe that’s amazing.”
“Crank Brothers play in a lot of product categories. It’s a fantastic brand run by great people in Laguna Beach, Southern California.”
One of their major product categories is pumps. Johnny said that their crankbrothers KLIC floor pump had temporarily sold out, even though the retail price is $375
“Sure, it’s getting up there in price for a pump,” Johnny conceded, but when you see it in the flesh, you can see the value. It’s very practical.”
Meanwhile, the latest new product from Crankbrothers is their S.O.S. TT18 on-bike tool kit. TT stands for twin tube, which describes the design.
“It looks pretty stealth, in two cannisters,” Johnny said. “It opens with spring loaded buttons at the front. It fits to the bike via water bottle cage mounts. There’s a lot more of these popping up all over frames including under the top tube.
“It includes a really cool chain tool that holds the chain level so that you put the pin in straight. It can carry up to 2 x 25 g quick fill cannisters. It’s just the level of quality of all the tools.”
Enduro Bearings
This is another USA-based company that has renowned material quality and product design.
We previously featured Enduro Bearings in detail here.
More recently, we featured their latest workshop tool innovation to increase mechanics’ productivity as part of our 2024 Taipei Cycle coverage here.
“Enduro do an exceptional job of building products for the bike shop mechanic, as well as for end consumers,” said Johnny.
“Matt (Harvey, Enduro’s co-founder) is really passionate about developing tools that are very functional and make life easy for workshops.
“Their bottom bracket development is also pretty incredible – they come with a lifetime warranty. On his own bike Matt has a seven or eight year old bottom bracket that he pressure washes every time after he rides to give it a tough life, and it’s still perfect.”
Route Werks
Route Werks is a Rhode Island (east coast) USA company specialising in products for gravel and adventure riding.
The Route Werks handlebar bag features a hard shell adjustable lid that can be customised to accept most cycling computers and smartphones. It’s also designed for quick one handed access to storage, while you’re riding, with a single lever to fit and remove the bag from your bike and a shoulder strap for off-bike use.
Brand New to Lusty – Chamois Butt’r
Johnny joked about his latest addition to the Lusty range, “If you told me 20 years ago, “One day you’d be doing Chamois Butt’r,” I would have laughed at you!”
“But when you see a good product… you see a good product.
“I tried it on long gravel rides. I hadn’t even considered chamois creme before that.”
Chamois Butt’r was developed way back in 1988 by Steve Matthews a physiotherapist and cycling fanatic. From day one it’s featured distinctive purple and yellow packaging.
“The package colouring came from their desire to be so abstract that when they were placed in a retail store, it was the ugliest product they could think of,” Johnny explained. “I like that story! They knew they had a great product and they wanted to attract attention to their brand.
“It’s water based and has an extremely long shelf life after being opened. A fantastic product good margins and a simple range.
“We’re going to be very friendly with samples. They like people to test it. So we’ll be out at events and we’ll have a lot of freebies available for dealers through our reps. I signed the deal at Sea Otter this April and our first stock arrives in July 2024.”
For more information contact Lusty Industries at www.lustyindustries.com, sales@lustyindustries.com or (02) 4962 3511.