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news
Evans Cycles, Manchester (CC BY 2.0 Smabs Sputzer:Flickr)Make Evans Great Again: Evans Cycles investigating "re-purposed" Instagram account (plus exclusive Q+A)
Evans Cycles says its legal team is investigating an Instagram account belonging to one of its stores which it says was “re-purposed” by an ex-employee, who renamed it Make Evans Great Again. However, road.cc has been told that a number of current employees of the retailer are involved in the account, where recent posts have highlight grievances relating to management and working conditions.
Live blog: Anonymous employees launch Make Evans Great Again Instagram account
The Instagram account was initially set up for the company’s store at Gatwick, where the retailer also has its head office and main warehouse, with the last official post made in June last year.
At the end of December, however, new posts appeared that were highly critical of the company and its management. Through Instagram’s direct messaging facility, road.cc has been in contact with the person currently accessing the account, who says they are currently employed by the company and is not acting alone.
Evans, however, believes that the hijacking of the account is the work of one person acting alone.
A spokesman for the company told road.cc: “We are aware of the Instagram account in question as it was a store account that was accessed without permission and re-purposed by a former employee, who we believe is acting alone in this campaign.
“It's now with our legal team and Instagram as we aim to restore the account to its intended purpose. We have internal processes for colleagues to raise their concerns with us directly.”
Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct bought Evans out of administration in October 2018 after the business collapsed due to a combination of factors including cut-throat competition from online retailers, soaring overheads including staff costs and store rents and debt following a succession of management buyouts.
Since Sports Direct took over the business, a number of stores have been closed, including several in London, although the employee, speaking to road.cc anonymously, told us that he and a number of colleagues believe the problems go back further, as outlined in the Q&A below.
Other issues flagged up but not covered in the Q&A include alleged lack of access to the Cycle To Work scheme for employees on minimum wage, fears that Evans may adopt Sports Direct’s staff discount scheme, which provides less generous discounts than the trade ones they currently receive.
Concerns were also expressed about what was claimed to be an “outrageous” amount of wastage in the business, whether that be helmets “smashed and destroyed” from stores that are closing down, or the amount of paper and cardboard wasted, which was described as “unbelievable.”
The Instagram account’s new name, of course, is a tweak of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan, and was coined as a “bit of banter” by an assistant manager at the company’s Gatwick store.
We’re told that customers and staff loved it but, not least due to the associations with Trump, management didn’t – whereupon, the employee concerned got a cap made in the company’s green and gold colours with the words Make Evans Great Again emblazoned on it.
Indeed, the caps are said to have proven so popular, with so many people requesting them, that a crowdfunder has been set up on Go Fund Me to produce more of them.
The Q&A appears below, and clearly comes with the caveat that we are unable to verify whether the Instagram account is as Evans says being used by one person who is an ex-employee or, as is claimed, is being operated by a number of current employees acting together; since receiving the company’s statement this morning, we have contacted the person again and they have reiterated that they do currently work for the business and that others are involved.
road.cc Can you summarise all the issues make Evans Great Again has with the business?
Make Evans Great Again (MEGA) As cyclists ourselves we love working around bikes and products, but the majority of us find it very frustrating that the people directing the business know absolutely nothing about the industry or products we sell.
We are frustrated by how little investment the company makes on its staff and how we are dictated to on a daily basis whilst working for peanuts and also how the company cannot take any honest feedback from its staff.
road.cc How many people are involved in Make Evans Great Again, and what level are they operating at?
MEGA There are a few of us involved in this actual account and we have support from people all across the UK from most Evans stores and departments in Gatwick (head office, warehouse, store etc) which is fantastic because it’s all of us that make Evans great!
From store managers to mechanics to cleaners, you name it, everyone is agreeing on one thing and that is to MAKE EVANS GREAT AGAIN, especially those in the company that have worked here for over 20 years; they have seen all sorts of changes in the business and they say right now it’s some of the worst they have seen.
road.cc Did all the problems start with the Sports Direct takeover, or did things start to slide before?
MEGA A lot of people assume Sports Direct is the main source of our problems when really they have barely touched us as a company. Sure, we are now selling some of their low-end stuff which isn’t great, but the big issue is we are being run by the same people who almost took the company out of business back in 2018.
Since then we have had a Sports Direct CEO but they haven’t been about for us to say anything positive or negative, we hope they get rid of the current directors as they are the ones destroying the company. And since we’ve been taken over things haven’t exactly gone uphill, if anything it’s still going down.
road.cc What are specific examples of the poor products been brought into Evans stores as alluded to in one of your posts?
MEGA Evans was known to be a place where you can get the best brands you wanted at a good, competitive price but now Evans focuses more on buying cheap, cheap, cheap.
We don’t know if it’s because the buying team are just bad at maths or whatever, but they really let the company down with their arrogance and think they are better than everyone else.
Their communication across the company is appalling whether it be not letting the warehouses know what’s going on with stock they have coming in, or to the stores when they are chasing up back orders etc.
Since the takeover we have seen brands like Schwinn, Viking and Muddy Fox along with cheap clothing brands like Sugoi. No store wants to sell these brands, it’s embarrassing for stores to sell Viking bikes and a week later the customer comes in with broken frame or fork yet the store is forced to display these bikes.
road.cc Have people left because they are unhappy, or have there been redundancies?
MEGA So many good talented people who have a real passion for cycling have left the company because they were not getting the money they deserved and were treated like trash.
The company does not like progression and will keep you working on a lower wage for as long as they can.
Some people have even gone to places like McDonald’s because the pay is much better! How can we pay less than these places when our staff are expected to know so much about what they are doing? One of the store’s best mechanics left because they couldn’t pay him an extra 30p!
As far as redundancy goes the warehouse got hit hard with the news they would be made jobless early last year.
Then, when the company realised they were going to have to pay thousands out to their staff who had been in the company for 10-20 years, they hoped most of the warehouse would quit before it came to redundancy as they would save thousands of pounds but that’s wrong; they are playing with people’s lives, some of these people have families to look after but the company doesn’t care.
road.cc What should the company do to address the problems you perceive it has? (an action plan, if you will)
MEGA Most of us at Evans would love to see the higher levels of management go and be replaced with new minds who are into the business and industry and are not just corporate robot yes men/women, from area managers to head of retail to directors they need to change.
We understand this won’t happen overnight but Sports Direct needs to have a proper think about it and listen to their staff because they are on the front line every day and see the problems, whether it’s in stores, warehouse and even up in the offices!
More listening to people and less dictating because we have people in charge who don’t even know how to run a bike shop and they have even said that themselves, so why are they being paid so much money? We just want the message to spread because Evans have tried to silence us so much it’s ridiculous.
We are a bike shop and we have good customers who are loyal to us. They see past all the bullshit and know we are good people working here, like in a lot of bike shops across the country. This sort of thing doesn’t just happen in Evans, it’s in most corporate bike shops like Halfords and Cycle Surgery which all have the same structure and it doesn’t work.
We see so many CEOs and directors come and go as they take the company downhill and move on to the next business and we as the workers get the rough end.
That’s why we had enough and want to raise awareness and hopefully get listened to for once.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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23 comments
"alleged lack of access to the Cycle To Work scheme for employees on minimum wage"
That's an easy one to answer - they simply can't offer it to NMW employees.
Cycle to Work is a salary sacrifice scheme, and you can't legally pay people below NMW, even if they are willing to 'give some back'. Whether paying staff NMW is right is another matter.
I've found Evans stores a bit of a mixed bag. I've used a handful as they're handy being closed to various workplaces I have worked at.
I have found the London ones most accomodating and helpful. I needed a service but they have a policy about storing bicycles (as they send all the bicycles to a central service location). But i was going away for a long weekend, so the chap in the store deliberately delayed the service so the bicycle would be returned on the collection day. Another London store they were very good at fitting me in a same day repair.
A store outside of london, the manager was often abrupt and not often helpful. The workshop staff were very good though.
Christ a lot of moaners on here.
They have good staff and bad (or untrained) staff, but my experiences overall have been good.
For the not so good experiences I'll happily put it down to the staff being paid fuckall and the management for not training them or expecting them to last more than a few months. Basically if you've moved to the zero hours pay peanuts model then you can't expect people to stay there and get the experience and knowledge they need to do their job properly.
I understand this and so don't often go in asking advice. Others - take note - there are enough high end bikes shops around charging the earth that will give you some good advice. But like everybody else (including me) you wanna pay bottom dollar or go online. That's a problem though isn't it?
What I hate is when people moan about moaners, and now I'm moaning about it.
You've basically just summarised what others have said. I think it should have a place on the high street, between Halfords (shite) and High End shops. As you suggest, you pay a shed load for the expertise elsewhere but can get it for free in some Evans stores. If they worked hard at ensuring their minimum standards were better then they'd fill a gap. If they pay peanuts, start putting devalued brands etc. in then they'll become a sub-prime Halfords - it may work for the general public but not the 'cycling community'...
You've hit the nail on the head - for years they've been trying to cover all bases so being the high-end bike shop selling £5000 bikes while at the same time trying to cater for the punter who would normally go to Halfords - the people that thought bikes cost £100 and could not conceive that £100 might only just buy a pair of tyres or one rear mech!
Trying to price match online retailers while at the same time, make the profit that they need to in order to pay high street rents.
And they've not managed to find that sweet spot. Some shops were really good. The Cut in Waterloo (the original shop) did a great line in touring bikes, it was known in touring circles / CTC etc as THE place to go to for off-the-shelf touring bikes like Dawes and the FW Evans own brand. A lot of the smaller shops tucked away off places like Covent Garden, Oxford Street etc did fantastic sales with commuters for example (but those same commuter-centric shops suffered big time if you tried to put a Tour de France themed window display in place as dictated to by Head Office - "it's July, all shops must have yellow jerseys and road bikes").
They're never going to compete with the likes of the Pinarello / Assos / Rapha stores. They're never going to be able to effectively price match CRC / Wiggle - no high street shop can. Halfords already does the low end of the market. So that leaves them...where? They need to work that out pretty quickly.
I agree, for me, it is the local bike shop. I am very fortunate in that my local bike shop is a high end shop, which services many famous cyclists and a number of Olympic riders, has an amazing framebuilder who has built frames for professional cyclists, has some awesome exotic stuff in, but is friendly, knowledgeable and experienced in servicing and repairing anything, be it a top of the range Colnago, down to an ancient Raleigh. And you get a mug of tea too. I have yet to see a better range of tools in any business, all on the walls around the workshop. I know that if I search the internet, I will probably be able to get some bits a little cheaper, but you don't get the service.
I've mixed feelings about Evans. No they are not a LBS, but it is very convienient to order online, price match, and collect from a store.
IMO Evans offer a better service than a pure online retailer, for the same price as a pure online retailer. The staff in my local Evans are always very friendly, they aren't all yoof, quite the opposite. However I can't really say I'm a loyal customer of theirs, I use the shop to pick stuff up from when I can't get it from my LBS. I'd rather spend at a LBS.
However retail is changing, maybe in our lauded future there are just click and collect stores. There's a bucketload of talk about why LBS can't compete with online and how their advantage is servicing and knowledge, knowledge and servicing is king, if Evans can get that right (which besides a few good eggs, I'm sure they can't, not without paying staff a lot more) then there's surely a place for our independent bike shops to survive in.
Places like Evans are everywhere. PC world, GAME, etc. They came and squeezed out all the the independents by getting priority stock supplies so the local shop can't even get the stock in never mind compete on price. Then they over expand and rack up debts on new outlets that aren't bringing in the cash and suddenly it's 'poor Evans' because the internet retailers are doing to them what they did to the local shops.
This. Exactly this.
Also, shops that were once eccentric local businesses get bought up by venture capitalists and blown up into characterless over-bloated nothings. Patisserie Valerie, I'm looking at you.
I think the website needs some work, it frequently has issues with losing items from baskets, the filtering system isn't great at actually finding what you want, and half the time it shows you things that aren't in stock (or as I had with one item) showed as in stock, then 5 minutes after I'd hit order an email comes in saying it is out of stock for the next 4 weeks.
I'd like to see Evans do better, but they're trying to compete with both the high volume online stores, and the more specialist high end stores, and not really doing well at either. I can't imagine very many people looking to spend a decent amount of money on a bike choosing to go to evans anymore.
I tend not to use my local Evans any more. In my opinion they are on a level with Halfords. However, on two or three occasions I have needed something that Evans had, at a decent price. I think the stuff I needed were GoPro spares. My local bike shop doesn't do these, I won't buy on eBay as most stuff is counterfeit, so I used Evans. The first time I was dealt with by a complete tool. Rude to the point that he couldn't even be bothered to look at me, and only mumbled a few words. The second time, the guy serving me was friendly and polite. The third time, again, a total fuckwit. But what sticks in my mind was not how great the second person was, but how ignorant the first and third were. For that reason, I have not been back again.
I too dislike Mike Ashley, I think he has ruined and devalued brands in his stores. Last time I was in Ambleside, we wandered into Sports Direct. There were karrimor KSBs piled to roof height all over, priced between £30-£50. Cheaply made, shoddy quality, such a shame how a company as great as Karrimor were are now reduced to being jobbed off in SD.
Absolutely - the one in the velodrome sold me the wrong clip ins to go around the velodrome
- the one in Macc had an MTBer from New Zealand who was a delight to talk to and try and give you great 'bang for your buck' advice...
Crazy, whilst I agree on many of your points in an ideal world and hate consumerism and these 'mega stores'. However, all too many staff are looking for the easy option, feel the world owes them a living and are not brand ambassadors. It's quite easy to point the finger at the top of the chain but the bottom isn't all it's cracked up to be either!
Having not worked at Evans, I could give them 10 more insightful pointers on how to run their business!
Yes, the challenge as always with these sort of roles is that they attract people passionate about bikes but not people who are necessarily experienced in life in general - usually it's young (almost exclusively) men who are going through college etc and looking to earn a bit of cash so for the business it's difficult as you rarely have much continuity or diversity (and you end up running loads of expensive training just to stay where you are - new staff come in, get trained and then leave, repeat process...) and for the staff it's just something to tide them over and keep them in relatively cheap bike bits.
There are some great people there; as with most places though there are also a few people who couldn't care less. I know loads of good level racers (MTB and road) who worked there and for a while the shop had it's own very good race team (publicity thing for Evans really). And then they expanded quite aggresively and (as usually happens), it takes the business a long time to actually move its processes from being a 4 or 5 or 8 shop business to a 20, 25, 30 shop business so quality and service levels fall. Meanwhile the front line staff are the ones who get it in the neck from customers and they get more disenfranchised with things.
That "employee" is running some risks. Should Evans/SD/Ashley feel extremely vindictive they could be charged with hacking (ie unauthorisedly accessing) that instagram account.
You may think thats overkill (and it is!) but afaik the hacking laws have been used like that before.
I spotted some Sugoi waterproof jackets on flebay and was actually put off when I saw they were sold in Sports Direct (maybe wrongly). Firetrap once made decent quality clothes (regardless of your opinion on fashion and design), in SD they're about half price and a tenth as good.
Ktache, I liked C&C too though now Macclesfield have gone I have to choose from one of their 27 Manchester stores
I got three sugoi bright yellow tops for summer commuting. Not the best, but three for the price of the Pearl Izumis I had been wearing.
I kind of like some of what Evans do, their click and collect is handy, the store is far more conveniently placed than the post office parcel place with longer opening times, and great for small items that might incur p+p for home delivery. The did price match too.
The bloke trueing a wheel lost a Middleburn bullet valve cap, so I don't use their workshop anymore. They were nice enough, offered me ID replcements but, Middleburn...
Quote:
Since the takeover we have seen brands like Schwinn, Viking and Muddy Fox along with cheap clothing brands like Sugoi
Schwinn are decent
So are Sugoi - I've got a couple of their RSE bibshorts and they are excellent, and definitely not cheap!!
I quite agree that Sugoi bib shorts are excellent. I have used RS, FXE and RSE since 2006. I don't think €120-€140 is cheap. In fact, this has reminded me that I have a new pair in the wardrobe just waiting for me to fit inside.
Possibly one of their problems though srchar - the stores are as good as the products and staff within them. You may have gone in on another day (or at another store) and got a die hard roadie that knew everything about the frame and arranged a test ride for you. The answers from MEGA above don't focus on problems such as this, more on whinges from staff - modern society maybe?
Five or so years ago, I tried really very hard indeed to buy a BMC frameset from Evans. However, the staff in the store I visited had zero product knowledge, telling me I'd be better off looking at their website. I explained that I had, but couldn't find the information I needed, which was greeted with shrugged shoulders.
So, they can cross "Again" off their caps, because for as long as I've known Evans, it has been rubbish.
Not really a huge global problem.
Stupid but they're far from alone. I was more unimpressed with much of the 'click and collect' lack of process, management, packaging etc.
Schwinn are decent
Be careful what you wish for!!!
Who knew they had so many business moguls operating their tills and mending bikes?
I hate Mike Ashley and do not shop in Sports Direct. They've devalued many brands they have purchased and lowered quality, stack it high and sell it cheap. I notice that they're laying blame at the door of the historic management structure (probably safest when they do get caught) but Evans as a bike shop lasted longer on the high street than many. With Ashley in charge it'll not be a bike shop for long!
Well it sort of is - the position is not well paid so many people there use the discounts to get bikes/clothing etc that would otherwise be way out of their price range. And if they're riding those bikes, wearing that kit etc they're in a good position to advise customers.
Schwinn used to be decent and then went down the cheap route. Bit like Saracen - they made some amazing XC bikes for years and then went to cheap full sus BSOs and just lost all their hard-earned prestige. Evans for a while stocked some really cheap"MTBs" aimed solely at the London student market. Something like £100, they would fall to pieces in a year but it didn't really matter if it got nicked or broken - it was actually more economically reasonable to just bin it and buy another than try to repair it. But, while they served a small niche market (poor students locking them up outside college), having those sort of bikes in the shop really looked awful next to high end MTBs, quality road bikes and so on.
You don't work somewhere for years and not pick up on market/industry trends, selling strategies, shop layout, customer service and so on. I've seen what happens when "customer service" is dictated from on high and it does not hold up when you try and do it in the real world with real people. Telling all shops to have such-and-such a window display without considering regional variations. I've got no probelm with training staff in good service and so on but dictating it with no/limited experience on the shop just doens't work, you need a collaborative approach with your staff - listen to them telling you what they need as support / what works in that particular shop - help them improve that.