If a customer wants to buy a new bike, what do they do with their used bike? TPC helps bike shops drive more new bike sales by offering a turn-key solution that lets customers trade-in their old bicycles. The TradeUp system is simple, free to use, and a great sales tool.
[button]Sell Your Bike[/button]
Spend a day on a bike shop sales floor and you’re bound to come across a customer who’s motivated to buy a new bike — there’s just one little problem. They’ve got an old bike, and they don’t want to deal with selling it. It seems like the hardest part about buying a new bike is often trying to sell an old bike.
What do you tell this customer? How can you and your shop eliminate this friction, close the deal, and sell that bike? The Pro’s Closet has a program specifically designed to help: It’s called the TradeUp program.
The Pro’s Closet has been buying and selling used bikes since 2006. TradeUp is your shop’s way to harness our knowledge, expertise, and our desire to continuously build our inventory of pre-owned bikes, which we sell online. We’ll buy that customer’s bike, making it easy for you to sell them their dream bike.
Learn more about a used bike trade-in program that is helping bike retailers across the U.S.
How does TradeUp work?
TradeUP is a turn-key solution for your bike shop. If a customer wants to trade-in their used bike and use the value toward a new bike on your sales floor, our team is ready to provide a free, no obligation quote as quick as we can. The process is simple:
1. Submit the bike for TradeUp
Our easy-to-use online form collects up to five photos of the bike plus a few details. You can use your dealer account portal to submit a customers bike on their behalf. Only 2 photos are required (a clear, full view of the driveside and non-drive side of the bike). However, we ask that the shop thoroughly inspect the bike for any upgrades, blemishes, or damage and include photos.
If you aren't already signed up, you can do so here.
2. Get a custom quote
Our bike experts provide a custom quote for each bike submission. They account for every unique aspect of a bike: model, year, upgrades, condition, and more. This quote will be sent to both the shop and the customer.
3. Accept the offer
If your customer accepts our offer, they simply have to complete our Verif process to declare ownership and include their serial number.
4. Apply TradeUp credit to a new bike
Provided the bike matches their submission and is free of structural damage, they can take their TradeUp credit and apply it to a new bike from your shop.
5. Ship the old bike to The Pro's Closet
Your shop boxes up the old bike and ships it to The Pro’s Closet using a prepaid shipping label that we provide. You’ll be paid the value of the TradeUp within two days of the bike arriving at our facility.
Bike inspection:
*Bike offer could be amended upon inspection due to undisclosed damage or missing components. Examples include: dented or cracked wheels, broken shifters or derailleurs, or missing electronic shiting chargers. In the case of a broken carbon frame, we may opt to pay for a carbon repair, which would be amended from the original offer. If a carbon frame is broken in too many places or in a challenging place for repair, we may fail the bike and send it back. This situation is unideal for all parties involved, which is why we ask dealers to perform as thorough of an inspection at time of submission as possible.
Common areas to inspect:
-Behind the crankset (chain drop)
-Tire rub areas inside fork and stays
-Bottom bracket and downtube area subject to rock strikes
-Top tubes in areas subject to repair stand and bike rack clamps
-Steerer tubes for over-tightened stems
-Seat masts for over-tightened seat mast caps
-Metal frames should be free of any dents
-Wheels should be free of any cracks, dents, hops, or flat spots
Why your shop should use TradeUp
For most cycling enthusiasts, a bike is the third largest purchase they make behind a car and a house. (Or sometimes ahead of a car … We’ve all been there!) Plus, bike prices are rising. In the last 5 years both covid and tariff's have caused the price of bikes to go up considerably. Having a tool to make a new bike purchase easier is a win/win all around.
Consider the car industry. New cars are also a big investment and they aren’t getting any cheaper. You’d be hard-pressed to find a reputable dealership that didn’t accept used cars on trade-in. It’s become an key part of how the industry works: Used sales lubricate new sales. And even people who originally bought used cars can be converted to new-car buyers with the enticement of a trade-in.
The Pro’s Closet is well on its way to bringing this system to the bike industry with TradeUP.
Your customer easily unlocks the value of their old bike and gets the new bike of their dreams. You sell a bike and gain a new customer (or cultivate the relationship with an existing client), and we get a pre-owned bike for our inventory that will be refurbished and sold to another cyclist. Everyone wins!
Get in touch with our team to start a TradeUP program at your shop. We’ll have you rolling in just a few minutes.
TradeUp testimonials
“The Pro’s Closet’s bike trade-in program has been a necessity for our business. Before TPC was an option, we’d take in used bikes and try to sell them on eBay. That was a lot of work. It took a couple of staff members almost a full-time job just to get small margins back on these used trade-ins.”
— Grant Fanning, Carytown Bicycle Co.
“It works two ways. First we’ll literally have someone come in and we know they’re coming a lot of times it’s a repeat customer. It facilitates it. The other is people are coming in just looking around, they have to sell their bike first, being able to talk about how easy it is to sell their bike to TPC is a really good way to accelerate the sales process and take the barrier away.”
— Chuck Kininmouth, Pro Bike + Run
“It has panned out way better than I thought it would have.
“Streamlined is the best way I can describe it. I didn’t want to have to get into haggling. Once we saw how TPC operates, it really takes away the awkwardness of negotiation. The biggest benefit is how easy the transaction is.
“I think the used market is simply going to bolster the new bike market.”
— Adam Johnson, Wheatridge Cyclery
“TradeUP is definitely something we think a lot about when it comes to the lifetime of a customer, how they progress from first bike to second bike and so on.”
— Grace Hutton, Serious Cycling
