We just pushed out a release with a handful of small updates and fixes. You'll probably notice the home page now shows a "or Make Offer" link next to the price. There is also a link to the blog at the top of the home page - near the sign in link. On the listing page, we made the Reply to Comment button much easier to find. Lastly, we made several improvements on the create a listing form for shipping options.

Drop us a line if there is a feature you'd like to see on BikeList or to let us know about any bugs.

I got a demo of the Gocycle G4 at the CABDA Expo in Los Angles, and then was able to take it for a short spin. This is the nicest folding ebike I have seen yet. Not cheap at $3500 but it is compact, stylish and light! Rides great, too, with a normal big bike wheelbase.

@bikelist Checking out the @Gocycle_official at the CABDA expo in Los Angeles. This is probably the coolest folding ebike I have seen yet. I took it for a ride and it rides great, too! #gocycle #ebike #foldingbike #citybike #bike #bikelife #bikelist ♬ BOOM - Tiesto

Welcome back to another edition of Seller of the Week: the blog series where we ask our favorite sellers five easy questions!

This week’s seller of the week is John Guerin AKA juanguerin. John has been one of our top sellers to date, with an eclectic and amazing variety of items from some of the brands our community loves the most: Paul Component, Chris King and Thomson just to name a few.

How did you get into bikes?

I was given my first two wheeler at age three by my Father and I've never looked back. Evel Knievel and BMX'ing in my early school years, road riding in high school and early college, and really falling in love hard in the 1990's and the birth of mountain biking.

What bike do you ride the most?

It's seasonal with the mountain single-speed in the summer months and the fat bike in the winter months.

What is your favorite bike ride?

Regardless of surface, just getting lost in new places for hours at a time, seeing new landscapes, climbing new mountains and meeting new cycling friends.

Campy or Shimano?

Bleh! It's all good. I get excited about the bling of Pauls, White Ind and King.

Any big plans for the next year?

I've registered for a number of Brevets in northern Colorado for the spring. Riding over the Big Horn mountain range in northern Wyoming in late summer which is the only range I haven't ridden yet in Wyoming. Lot's of single-speed mountain biking in between all that.

We will be at CABDA West in Los Angeles next week (January 10 & 11) in booth 420! Best booth number ever? Surprised they didn’t charge us extra for that!

This will be our first CABDA so we don’t know what to expect exactly, but the exhibitor list looks pretty awesome. We will be there talking about BikeList and how we can help independent bike shops and small brands reach more customers. And of course giving out stickers and trucker hats! So if you are at the show, please come say hi! Or shoot us a note if you want to make sure we find each other.

We just launched BikeList Local - a way to find bikes, parts, and accessories near you. You can save on shipping by purchasing on BikeList and picking up locally. The way it works is that the buyer purchases the item online and then picks up the item from a local seller.

How to find bikes and parts near you

To search for listings near you, just click on the "location" link at the top of the page. The page will refresh and show listings closest to you first.

You can find the shipping options on the Listing Page under the Shipping/Returns tab. Have a question about shipping options? Leave a comment on the listing or click on the envelope icon next to the seller's name to send a private message.

We also included a link to the BikeList Local page at the bottom footer of the website. From here you can see all local items by state.

How do I arrange for Local Pickup?

When checking out, you will be asked to select between Local Pickup or Standard Shipping if both options are offered by the seller.

After purchasing, the seller will contact you through BikeList Private Messaging to arrange for a local pickup. Make sure to check your spam folder or whitelist emails from bikelist.com ! If you don't hear from the seller, you can send them a private message either from your account or from a link included in your receipt email.

IMPORTANT! After picking up the item the buyer needs to click on the Picked Up Item link sent in the receipt email. The seller will not be paid until you do this!

Sales are considered final. It is the buyer's responsibility to inspect the item and ask questions of the seller before purchasing and picking up. BikeList isn't involved in the coordination of the pickup. This is worked out between the seller and the buyer. If you have concerns, then message the seller before deciding to purchase.

Sellers! Here's how it works

You can add Local Pickup to your existing listings or set it when creating a new one. On the create/edit listing form, select if you want to offer Local Pickup, Standard Shipping, or both. Don't forget to set the shipping cost if offering standard shipping!

A buyer may message you, or leave a comment on your listing asking about Local Pickup options. After the item sells, you will receive an e-mail notification that a Local Pickup order has been purchased (the buyer has PAID for the item) and that you should contact the buyer using a provided link in the e-mail to message them. At this point the purchase is considered final. Please note that you will not get paid for the sale until the buyer confirms pickup of the item, so it's good to remind them to do so when you arrange a pickup.

Questions?

let us know

I recently built this Weinmann Merckx up with 9 speed Dura Ace to sit on the trainer and am loving it. Yes newer bikes are lighter, have better brakes and more gears. But you don't need any of that for Zwift!

Other advantages: Your main bike is always ready to go. You don’t have to worry about straining that fancy ultra-lightweight carbon frame. And you can pretend you are Sean Kelly or Andy Hampsten or (insert your favorite 80s/90s pro here).

For anyone curious, here is the full build:

Weinmann Merckx 57cm Columbus SLX Corsa frameset
Chris King headset (just because)
Cinelli 1A stem
Soma Highway One bar (works a bit better with STI levers than an old school Cinilli bar IMO)
Thomson post (I’ve moved a bit forward in my old age)
WTB Volt saddle
Ritchey cranks (slightly lower q-factor than the Dura Ace)
Dura Ace 7700 shifters, ders, brakes

Stay tuned for a review of my new Zwift Hub trainer!

Let us know in the comments below: what is your trainer setup?

Historically cyclocross bikes have had higher bottom brackets than road bikes. But do you know why?

Clipless pedals have been the norm for a long time now–longer than cyclocross has been popular in the United States. So most people don’t know that the high bottom bracket was a result of not wanting toe clips to drag in the mud. I’d heard this anecdotally from some old timers, but never saw it verified anywhere until I posted our cyclocross bike video on Twitter and tagged Keith Bontrager.

Keith commented:

The high BB was necessary. They rode with clips and straps. They needed the extra height to avoid contact between the clip and the ground on the first crank revolution after a remount. Their foot wasn't in the clip yet and it was facing down, towards the ground. If the clip dug into the ground and spun the pedal it messed things up badly. Getting back into the pedal was critical, and really hard to do with cross shoes of that era in the mud.

Keith posted three examples of old cross shoes to illustrate. I love these old Duegi cross shoes:



Watch our video: What Is a Cyclocross Bike?

See our current cyclocross and gravel bike listings!

Welcome back to another edition of Seller of the Week: the blog series where we ask our favorite sellers five easy questions!

This week’s seller of the week is Jeff Frane, AKA BikeJerks. Jeff is a legend in the Minnesota bike scene and famously founded All-City Cycles. Today his main focus is divided between his BikeJerks brand and his newly launched Wilde Bikes. You can see Wilde Earth Ship #1 for sale on our site now! We love everything Jeff does and are stoked to see him on BikeList!

How did you get into bikes?

I started as a kid exploring the neighborhood and I never stopped. I started racing mountain bikes in Junior High and in High School I never got my drivers license because I was too afraid of the responsibility of maybe killing somebody. So I never stopped riding my bike as transportation. I graduated with a Liberal Arts degree and so was in fine prospect to be hired at a bike shop when I moved to Minneapolis after completing my secondary education and having livied in a 1992 Dodge Caravan for a year. In Minneapolis, all we do is ride bikes. Fact: all new citizens are issued a u-lock and chamois cream at the county line. It's in the constitution. Mind you it's industrial stuff, strictly the bare minimum quality.

What bike do you ride the most?

My daily driver is a BMX handlebar'd Surly 1x1 single speed or an eight speed Fat Chance Yo Eddy! with a front rack. I also ride a ton on my gravel bikes, mtb's and various vintage bikes. Because I am a person who easily falls in love with "things," I have many bikes so none of those gets significantly more attention in terms of hours of use than the rest. The honest answer to this question would be my fat bike, a Salsa Beargrease. For four months of the year it is the only bike I use for sport or pleasure.

Campy or Shimano?

This old chestnut again? Is it 1997? That's a lazy question whom only folks on the cusp of aging out of their Paramounts likely give a fig regarding. Everybody knows the Nuovo and Super Record groups were innovative and iconic. That Shimano crushed the 80's mtb game as off-road technology emerged. That Suntour was always innovating, had that WTB collaboration period and that their Bar Cons are some of greatest parts ever made for function and durability. And that Grip Shift sucked, but that SRAM AXS is the biggest innovation of the last ten years.

But I will say that Campagnolo C-Record is the most beautiful groupset in the history of ever by a margin. So yeah. Campy.

Any big plans for the next year?

My dance card is full. In addition to all of the Wilde commitments, I'm looking at expanding the events I run with two more big ride/tour extravaganzas in addition to the Hodag Country Ramble. If y'all want to experience some deep Midwest stuff, show the heck up. We party.

Photo credit Stevil Kinevil

Earlier today the IRS announced it would delay a rule change that would have impacted anyone selling over $600 on marketplaces like BikeList. You can read more about it here. This proposed rule change was incredibly annoying and confusing for sellers on marketplace platforms like ours, and drove many BikeList sellers to write in to complain to Rob and myself.

It used to be that if a person sold more than $20,000 AND 200 or more transactions on a platform like eBay or BikeList, the company would be required to collect personal information like Social Security Number, Address, etc., and then report those transactions to the IRS.

However, in 2021 Congress lowered that threshold to $600 and ONE transaction. Why $600? Best guess is that is the same magical threshold for reporting independent contractors. Which was set back in 1954 by the way. Gas was 21 cents a gallon back then.

When we were building BikeList earlier this year we we confronted with two VERY BAD options. Either we collect that personal information BEFORE a seller is allowed to list items on our site, or we collect the information before releasing funds to the seller when they cross $600.

We knew we would lose some folks with this, but chose to collect the info up front so nobody would think that we were pulling a gotcha on them after they sold their item. A quick look at our marketplace shows that about 80% of the bikes for sale for $600 or above. For most of our sellers, a single bike sale would trigger the information collection, reporting transactions to the IRS, and a 1099k in the mail in January.

So, where do we go from here? Now that the limit remains at $20,000 and 200 transactions for at least a year AND there is bi-partisan support for changing the law we have some room to redesign our seller onboarding experience to ask for information only if a seller is approaching the higher limit.

Even if Congress updates the rule to be $5k or $10k, it will be more manageable than $600. This is likely a larger development effort, so we can't quite say when the site will be updated..sometime next year.

Finally, we had a good time helping drive awareness in DC as part of the dream team. We met with some very nice Congressional advisors, staffers, and even one of our state's Senators. We tried our best to relay our seller's complaints - even the harsh expletive-laden ones - and be part of the solution.

What a year!. Dan and I founded the company in January, launched our MVP website in June and got our first sale in July. Each month has been bigger and more exciting than the last. Here are the highlights!

First Sale

We were expecting our first sale to be a stem or maybe a crankset. Instead we sold this awesome Nate Zuaks frame.



Biggest Sale

Our biggest sale came the following month: this Santa Cruz Santa Cruz Bullit CC for a whopping $7,999!



Coolest Vintage Bike

We love vintage bikes at BikeList. I knew this Salsa Ala Carte wouldn’t last long when it hit the site. I almost bought it myself!



Top Brand

Our top selling brand is…drum roll... Thomson! And for good reason. They make beautiful, durable stuff (I run their posts on all of my bikes).



New Features

We stayed busy making improvements to the site all year long. First we rolled out Price Drops. Then we launched Make Offer. Then we integrated with Project 529. Then we added private messaging and integrated commenting on blog posts. And we are about to launch local shopping!



We Launched Our Nonprofit Program

We at BikeList are dedicated to supporting the nonprofit bike shops that serve our communities. To help nonprofit shops clear donated inventory they may struggle to sell locally, we are offering all nonprofit shops the ability to post and sell items on BikeList for free. You can read more about our program here.

And we were thrilled to welcome Pedal It Forward as the first shop in our nonprofit program.



We Launched Merch

So far we have stickers, shirts and hats for sale on the site. But our truckers are definitely most popular. We sold out of the camo version quick, but don't worry, more are on the way!



We Launched Our Social Channels

First Instagram, then TikTok and Youtube. This was our most popular IG post and this was our most popular IG reel. And this TikTok blew up! Watch our most popular YouTube below.



We Launched Our Newsletter

We have sent out 25 weekly newsletters so far! We try to keep it fun! If you haven't already, sign up and check it out!

We Got Out of the House

First we went to Philly, then the we went to the cross races in Seattle. We have lots more travel planned for next year!



We Profiled Our Top Sellers

We love our sellers, and we love their answers to our stupid questions. You can read the whole Seller of the Week series here.



We Worked With Influencers

We had a lot of fun with influencers this year. From Oldshovel to Rad BMX Builds to Jess The Maker. And Hannah Bergemann starred in our bike boxing video!



We Got Involved in Politics

The new 1099k rules have been no fun for anyone. Dan got us involved with the 1099k Fairness Coalition. And as of Friday the 23rd it looks like it might have paid off!



People Wrote About Us

First Geekwire, then PEZ Cycling News. Then Dan Cavallari even invited me on his podcast!



We Are Just Getting Started!

Wow that seems a lot! But we have even bigger plans for next years! Thank you to everyone who has come this far with us! And stay tuned for more!