Giancarlo Zanol had a long and successful career owning a substantial industrial engineering supplies company called Skilled Materials Handling.
He sold the business about 4 years ago and settled into a life of retirement. Six months each year back in his native Italy and six months in Australia. But after a couple of years he started getting restless.
“You can only travel so much!” he said.
Then he saw and electric bike in Italy, went for a ride and liked the experience. He discussed it with his son Gianpaolo and decided to import them to Australia.
Hence Dolomiti Electric Bikes was started.
It’s now over a year down the track, with a smart new Dolomiti showroom in Carlton, just around the corner from Melbourne’s famous Lygon Street restaurant precinct.
Ironically, Dolomiti’s retail store customers have spoken with their wallets and the Emotion electric bike range from BH are proving to be their most popular sellers, well ahead of Dolomiti and Gazelle.
The shop is fitted out with a distinctly Italian style. Apart from a small range of outdoor clothing, ‘we’re getting out of this’, their sold focus is electric bikes.
“It’s not worth selling a normal bike for $300,” Giancarlo said. “There’s too much competition close buy and not enough margin.”
“Electric bikes need to be explained, but most of our customers have already done research on the internet before they come here. But it’s one thing to go on the net, and another to go on a test ride.”
Not surprisingly, Giancarlo is riding e-bikes himself after 40 years away from riding. “The second car is gone,” he said. “Now I only bike. On top of that, I’m keeping a bit fit.”
They’re also taking part in an interesting trial being done in conjunction with the University of Melbourne and Vic Roads. 17 e-bikes have been fitted with GPS tracking systems then given out to a range of people for their unrestricted use.
In this way, they can see the exact patterns of usage for the e-bikes. Where are they being ridden? How far each day?
The trial has been going for over 6 months and is returning some very interesting data. Rather than the e-bikes being solely used in the inner city, as was expected, the bikes have been ridden and taken far afield, both in the outer suburbs and even country areas and interstate.
Meanwhile, sales through the shop are small in terms of units, but still significant, given that the bikes are typically $2,000 each or more.
“We’ve sold about 70 bikes in the past 3 months,” Giancarlo said. “We also tried some Ducati electric bikes but no-one was interested. They were supplied on consignment so we returned them.
Giancarlo is not looking for a close, day to day involvement in the store, but is hoping that it will evolve into a long term, viable business that his son Gianpaolo and daughter Marianna will run.
This Dolomiti iPad lets customers find out more technical information while they browse in the store.
Giancarlo Zanol’s new e-bike store has an Italian feel, partly due to the wall mural that depicts his home region of Trento.