Bikes and cycling. Shopify for stores where every product needs advice.

A bike is rarely an impulse buy. The basket value is high, the choice depends on body height, intended use and budget, and many customers want to know before buying how they can finance or lease. On top of that come spare parts and accessories that only fit when standards and dimensions match. So the store has to advise, not just display.

The journey after the purchase is different too. A bike ships as bulky freight, needs final assembly or a handover in the workshop, and service and inspections are a fixed part of the business for many retailers. A store that only knows basket and parcel shipping leaves these parts with the team, which then catches them by phone and email.

That is why we start bike projects with the processes, not the theme: which payment methods and leasing routes exist, which system owns stock and serial numbers, how bikes are shipped, what happens in the workshop. Only once that is settled do we decide on page types, apps and integrations. That avoids later rebuilds, which cost far more in live operation.

Employee bike leasing is how many people get a high-quality bike. The employer leases the bike through a leasing provider and passes it on to the employee, and the instalment usually runs through payroll. For the store this means that part of the orders is not paid directly but handled through a provider that requires its own approvals and documents.

Technically this is a separate route next to the normal checkout. It needs a clear choice in the basket, the handover of order data to the provider, a status for pending approvals and a rule for when stock is reserved or released again. With Checkout Extensibility and Shopify Flow, parts of this route can be mapped in Shopify Plus instead of being chased up by hand.

At Bikemailorder, bike leasing is explicitly part of the scope of the migration from Shopware 6 to Shopify Plus. The case study is in progress, so we do not share implementation details here. What can be said in general: leasing is not a plugin you switch on at the end, but a process that has to be settled before the design.

Frame sizes are stated differently depending on manufacturer and bike type, sometimes in centimetres, sometimes in inches, sometimes as S, M and L. A general size chart does little to help. What matters is body height, inside leg and intended use, and the recommendation has to sit on the individual model, because geometries differ even within one brand.

We set up frame size, recommended body heights and geometry data as metafields on the product. From these comes a size calculator on the product page that works with the same data as filters and search. Because Shopify knows three option dimensions per product, such as size, colour and specification, we plan early which attributes are variants and which sit alongside as data.

With spare parts and components, compatibility decides the purchase. Does the cassette fit the freehub, the brake rotor the mount, the bottom bracket the frame, the thru-axle the fork? If that only sits in the description text, the question stays with the customer. They order the wrong part, send it back or ask support, and both cost you margin.

We model standards such as axle dimensions, mounting dimensions, wheel sizes and drivetrain systems as metaobjects that products reference. That lets the store filter by them, show on the product page what a part fits with, and point to matching accessories in the basket. The biggest effort lies in data maintenance: the values have to be taken over cleanly from manufacturer data or the inventory system.

Structured compatibility data also helps outside the store. Google and AI assistants increasingly answer questions about which part fits a particular bike directly. They can only do that when the information is machine-readable and uses the same terms across the whole range. Consistent terms are therefore the first step of the work, before any filter logic.

A bike in a box is bulky freight. Whether it arrives partly assembled or fully assembled and ready to ride changes packaging, carrier, costs and what customers expect. E-bikes come with batteries, and their shipping follows rules of its own. These differences belong in the store as shipping profiles and product data, so that costs and delivery time are right on the product page already.

Many bike retailers have a workshop or a physical shop. Click & Collect connects the two: the bike is bought online, made ready to ride in the workshop and handed over on site, often with saddle and handlebar set up. With Shopify POS, in-store sales and online stock run in one system, instead of maintaining two inventories separately and reconciling them every evening.

Service and inspections can be connected as well, for example as a bookable service or as an appointment request that goes straight to the workshop. What matters is that workshop planning can keep its own system if it runs well there. The store should hand over requests cleanly and not try to rebuild every piece of workshop logic itself.

Cycling clothing and protective gear follow sizing logic of their own. Jerseys, shorts and gloves fit differently depending on the cut, while helmets and protectors are chosen by head circumference or body measurement and have to fit properly to protect. Fit notes therefore belong on the individual product, and material and use case in structured fields that filters and search can read.

If you sell beyond Germany, you need prices, currencies, taxes and content per market. Shopify Markets handles this in one store, instead of maintaining a separate store for every country. At Platzangst, a brand for MTB and gravel clothing, internationalisation is part of the migration from Shopware 6 to Shopify Plus. Here too the case study is in progress.