Unicycle.com

General
1

Hello,

Does anybody here know of a place that sells unicycles that ISN’T unicycle.com.

I find a whole bunch of places advertising them, but they are never selling. I just want to see if I could find some more variety…

Thanks

-Joe

2

i know

www.bedfordunicycles.ca/pricelist

3

Re: Unicycle.com

Try the Unicycle Factory http://www.tux.org/~bagleyd/unicycle_factory/ - Tom
Miller not only actually sells them, he builds them to your request.

—Nathan

“MUni14052” <MUni14052.fvr3y@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote in message
news:MUni14052.fvr3y@timelimit.unicyclist.com…
>
> Hello,
>
> Does anybody here know of a place that sells unicycles that ISN’T
> unicycle.com.
>
> I find a whole bunch of places advertising them, but they are never
> selling. I just want to see if I could find some more variety…
>
> Thanks
>
> -Joe

4

The link to the Bedford Unicycles pricelist is actually …
http://www.bedfordunicycles.ca/pricelist.htm

Carl

5

Has anyone bought anything from here? The profile hub/crank setups are literally twice the price of unicycle.com. Wierd. I guess I’m not sure what the rate of exchange is for canadian money but that seems like a lot, I didn’t think it was 1/2.

topside

6

The exchange rates are a that much, but the profile uni is like $380 USD and from unicycle.com it is $299 USD
Everybody has a different price

7

I and my fellow cyclists at the Ordinary Bike Shop in Danielson, CT sell, build, and service unicycles. We can do freestyle, MUni, trials, commuter, and other configurations. We also do seat work, frame alignments, wheel builds, and the like. Our supplies come from a variety of wholesale and retail suppliers, including uni dot com and The Unicycle Factory. Recent projects include a robust outdoor freestyle 20", a Profile/Monty-based trials, and a custom-wheel 36".

I’m not sure where you are in NY but I’m at Unatics meetings on a regular basis and could meet you there. In fact, we’ll be testing a new Coker wheel configuration and GB handle design this Saturday afternoon in Central Park.

Send me an email if you like!

Dave Stockton
Ordinary Bike Shop
21 Furnace Street
Danielson, CT 06239
(860) 774-1660
davstock06351 at yahoo dot com

See also http://www.bicycleclassics.com/home.html

8

Re: Unicycle.com

The prices are total cost in Canadian dollars. The profile set is now 520.00
Canadian.
The exchange is 480.00 CDN on 299.00 USD. plus a small amount for shipping
and duty. Still cheaper than ordering it from the US.

The price list will be updated as soon as Christmas orders slow down.
If you inquire about an item, I will let you know that it is cheaper now.

There are many lower prices and lots of new items !
B.C. Wheels, Ultimate Wheels, Powder coated components, 3" frames, etc…

Happy Holidays !
Darren

topside wrote:

> muni_guy wrote:
> > *The link to the Bedford Unicycles pricelist is actually …
> > http://www.bedfordunicycles.ca/pricelist.htm
> >
> > Carl *
>
> Has anyone bought anything from here? The profile hub/crank setups are
> literally twice the price of unicycle.com. Wierd.
>
> topside
>
> –
> topside - Perfecting the Image
>
> A Solopsistic panjandrum immured in a etiolating panopticon will soon
> metastasise into an eremite.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> topside’s Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/1028
> View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/22283

9

3" frames?!

Wow! That’s really the only thing that’s been holding me back from one of your Munis. Everyone (OK, almost everyone) raves about the 3" Gazz and I was scared to pop for a uni that couldn’t hold it. Can you give some details?

  • Is it the same lugged crown (but wider), are the legs crimped?
  • How much?

How about a preview?

Thanks,

Tim

10

Yup. I’ve bought a uni, wheelset, seat and some other stuff from him. Great guy, very helpful and he sells great stuff. And yes the Canada-US exchange rate sucks.

11

U-Turn, and everybody else,

Actually…

I live near Buffalo and Niagra Falls, so it would be about an 8 hour drive or so…

But however… Your club sounded pretty cool, well anything with the word Unicycle is cool.

Thanks to the rest of you also. Your websites helped a great deal.

12

I live kinda close to Buffalo/Niagara Falls. Well, it’s almost a 3-hour drive.

13

“E. A., NY” sounds like it may not be too far from Toronto. You could hook up with the Toronto Unicyclists and Darren Bedford. But as an American you will pay a little more doing business with him. For all you Canadians out there, he is my highest recommended uni vendor in Canada.

In the US, there are plenty of unicycle vendors other than Unicycle.com. But none of them has the same selection. To my knowledge, the only ones that have better prices only have them on the lowest-end unicycles. And most of those vendors don’t know the first thing about unicycles.

Any reason not to shop at Unicycle.com?

14

yes yes i have! and thoughs powdercoats looks awsome!

15

I’ve had great experience with John, Amy, and Co at uni dot com and I have spent a lot of money there. I got into unicycling with a unicycle purchased from there, and have spent some enjoyable time discussing many things with them over the phone. My bike shop also uses unicycle.com as a source of wholesale unicycle supplies. Some of the fine unicycling videos I own may not have been possible without the support of unicycle.com. With that in mind, here are some reasons, and there are others.

  1. unicycle.com doesn’t do service, maintenance or repair. Their warranty coverage is fantastic. But what if you can’t repair your own, and your LBS is clueless, or won’t touch it? For example, I needed to ream out my Pashley frame to accept a larger seatpost. One bike shop I went to, the largest in this area with two branches, wouldn’t even touch the project. I wonder if they even have the proper tool. We need to cultivate shops that have the unicycle capability and knowledge to work on our prize machines.

  2. John’s stated intention, at least in the news article http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/dayonthejob/12/13/drummond/index.html, is to be a company-builder. Here are his words:

In other words, once unicycle.com is going great guns, his plan is to go on to the next thing. What does that mean for unicyclists? I think that many of us are reluctant to put all of our eggs (our beloved sport) in one basket, as robust as that basket seems at the moment. Even if one has the highest opinion of John and Amy, and I do, who will be his successor, and what will he/she do to the company?

  1. As consumers it is never good to rely completely on one company, let alone one family. This is why we hate it so much when we buy a laptop from HP that can only use batteries that we have to buy from HP. When I make purchases of anything, I spread the buying around so I keep my options open.

  2. In a free market economy, competition is what improves products and keeps prices down. By limiting one’s unicycle purchases to one company, we are, in the long run, encouraging higher prices and lower quality.

  3. Other unicycle dealers are already suffering due to the success of unicycle.com. As an example, The Unicycle Factory, a mainstay of the unicycling community for many many years, is about to close its doors, despite a recent custom project for Cirque de Soleil. The fund of knowledge, experience, and sheer unicycle enthusiasm in that company is about to go down the tubes. If we spread our purchases around, we can keep that knowledge and understanding with us. For example, I recently built a Coker wheel with stainless steel spokes. How did I get them? unicycle.com didn’t have and couldn’t get them. Darren Bedford, another dealer, who didn’t have them, recommended Tommi at The Unicycle Factory. Tommi invested many years ago in a huge number of 19" spokes, I think it was 10,000, and a spoke cutter/threader (today’s cost for that machine - almost $3000). He was able to send me a set of 40 at about $2 each. Not only that, but he knew offhand that Sem Abrams of Semcycle had some special nipples with a larger head that was required for the Coker rim. Not only that! He also knew that adhesive rim tape is better for the Aero rim than the rubber strip that unicycle.com uses. I tested his recommendation and found that it is indeed true. NOT ONLY THAT! He sent me several videos, to borrow or keep, that he had recorded off the airwaves. My favorite so far is a special on the bicycle industry. We need to keep that personal touch around.

  4. unicycle.com is not constructed to do special projects. If you want something done that isn’t off-the-shelf, you have to go somewhere else. But have you ever tried to get a custom frame builder to build a unicycle frame? I have, and most of them won’t touch the project. “Not my thing” was one of the responses I got. By purchasing products from somewhere that can do special projects, we ensure that place will be around when we need them.

So consider this scenario: unicycle.com makes a bundle, and meanwhile the other shops have gone out of business. John sells unicycle.com to some bicycle manufacturer, who immediately cuts out most of its (now internal) competition, as well as the least profitable lines. This company also has ties with a cycle tire company, so they also limit or eliminate sales of tires from other companies. Since the selection has dropped off, so has some of the thrill of unicycling, and business drops. Finally, the buying company, for whom the unicycle line is 2% of its business, eliminates most of the selection except for a 20", 24", and a giraffe, which is exactly what you find right now in the Quality Bike Parts catalog. But now there is no one around with the skills, knowledge or tooling to make custom unicycles. Back to the Dark Ages!

16

I don’t believe that unicycle.com has hurt unicycle innovation. In fact I would have to say that they have been instrumental in encouraging and enabling more innovation in unicycle design and components in the last few years than has ever happened in the last 50 years of unicycling.

Unicycle.com has encouraged some specialized unicycle components that we would not have had otherwise. One example is the Airfoil rim for the Coker. That rim would not have happened without unicycle.com.

They make it easy to get many custom unicycles like the Wyganowski, Wilder Lightrider, and many others. Would we have the Nimbus II / Yuni frame in the US if unicycle.com didn’t import it? There are many other new unicycles and components that unicycle.com has encouraged the development of.

As for Tommi and the Unicycle Factory. How many people even know of the Unicycle Factory. You have to be a serious unicyclist to have even heard of it and even then there will be some serious unicyclists who don’t know who Tommi is and that he runs a place called the Unicycle Factory. The problem is that Tommi doesn’t run it as a serious business. People learn of the Unicycle Factory by word of mouth. If Tommi had run the Unicycle Factory as a serious business he would be doing better today. That isn’t the fault of unicycle.com.

I have not yet ordered anything from the Unicycle Factory. However, I do need to order some of the custom Coker spokes. I’ll give him a call tomorrow.

17

I think u-turn makes some good points that require some thought. I tend to disagree with some of it.

For example, I never saw any unicycles other than the cheap Taiwanese versions in bicycle shops and, hence, never even knew that any others existed. Unicycle.com changed all of that for me. I found out there were Miyatas, Pashleys, SemCycles, and the awesome Coker. (I refrain from writing the heavily overused “awesome” except where appropriate and even then maybe once every two years. Next to Coker it is appropriate.) I think that they expanded not only my awareness of the unicycle market but that of others as well.

Also, saying that the mass sales approach by unicycle.com has stifled originality and development in the unicycle field is somewhat like saying that Ferraris and formula 1 race cars don’t exist because Henry Ford invented the assembly line. If anything, unicycle.com has encouraged and even inspired development. So have Roger Davies, Kevin Gilbertson, Darren Bedford, Kris Holm, Dan Heaton, Scott Bridgman, Steve Howard, Bruce Edwards, and Sem Abrahams; just in different ways.

In addition, the statement that unicycle.com is not good because it doesn’t provide maintenance, service, and repair but it DOES provide outstanding warranty coverage is inconsistent. There is only the one facility unlike franchises or global corporations such as Meineke, Sears, GM, JiffyLube or the like. Going to Marietta, GA for service might be a bit troublesome for our Aussie friends. No, they may not service or repair your purchase but they will replace it or parts of it if they fail or are faulty. And they are very good about this.

Finally, because of the relatively small size of the unicycling community (and i’m writing about the global unicycling community here) even a large distributor such as unicycle.com remains personable and intimate rather than distant or aloof. Even u-turn himself is on a first name basis with John and Amy.

18

excellent words U-Turn

John does deserve a vacation,though i hope its never a permanent one.that would suck to one day call 1-800-unicycle and hear “thank you for calling TREK unicycles…please hold…” :astonished:

19

Re: Unicycle.com

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 17:15:10 -0600, MUni14052
<MUni14052.fvr3y@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:

>Does anybody here know of a place that sells unicycles that ISN’T
>unicycle.com.

<www.semcycle.com>, obviously selling Semcycles only.
<www.unicycle.uk.com> in the UK
<www.eenwieler.nl> in the Netherlands
and your LBS of course.

Klaas Bil

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

20

Excellent words, guys. Here are a few responses.

  1. unicycle.com has definitely stimulated innovation. The example I mentioned was videos, but I agree wholeheartedly that many aspects of the entire unicycle community got a big vitamin shot in the arm because of this company. They are surprisingly creative in many areas. Like John Childs mentioned, the Aero rim is another excellent example. My point was that, in the long term, the tendency is often in the opposite direction.

  2. I didn’t say that other businesses were run well. I agree with John when he says that The Unicycle Factory’s business approach is lacking. I think that, even now, if The Unicycle Factory were to bounce into the 20th century, and focus somewhat, there is a worldwide market large enough for the kinds of specialty things they do to make an excellent business. I do think that unicycle.com is an excellent example of the kind of internet business that really can survive and do well because its customer base is so widely scattered. I’ve told John Drummond that more than once on the phone.

  3. Saying that unicycle.com doesn’t do repairs but does do good warranty isn’t inconsistent, Harper. They are separate things. unicycle.com doesn’t do repairs. Can I send a 3 year old Miyata to them for frame alignment, wheel truing, and general refurbishment? Not at the present. Can I send uni.com a battered wheel and say, “Please fix this!”? Not at the present. What I said was that unicycle.com’s charter doesn’t cover everything that is involved in the lifetime of a unicycle and its pet. Once the warranty is up, you are on your own.

In addition, I didn’t say that unicycle.com was bad because of this. In fact, I never said they were bad at all; just the opposite - several times. What I’m saying is bad is the unicycle community losing diversity in its resources.

By the way, Jag - Profile itself makes a unicycle that you can buy; it’s in their catalog.