How Much of a Container Should Be Spare Parts?

By Daniel Chen, technical export manager at Meihanda. Last reviewed: October 2026.

Why spare parts decide whether the customer comes back

A distributor does not lose a customer when a bike is sold, it loses them when the bike stops working and cannot be repaired. The parts that produce that moment are not the ones buyers discuss at the quotation stage. They are tyres and inner tubes, brake pads, chains, cables and housings, and — in a surprising number of cases — derailleur hangers, which break in transit and on the first ride and cannot be substituted with anything close enough to work.

Those parts cost almost nothing per unit and occupy little space. On a container that has already been paid for, they are close to free to move. That is the argument for planning them into the order rather than ordering them separately later, when they carry their own freight and their own customs cycle.

How much: what the 8–12% figure actually means

The trade rule of thumb is to reserve roughly 8–12% of container space for wear parts of the models being shipped. It is a useful starting point and a poor instruction, because the three ways of measuring it give different answers:

Measure	What it looks like	When it is the right one
By volume	A share of the container’s cubic capacity	When the parts are bulky relative to value — tyres, rims, mudguards
By unit value	A share of the order’s value, expressed as parts	When the parts are small and valuable — chains, cassettes, bearings
By consumption rate	A multiple of what your market consumes in a selling cycle	Almost always the most useful, and it requires you to know your own numbers

The volume measure is the easiest to plan and the least informative. A container of 400 bikes with 10% of its volume given to inner tubes and tyres has a very different service capability from the same volume given to brake pads — and only the second is a plan rather than a gesture.

What to include, by part category

Category	Typical parts	Why it belongs in the container
High-turn wear	Tyres, inner tubes, brake pads, chains, cables and housings, grips	The rate of consumption is predictable and the dealer notices immediately when they run out
Breakage	Derailleur hangers, spokes, rims, seatpost clamps	Impossible to improvise, and often the reason a bike sits unrepaired for weeks
Model-specific	Suspension service parts, frame hardware, specific mechs and shifters	Sourcing these outside the factory is slow and expensive, whatever the part costs
Electrical, on e-bikes	Controllers, chargers, displays, batteries	The parts with the longest lead time; a fleet without them has no fleet

What not to load

Parts for models you did not ship. A generic box of components looks efficient and ends up as dead stock, because a workshop repairs what it sold.
Low-turn high-value items in bulk. A wheelset tied up in inventory costs more than the wheel, if it will sit for a year. Carry one, not ten.
Parts you can buy locally at a sane price. If a standard cable or a common inner tube is available in your own market, freight and duty make importing it a worse deal than it looks on the price list.
Consumables that age on the shelf. Rubber and batteries both degrade; a large spare stock can expire before it is used.

The economics of a part that arrives too late

Route	Cost profile	Lead time
Inside a container you are already shipping	Marginal — no second freight, no second customs cycle	Follows the container
Consolidated with another buyer’s shipment	Low to moderate, requires forward planning	Weeks
Courier on its own	Highest cost per kilo	Days
Not having the part	The highest of the four — the bike is unsaleable and the customer’s confidence is spent	Indefinite

The practical rule that follows is to plan spares one container ahead: the parts that will be needed during the next selling cycle arrive in the current shipment, when they cost almost nothing to move.

The initial allowance and a parts programme are not the same thing

Two different mechanisms get confused, and they serve different purposes.

The allowance included with a bulk order is a starting stock. It covers the first failures and the first service work, and it is agreed before production so the parts you receive are the ones your market actually consumes.
A parts programme is the ongoing arrangement: a standing list, replenished with each container, sized against your own consumption. Without it, the allowance is consumed in the first season and the second season starts from zero.

For a distributor running two or more containers a year, the programme is what keeps service capability stable — and it is what makes the difference between a product line that can be supported and one that has to be replaced.

How to plan it with the order

Send the models in the container and the annual volume you expect to sell.
Tell us the parts you replace most often, and roughly at what rate — a dealer network knows this better than a factory does.
We propose a part list weighted to those parts, with quantities sized to the container and priced at cost rather than as accessories.
Confirm the model-by-model reference so the parts arriving match the bikes you actually stocked.

What we ship, stated plainly

Spare parts travel inside containers, with a part list referenced to the models in the shipment, so a workshop fits the right part to the right frame rather than matching by eye. The standard allowance is agreed before production; additional spares can go into any later container; and where a part is holding a bike off the road, we quote and arrange courier shipment instead of making you wait for the next shipment. Batteries and electrical parts are handled the same way, with the serial recorded where the part carries one.

Frequently asked questions

Is the allowance free?

The allowance is included with bulk container orders on the terms stated in your quotation; additional spares are charged at cost. Both are confirmed per order rather than assumed.

How do we size the parts list for a market we have not sold to before?

Start with the parts that fail regardless of market — tubes, pads, cables — and adjust after the first season using your own replacement data. The second container is where a market’s real consumption pattern becomes visible.

Can spare parts be added to a container late in production?

Often yes, if the parts are in stock, and the loading plan is adjusted before the container is packed. What we will not do is add lines after the packing list is finalised, because that is how short shipments are created.

Do you supply parts for bikes bought elsewhere?

Only where the specification matches parts we manufacture. Send the part reference and we will tell you honestly whether we can supply it or not.

Who should hold the stock: you or your dealers

Where the spares sit changes what they cost and how fast they work.

Model	Advantage	Cost
Central stock at the importer	One inventory, visible and controllable; parts move to dealers as needed	You carry the capital and the shelf, and a dealer waits for a shipment from you
Distributed to dealers in the container	Parts are on the shelf where the repair happens, from day one	Capital is spread across accounts you do not control, and parts end up in the wrong place
Hybrid — service parts centrally, wear parts distributed	Low-value high-turn items where they are used; expensive and slow-moving items where they can be seen	Requires deciding which is which — which is exactly the planning step most buyers skip

For a distributor running a dealer network, the hybrid arrangement is normally the one that works: tubes, pads, cables and hangers travel to the dealers because that is where they are consumed within weeks, while controllers, wheelsets and suspension service parts stay central because they are expensive and turn slowly.

What spare parts do not solve

It is worth being clear about the limits, because a spares programme is sometimes used to avoid a harder conversation.

They do not fix a specification problem. If a component fails repeatedly across a batch, the answer is a production or specification issue, not a larger box of replacements.
They do not compensate for a bad first assembly. A bike that arrives needing a workshop visit before it can be sold will cost the dealer more in labour than the parts are worth.
They do not remove the need to agree the specification in writing. Spares address the parts that legitimately wear out; they do not address the parts that were not what you ordered.

The distinction matters for the relationship: a supplier who responds to a repeated failure by sending more parts is managing a claim, not solving a problem.

How to tell whether the programme is working

Three numbers make a spares programme measurable, and they are all available from your own records after one season.

Measure	What it tells you
Parts consumed per hundred bikes sold	Your market’s real consumption rate — the number to use when sizing the next container
Stock-out incidents	How often a repair was delayed by a missing part, and which parts caused it
First-year failure rate by component	Whether a component is wearing out or failing — the first is a spares question, the second is a supplier conversation

Buyers who track those three numbers stop guessing at their spares list and start placing an order against it. It is also the fastest way to find out which component in your range is quietly costing you service time.