My love affair with Pipedream Cycles is over.
Please note: This article describes my own experience and my interpretation of it based on citeable information. It isn't intended to speak for every Pipedream customer, nor do I suggest that everyone has had the same experience. But this is mine.
I've chosen not to promote this post on socil media as I don't want it to seem vindictive or like sour grapes. I also don't want to cast an aspersions on any individuals. It's our catharsis. Take it or leave it.
So, how Do You Lose a Customer Who Still Wants to Buy Your Bike?
Everything beneath the line above was written over a month ago for catharsis. I don't think I was ever going to publish it. However, someone asked me about my Pipedream Sirius S5 while I was riding recently. I went online to show the person the company's Instagram and I'd been banned from it. Facebook too, also the Pipedream community page. Not just me, but someone has gone out of thier way to ban all of my social accounts an business accounts from seeing Pipedream content. That's dedication! I'm confused why this is the case as I have catagorically never said a bad word about anything or anyone related to the brand. Like I said, I'm confused, but it has pushed me to publish this blog about my experience with Pipedream cycles. I'm likley going to be annoyed with myself for letting myself open to critisism for this. But it's my way of just putting my personal disappointment to bed.
As well as writing this, I've been trying to work out whether to publish it for a while. Partly because I don't particularly enjoy writing negatively about small businesses. I run a few small businesses myself. I know how difficult it is, how many plates there are to spin, and how quickly something fairly minor can become a massive problem when there aren't enough hours or people to deal with it. But also because I still really like Pipedream's bikes. There's nothing wrong with the product.
And that's probably the strangest part of this whole story.
I've owned five Pipedream frames over roughly a decade. Three Moxies and two Sirius. My partner and I still own Sirius bikes. I've recommended them to people, written about them, defended the brand when conversations became negative and generally been one of those customers every small bike company needs. Not an ambassador in the commercial sense, just an advocate. Someone who buys the product, likes it, tells other people about it and comes back for another one. The subject of this blog, The Pipedream Sirius S6 Ti should have been number six. For the longest time, I assumed it would be the latest and likely the last hardtail I would ever own.
The bikes were never the problem. Pipedream make, and have made, some absolutely brilliant bikes. My Sirius S5 is one of the best hardtails I've ever ridden. Actually, scrub that, it's one of the best bikes I've ever owned, full stop. That's not just me either. Pipedream's bikes have been incredibly well received over the years. The Sirius in particular has earned the kind of reviews most small manufacturers would give their right arm for. So this isn't a story about falling out of love with a product. It's about slowly losing confidence in everything surrounding it.
Spend a bit of time around forums and owner discussions and you'll find other customers talking about long waits, poor updates, unanswered messages, stock uncertainty and concerns about after-sales support.
Over the last couple of years I'd had emails go unanswered, different points of contact come and go, difficulty getting straightforward information about stock, confusing messages around pricing, problems with social media and a general sense that every few months there was another reset or another new beginning. None of these things individually would have stopped me buying another frame. Collectively, they started to matter.
And I wasn't alone. Spend a bit of time around forums and owner discussions and you'll find other customers talking about long waits, poor updates, unanswered messages, stock uncertainty and concerns about after sales support. I don't mention that to pile on. Internet forums are internet forums and unhappy customers tend to make more noise than happy ones. But when your own experiences start looking increasingly similar to everyone else's, it's difficult to ignore.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is that I wasn't shopping around for a titanium hardtail. I wasn't comparing ten manufacturers on geometry spreadsheets. I wasn't trying to knock hundreds of pounds off the price. I wanted the Pipedream.
For a long period the Ti Sirius S6 was advertised at £1,500 and I made several attempts to establish availability and actually make moves to buy one. At one point I was told the £1,500 price was going to end and the frame would return to full price. That created a bit of urgency, naturally.
Except the price didn't go back up. Later, after chasing availability again, I was told the frames weren't actually in the country. Then came an email saying they had been manufactured and were ready to ship. Fine. Progress. Then came the bit that made me nervous.
I was told that to ship them, some of the cost needed to be paid upfront, so customers would probably need to put deposits down on frames. Now, maybe that's completely innocent cash flow management in a small company. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But from the customer side of the fence, after all the previous uncertainty and communication problems, being asked to put money down partly so the company could get the frames shipped was exactly the wrong thing for me to hear.
My position was pretty simple. Get the bike here and I'll buy it. I wasn't asking them to finance a speculative product nobody wanted. I was sitting there wanting one. But I wasn't comfortable financing part of the journey into the country myself. And that was another point where the sale simply drifted away.
Eventually there was another change within the business and I decided to write to them properly. Not an angry email, actually quite the opposite. I explained my history with the brand, the five frames, the recommendations, the social media issues, the unanswered emails and why something that should have been an incredibly easy purchasing decision had somehow become difficult.
To their credit, the response was good. Really good, actually. There was an acknowledgement that communication and stock had been ongoing problems. There was no attempt to tell me I had imagined it all. Perhaps the latest management had finally nailed it. They said rebuilding trust would be difficult, that they wanted to improve communication and stock availability, particularly spare parts, and that if I decided to buy an S6 in future they'd be happy to work out a deal and thanks for the feedback.
That was exactly what I wanted to hear. Not a free bike. Not even a discount. Just acknowledgement.
I remember thinking, brilliant. Maybe this really is the reset. And perhaps I could be part of it. There's something quite nice about having been around a brand for years, seeing it struggle, then seeing somebody get hold of it and make it work again. I genuinely wanted that to happen.
Then, not long afterwards, an email arrived.
There was a Sirius S6 Ti available. Before announcing it more widely, they had contacted me to give me the opportunity to take it. That's good customer service. Seriously. Someone had remembered the conversation, remembered that I wanted the bike and given me first refusal.
At this point I had the money sitting waiting. This should finally have been it.
I asked the price.
The price had gone up to £2,050, but because of everything we'd discussed I was offered £300 off. £1,750.
And this is where things got weird for me. Because the frame I'd been trying to buy for a long time had been £1,500. So after all the emails, all the waiting, all the stock uncertainty, all the conversations about rebuilding trust and a gesture intended to recognise my experience, I was being offered the bike for £250 more than I'd spent all that time trying to pay for it.
I declined. Then there was another offer. £1,600. So now we were £100 apart.
Then somehow that £100 became the most important thing in this whole story. I completely understand that businesses change prices. Costs rise. Shipping changes. Exchange rates move. Margins matter. I'm not suggesting a company has to honour an old price forever because somebody once thought about buying something. But that's not what happened here.
I'd actively been trying to buy this frame while it was £1,500. Had communication been better, had stock been available when expected, had the transaction simply worked as transactions generally should, I'd have paid £1,500 and we'd all have been happy.
This actual frame would also have been from the same batch, so I have to assume sold at a margin where they would have sold it for £1500 to everyone else.
I wasn't really negotiating over £100 anymore. I was asking myself whether ten years of customer history had a value?
Instead, after everything that had happened, the resolution was that I could finally buy it for £1,600. That didn't feel like goodwill to me.
It felt, however unintentionally, like I was paying £100 extra for the privilege of having waited through all the problems that had prevented me buying it at £1,500 in the first place.
I wrote back and tried to explain that. I said the money was there. I said I'd saved it specifically because I expected eventually to buy the frame. I explained that just £100 stood between me buying it and feeling valued as someone who had been a long term customer and, potentially, a lifetime customer.
I wasn't really negotiating over £100 anymore. I was asking myself whether ten years of customer history had a value? And we couldn't quite get there. In the end I wrote how I felt in a very measured way and left it at that. I received no reply.
This is probably the reason I've eventually decided to write this. It's not really a bike story. It's a business story. When you buy an existing company you acquire all the obvious things. The name, products, intellectual property, website, stock, supplier relationships and whatever else comes with the deal. But you also inherit something that doesn't appear neatly on a stock sheet. Customers. And those customers arrive with history.
Some of that history is incredibly valuable. Brand loyalty, recommendations, community, repeat purchases, people wearing your T shirts and sticking your decals on vans. Some of it might be damaged. You inherit that too.
You can't reasonably be blamed for everything that happened before you arrived. But equally, the customer can't simply delete their experience because the ownership has changed. That's the bit I think businesses sometimes underestimate. Turning around a brand isn't only about making better commercial decisions going forward. Sometimes you have to repair what you inherited. And sometimes repairing it costs money.
In my case, apparently, it cost £100. But they wanted me to pay it?
This is the part I'd encourage anyone taking over a small enthusiast business to think about. What is a customer actually worth? Not the margin on today's sale. The customer.
I've bought five Pipedream frames. I've recommended them to other riders. I've talked about them online. I've written about them. I've defended the brand because I believed the products deserved it. And despite everything, I was still standing there trying to buy number six. That's a pretty committed customer.
If I'd bought that Ti Sirius from the new ownership and the experience had been good, what would I have said?Probably exactly what any business taking over a troubled brand would want an existing customer to say.
"They've sorted it."
That sentence is worth something. Instead I'm writing this. Not because I'm furious or feel entitled. I'm really not, I'm disappointed. There is a difference.
As I write this, I don't own the Ti Sirius S6 I'd been waiting to buy. I don't actually know whether that particular frame is still available. And despite everything I've written above, I still think it's a fantastic bike. That's what makes this slightly sad rather than in any way satisfying.
There's no triumphant ending where I bought something else and discovered it was infinitely better. There's no villain. There's no dramatic door slamming moment. Just a customer who spent a fair amount of energy wanting to give a company his money and somehow never managed to.
Perhaps that's the cautionary tale. Great products are incredibly difficult to create. Pipedream has already done that bit. It has made bikes that people love. Bikes people keep. Bikes people talk about. Bikes that generate exactly the sort of passionate little community that most niche cycling brands spend years trying to build. That community is an asset. But it isn't indestructible.
Every unanswered email takes a tiny piece out of it. Every uncertain delivery date takes another. Every customer who starts wondering whether they'll get an answer if something goes wrong takes another. Eventually the problem isn't whether somebody likes the bike. It's whether they trust the business enough to buy it.
In a time when the bike industry is so volatile, companies, no matter thier size need to take more care of thier customers. Even at their own expense now and again.
I sincerely hope Pipedream gets that right. I hope the new ownership succeeds. I hope communication improves, stock becomes predictable and this becomes one of those slightly awkward periods people look back on after a successful turnaround. Because the bikes deserve that. And maybe that's why I've written this.
Ten percent catharsis, perhaps. Ninety percent because there is a useful lesson in how close a company can get to retaining a customer and still lose them. Sometimes the gap isn't thousands of pounds. Sometimes it's £100 and one email. In a time when the bike industry is so volatile, companies, no matter thier size need to take more care of thier customers. Even at their own expense now and again. Particularly the ones that advocate for them at every turn. All of the above was deflating and whilst I do not believe any of it was delibirate or for any nefarious reason. It's left me incredulous and feeling the need to write it all down.
So that's it. All the bluff and bluster of me constantly sining the praises of my Sirius S5. The journey is over. It's time to move on.
So at the end of the day there is still an up side...
Meet my new bike...
Cheers.
Allan
Please note: This article describes my own experience and my interpretation of it. It isn't intended to speak for every Pipedream customer, nor do I suggest that everyone has had the same experience.
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