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Brett Flemming

Tue, 8/18 10:43AM • 1:05:54

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, client, Fred, ride, brett, buy, mechanic, bicycle, shifting, middle-aged guy, hanger, store, service, shop, BMX bike, mountain bike, seminars, fun, experience, brand

SPEAKERS

Fred Clements, Rod Judd, Brett Fleming, Chad Pickard

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Fred Clements  00:17

Welcome to the NBDA Bicycle Retail Radio Podcast. I’m Fred Clements I’ll be hosting today and I’m with Brett Fleming the famous Brett Fleming. He is a master mechanic and trainer who has at least 35 years in the bicycle industry and 15 as a service manager of a multi-store group up in Portland, Oregon. But his roots are farm roots I believe Iowa Brett and he’s not really efficient.

Brett Fleming  00:48

I was a Navy brat, dad wanted to give the Midwest experience too. So I was hanging around with kids from the Philippines and Guam and then next thing I know I’m in correction Ville, Iowa. More That story later. It’s not afraid. Yeah. So but I ended up there. So I went to high school honored. Yes. wonderful experience in the Midwest.

Fred Clements  01:09

Okay? You’re the owner of efficient Vela tools, which is pretty well known in the bike industry inventor of a number of products available through efficient below tools. The easy lift, the safe zone mirror, the right arm of work stand. Clamp,

Brett Fleming  01:25

right on the lap. Yeah. And

Fred Clements  01:27

I’ve known Brett for a number of years from seminars he’s presented and really it’s a pretty powerful message, a unique message, I think in terms of service writing, to how to turn your service department as a bicycle retailer into something special, or where customers feel welcome and nurtured. And which brings up the concept that I’ve gathered. Brett from your past. Aggressive agreeability is something I’ve championed. And I wondered if you might sort of giving us a primer on aggressive agreeability

Brett Fleming  02:00

Thanks, Fred. Here’s the perspective. I’m speaking if you’re a bicycle service professional, and even a motorcycle service professional because two-wheeled vehicles have such dynamic that requires high interaction, so we’ll take it from that perspective. Right. So as a professional mechanic, I was always trying to get hired by everybody that came in the door. And to them, I tried to submit a resume and treat them as if they’re the most important person in the world and make a show about it. And let them know instantly that they had the entirety of the resources of the company right to butt off, correct. Who would do anything for them? And when I saw that heart go to every single soul, the person digging cans in the dumpster that needed a flat patch, because they couldn’t afford the tube. He was right there for him with the same level of dignity and Soozee Azzam and fairness and I just copied him and I get emotional about it because it was fun and important, and people can die. And people have extreme joy and kids run around on pushbike. Isn’t that cool? two-year-old carving turns. That’s when I finally left retail. And that was pretty cool, wasn’t it, Fred, the joy can spread so many different ways now to try to everything, you know, the mountain bike crowd, you never want to ride on the road, fine, I support them, whatever you want to do, if your interest snooty, you know, $10,000 bike, fine, I support that. If you have no money, I’ll support that too, with a smile, because it’s always working. It’s easier if you greet the mechanism with kindness, enthusiasm, and support and let the client know that you really want to help them. And thanks, David, jack for that word. When a mentor gives me something great. I copy it. That’s all. The thing that was really terrible for me in school is I did ever copied I never teach. It’s really, really hard. And I barely ground through high school. You know, and I did it though. But in real life, you didn’t cheat. You get to say to the customer, how do I get an A on your test? Give me the answers now and I’ll just give them to you if I can because that’s what we’re trying to do here. With love. And enthusiasts and in fairness and why not because you’re trading a massive part of your life for money jobs are crappy. Wouldn’t I’d rather be on my farm anytime now because I got myself a little Lakeridge. Right. That’s more fun than a job and, but why not make the job as fun as you possibly can and that’s what I copied from bud Albrecht age 95. I checked in with him recently and here’s his answer, about aggressive agreeability. I said, bud, I worked with you for 15 years I’ve worked with grace for 15 years, but I’ll break the first 15 Jay gave last year 15 and amazingly Jean Osborn for a couple of years and by cracking between and he’s the guy that taught me retail professionalism and using technology. He was a retailer first bicycle guy second but holy moly. He built a beautiful store but anyhow I called but I said I gotta get it from your mouth. How come when I was there, in all the world where we say You know, sometimes you have to fire a customer and you know the customer You know, they’re just riding along and there they don’t know nothing. I never saw you disrespecting anybody button and I never saw you say, get the heck out of my store and never want to see you again. He was all Yeah, you just never argue with people if you argue with somebody, they get mad and you get madder. We’re trying to get hired. Don’t argue with people. Even scientific argument feels like an argument thread. Well, something bent the hanger. The law of physics indicates otherwise, force acting upon another person’s life. You know, I don’t all that stuff. But some Newton would have something to say about it. People don’t care about what Isaac Newton knows and what the whole, you know, the reasonable scientific world knows. As far as they were concerned, they’re just riding along. So I’m going to agree with them and say, yeah, that’s how it is, man. You’re just riding along and you’re just going into low gear or something where you’re doing that because it’s horrible. This is a catastrophic deal, man. Sorry, it happened. But you know what, sorry, it happened a bunch of BS. Fred, you know how my stand is on the hanger, don’t you? the hanger. Great everything. If a customer bends the hanger catastrophic Lee and destroys the derailleur, it’s your fault is the dealer. And if they did in the right dealership, they would say, you know what, Fred, you were right. The bike only fell over in front of the coffee shop. I didn’t check for the scratches as you taught me. Doggone it. And it was shifting funny. Like he told me and Doug did it, Fred. When I went into low gear, it went into this book, just like you told me and destroyed it. This sucks, Fred. I’m sorry, it happened. And Doggone it, you told me and he also told me it wasn’t gonna be a warranty, Fred. So here’s the deal, Fred. I’m kind of screwed. You have this brand new bike. So I have to pay full retail for everything. Is there anything you can do? Can you talk to these people and help me get a better buy on the frame? Or can you help me find a repair source or something like that? right because I know it’s no warranty. I’m not asking you to eat it, but could you help me right now? Just to answer that question as a human being, could you would you do that for me? Would you advocate for me? You know, as usual?

Fred Clements  07:10

Yes, we will help you. We will help you. We’re here to help.

Brett Fleming  07:14

Yes, exactly, exactly. It’s like hey, but that doesn’t happen. Instead, we make fun of them because they were just riding along when a hanger bends and allows the director to go catastrophic Lee and we’re the spokes and then the rotational force destroys you know, hanger sometimes the frames wheel that is an avoidable situation that has cause and effect it doesn’t just happen riding along you know, okay, it feels like that. So the client you have to honor that so it’s always like honored the feeling spread. The aggressive agreeability is if the customer is mad at the bike or if they’re mad at the company, get mad with them. That first set the alignment that they know that you care that Jeepers, yeah, I want to this sucks. I want to get back on my bike. I agree. We have loaners we can get you going. And let me deal with the baloney of the dealership. You know, it’s usually not covered under warranty. But let me go to bat for you, right. The words that you choose I could never illustrate this well enough in my seminars I patched together while having a busy crazy life.

Fred Clements  08:17

professional service writers professional mechanics, serve the client, not the brand. The mission is the customer. Everything else follows from a well-served customer don’t chase the money first serve the customer and the money will follow. Does that make them good and

Brett Fleming  08:35

correct but don’t serve the customer in the standard fashion. That is the rule. each client has to be viewed as if you want to survive in today’s retail establishment. each client has to be completely hands curated. Friday went in to buy a few but my local dealership in took to my new farm in Chicago, Washington. I call it the no sigh ranch. I got a little half-mile mountain bike loop I do each morning and then walk the dog in my stream and it’s wonderful. And the retail there is actually pretty darn good because they know it’s a small area and they can’t screw up because small towns so I’ve had some pretty exceptional experiences I went in to get to my mountain bike because I have thorns on my property and fixing flats all the time. And as a professional you should know even as millions and millions of flats that I’ve ticked they all suck in their massive massive barrier to get on a bike and riding for anybody for me or for anybody my crippled hands I think about the pain the change in tubes and I haven’t done it millions and millions of times but in the I go to the local bike shop and I want to buy it too It’s not one of them slime filled tubes and what the fattest one I can’t cuz I don’t like them suckers stretching out and I kind of gave him some specific information. And I said I would advise them SPD mountain to size 41 standard pleat, not SPD but that brand that type of you know, like a mountain fleet to different brands. I don’t mention that. He did it and I said I’d like the cleats roughed in and I think I really appreciate the threads grease, but I really want those counters to think bolts. I want the countersunk areas to grease because that’s the part that’s all creaky when you try to break it loose five years now in Oregon dust. So it was fun because they said that’s how we do it. And they were really agreeable, right. And then the best thing was Fred, you won’t believe the bike. They had a chrome connector with GM grips and pure GM tires. Right? You get the pictures that were there doing that where the GM rubbers remember like the brake hoods of diet calm. And Camplin, yo. It’s like that kind of GM rubber on the tires and the grip and had a free coaster. And I said to the young man, that’s three coasters on the 509 99. like yours. Yep. So they’ve never ridden one Can I have to get down? Can I try it? She said, Yep. He got into town. You can kind of tell like I can kind of say like, he can kind of tell that I knew a little bit about bike. And so then I said, What about this one bike here and I said, I want one of those modern numbers because I said I just have a lot of reasons why I want one of these. Do you have one of these in a small because you know I’m an odd guy. And so he said no but I get when I said I’d like to get one of them I just bought a bike for $1,300 tax included all in for everything and all kinds of cool stuff at full retail because he deserved it. And that shop turned it and it was warm and inviting and welcoming and clean and the restroom was perfect and there’s clean fresh water to drink. And he was nice and he didn’t dampen my enthusiasm one bit but only allowed it to happen. And that’s what you can get from a tube to a multi-thousand dollar sale and I’d never done it Eddie Grayson attitude. You know, but it was beautiful and couldn’t believe it Fred and I got the super bind you bite with a dog gun, dropper seat book. I love those things. They’re the best things in the world both to get yourself a BMX Park riding a bike in one second and like a massive turbocharger climbing unit and the next because I get some gravity money Place. Holy smokes I’m 600 feet in 2.4 miles, it can be a 1500 plus. And it’s just so steep. Anyhow, I’ll talk about that later. But see, that’s the new experience that’s available to me. So because of my bicycle addiction, which this is where we can grow our business with clients, specifically, you want to really do some compounding and top of line business, get people hooked on different types of cycling and running around on two wheels, three wheels, four wheels, I don’t care. And you know what I cried out loud. Fred, when I was climbing with the first time on my property, he’s got some clear cut and different prairies and stuff. So in the book I call Sun Prairie, which is 250 steps to the steepest part of my property. So it’s just like eight floors of climbing, and I was going up there on my mountain bike in the lowest years harnesses possibly could and when I tipped over as a 58 year old duffer, the steepest part of the hill, I cried out to words lithium-ion Because we need to embrace everything that’s available to help people have a Stokes time. Because if you were at my level, in my property in my area, you would think of riding a bike because it’s as hard as it can possibly be, for me to go up for pitches on my road straight up without switchback in it in the lowest gear, anybody I got the lowest triple the new 12 on the back kind of a deal. And that experience is available to me and you know, then when I played with that free coaster, do you think in the back of this old bmxers mind, I’m going to wonder what it would be like when I’m bored in my shop or trying to think of a problem of tooling. When I rally around my shop with a BMX bike, wouldn’t it be kind of fun at 58 years old to learn how to go backwards on the bike because a free coaster bike lets you do it. And I could watch some YouTubes and tinker around and then have you know minor blood trauma injury like usually happens on BMX bikes, but I don’t want that anymore. Anyhow. Yeah. So here’s the other thing with aggressive agreeability and like it’s mainly like trying to get hired. Don’t forget that you’re trying to sell your services you’re trying to sell you, because the Internet has all this other stuff available. But what I got at this shop, you wouldn’t believe it. The first time I bought my bed in the break. I said, Oh, we got this huge disc on the back. I don’t know why they put some 200 and some millimeter diff on the back of this monster mountain bike. So it had a sickness anomaly. So it just grabbed and I thought maybe get pine SAP, maybe embedded it in. I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt the company is like two hours on it. So I went to the shop and I said, Hey, I need to have you guys Marty just because they know who I am now and I never told you that. They figured it out a certain point. There’s three guys in the shot. It felt so good. Fred’s in the old days. You know, you’d go into a shop and get disrespected to some bald middle-aged guy and then got your bike that I know something about, like this whole situation. But they were really cool. And he after a while he goes, he said I figured it out. And then the guys in the back came out it right our plants in their shop. That was really cool. But I didn’t come in and say hey, I’m this guy in that Guy and I’m looking for a bro deal. And I said I only have two rules. When I shop with the local people I pay full retail for everything. And I don’t ever expect free labor or anything like that I pay full price on everything. Because as a community member, that’s great because we live in a state where we have a no-tech state right across the river. So in Washington, you better darn well be on your game because you got to punish the client or not. The client has beautiful roads and whatever we have in Washington because there’s some sales tax. So it’s beautifully collected over here, but you can go across the river and not have it well. If I choose to shop on this site, I better get something more for it right then Fred? Oh, man, I’m happy to pay the taxes. I don’t have to go into the city and back across the state line, the ridge that clogs up a little bit and I can have an experience and you know what, you know what he said as I last year, I said I love you guys. I said I got a local bike shop now and he said to consider it your third space or something like that. But then modern youngsters would say you know, so I go in there now and feel their way Water. And now I know I need an extra-large helmet, you know, setting a stocking cap under it. And they hooked up this brake pad problem, the brake disc thing and they did exactly what I wanted. I said that’s too big of a rotor for two-wheeled vehicles Give me something smaller. And there’s a cool spacer under the caliper and they said decent. I said can’t this cannot do that. And they said, yes, it can take care if it’s a different rant. Heck, no, I just want to go. And they said, Yeah, here’s this 180 boom. And I’m really happy with the rear brake on the pipe. Because when you’re going down the steep pits and your brake is grabbing, you lose all your security because you don’t want to get the tire and all of a sudden now, every time it rotating around, and you know, the thing about middle-aged guys, that is important to middle-aged gals or people that as we age, it isn’t about Guys, please. But it’s like the older we get the higher the consequence. So to support people, we have to enhance their skills and understanding of the vehicle as an obligation. That’s part of the safety package. In other words, yeah, you do the work, but then the human has to operate it and it’s not you. Those are some fun The mentals right? Have your work checked by someone the best test writer in the world is the client. You know, if you have a critical situation, I always invite the client in scheduled basis to come on and say, Hey, come on in here and your stuff and let’s go for a ride by your coffee. Because Doug on this trip would drive me crazy to Lady. Let’s get to the bottom of it. Right? And it’s just a little lubrication under McClure’s. You know, it’s just a little lubrication between she’s willing to do it, and it’s done. Because we did it together with her shoe on her bike, see, and that’s what it is. And when you have a victory like that with a client, say just you own them, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s like you own their safety and their experience. And you get to like say, How do you feel what is the maximum experience for you? I never wanted to over 30 miles an hour down the hill. Well, we’re going to make sure your breaks are top of the line because you’re going to right now remember that you don’t have Do it once because if your hands both get cold and you can’t do nothing, you might not be able to stop. So figure out a way to, you know, use one for a while and then the other to kind of give one hand a break and a shake, you know, but never be caught with him too cold to just grab a break and stop if you need to. But you keep using those breaks down the hill, because if you don’t like going over 30 you don’t like going over 30 now you know me, Fred. That’s just a little blip. When I’m on a hill, it’s fun and exhilarating to go fast down the hill, but it’s not my duty to try to transfer that enthusiasm to other people, right. That’s not how professional My duty is to say if you’re scared going down hills it almost makes me emotional, because you could get hurt.

Chad Pickard  18:42

Have you signed up for a ride a daily extended service yet? What are you waiting for? It’s the extended service plan for your customers that pays you your shop rate for extended service and warranty claims. rides are only available to NBDA members and it’s only available at NBDA calm

Fred Clements  19:06

A good question for you, Brett would be, you know, as a service writer, as a bike retailer, you have all sorts of people all sorts of experience level all sorts of attitudes good and bad. You have said in the past stop thinking that customers are doing something wrong, even when they are, it’s your job to manage feelings, and to deliver possible action. It’s not your job to be right.

Brett Fleming  19:30

Yeah, here’s a good example like words matter. And one of the little word tracks I’ve never perfected, but here’s as good as I’ve got. So let me let you in on a clue about shifting because I’ve really struggled with shifting myself until I found out the one thing that’s an absolute fact, if it makes noise, it’s something I’m doing, that I might be able to and probably can do differently to not have noise. And I can be highly interactive with what’s going on precisely when that poor chain being asked to ram from one raw sprocket to another. It’s tricky, and it takes technique and understanding. But Doggone it, every time I make noise, I’m a kind of a gearhead, I can trace it back. I promise scientifically, there’s some little tiny thing that I could have timed differently or pushed a little this way or that way a little better. And it kind of sucks. But this is part of the game. And nowadays, it’s a lot less of a problem because let me tell you that we can make it a lot less about finance than we could before because we have some really terrific shifting vehicles nowadays. So it’s easy to deliver a precisely shifting vehicle provided you know hangers or Street and things like that.

Fred Clements  20:39

You’ve suggested never argue. So that raises the question to me. What do you consider arguing

Brett Fleming  20:45

what is arguing? arguing let’s start in the kind of in the way arguing should exist in a scientific argument, right? You know, a hanger titanium hanger takes 70 kilograms and force them. That force comes from somewhere. Isaac Newton says so You wrecked it. You were not covering it. Right? It can be that simple, right? That’s the truth. The company’s not going to warranty it. You know in the way I know it took 70 kilograms force when I knew that how fun it was to do the garage-style inventor and meet the engineering team met some guys with Shimano when I said I invented the derailleur hanger that they patented it ultimately and I said this titanium hanger take a lot of force to the to Leslie’s tongue. And the engineer from Shimano said yes 70 kilograms. I laugh I don’t know how you know that but it’s mass and respected. Don’t be you know, buggering up the argument even scientifically like, well, something dentist lady, you know, and it’s not covered. We’re still not going to cover it. Whatever, you know, none of that stuff matters to someone. So, but arguing would be well, you anything that makes him feel bad to hear. Let’s put it this way. It’s all about feelings for me because I’m trying get hired. And nobody wants to give money to someone that’s mean to them or not nice and inviting and helpful. So instead of like defining what arguing is, just say, I think I can kind of sum up how by Trump interaction. If someone walked in and you’re, you know, like, I was playing with some ladies that I was with two ladies that one of them is 50 and her sister similar age, and I said, Okay, usually ladies walking the bike shop, what’s going to happen? You know, someone might say, Oh, you need a cruiser hybrid. You know, and yet I say how did they not know that you were like, near bronze level, you know, swimmer or you know, downhill mountain type champion. They just can’t guess the people by that’s the first thing you never ever, ever do. Ever, is just people, you know, around because I went into a name the names of bad ones. I went into an Italian motorcycle dealership that very famous I was really curious about the WBC or some other brand of the airbag, you know suit, full airbag suit for motorcycle and you know how am I motorcycles? I got a few. Me and Fabio, he’s done the gorge. That’s my big joke. He owns property about 30 miles from me. Hey, you have a lot of motorcycles too, but, but I was under the suit in the dealership that cost $5,000 that I probably could afford. I wanted and I heard a compelling argument. And it meant the EBT could go on and case by off on one of my machines and airbags maybe save me and some guy sells me that argument. I would have bought it that day. But instead, I saw the CarsGuide Burton with the espresso lady. And then I stood under every gleaming Italian jewel with halogen lights. beautifully you know illustrating middle-aged guy. Yeah, six-figure income finally fit Nobody ever talked to me. Not even once. Everything was like I went now then it became an experiment of ignoring like, you know, I wonder if they would know. And then I had already driven upon an exotic Italian motorcycle brand new. I’m interested in this stuff. You know what, yeah, zero points for them. You know, and, you know, I had a heating and air conditioning person where they first started doing what I call like chopping the tree down one branch at a time. I walked up and is randomly showing me the ohms output on the Start capacitor for the compressor on a brand of heat pump to cheapest on the market. I just took it the garbage and buy a new one. So he’s doing that. Are you doing that? And he was checking the fuses on a 220 line? Well, if it was running, and it’s too funny, even one fuse out it wouldn’t have been run. And so why are you checking the continuity on the fuses and he was training some young guy and they were 15 minutes early. That made me mad. They said that 843 or 743 they said it’ll typically come early. And I said, Well, how early Are you saying, quarter till so that means you’re in my driveway, and I’m in my robe. You know, that’s how they started it all. Be on time. Keep your word. be simple. And then ask people what’s important to them. Ask people where they are in scale. Say, Hey, thanks for coming in. female clients, middle-aged, not racer body style. I don’t know nothing about you. I don’t care about your gender or nothing. Because guess what? Your hominid that’s gonna be dinking around on two wheels or three wheels or something. And I don’t know nothing about you. But I know a lot about bike and this kind of stuff and XYZ. And if you need some help with it, by golly, I’m the person right here to do it. So yeah, instead of arguing it’s like aggressively just say Hey, take care for coming in. Retail test these days, we have to make an impression on people. How can I just get right down to it and listen to you in a way that’s meaningful and efficient, and help you accomplish your goal? Now, I know that too cheesy and too tan, but that’s what they should feel right? That’s what I’m trying to push is the feeling that and I think

Fred Clements  26:17

you’ve given some talks on words to use. Do you have any words to use words not to use sometimes, you know, you don’t want to just someone has a need and you don’t know much about them. Are there some good words or ways to get into a conversation to know more about their needs? Fred, Fred.

Brett Fleming  26:38

You bring a bike in. This is like, hey, let me get to. First of all, I tell the sales people in the store to be scanned in the parking lot. They even remotely see someone coming in with a service bike. They dang well better get off of that internet. And run out there and say I’m looking for an excuse on this beautiful sunny day to get outside. Tonight. Hold your hands up. If you’re taking it to service, I can guide you to that awesome team and they’re ready to help. See, this has got a sticker on it. smartstore is that did you buy it from us? Yes, I did. Awesome. Well, thank you and can I help you with that getting into the okay with that? Sure. Sure. Hey, next time you load this in your trunk if you don’t mind I’ll give you a piece of foam that we use in that bites compact list and and we could put that on the lip of the trunk right here. And then that would keep it from scratching the bike you know for the occasional haul another bike if you do it a lot, you know, you probably would invest in the car rack eventually or immediately whatever you know, but we’re not talking about that just second let’s get this bike in. Just talk to the service soul you know and say Hey, tell me a little bit about it. You know what’s going on the bus is in trouble getting their truck gun it would you rather be out riding it? Well, yeah. Well, I was riding long and had this business right. Well done. done it. Let’s get that right if and if it’s anything made, let me just tell you how this works. We can do most of this stuff since you got it. My Thunder this You know, generous little situation, we really are committed to getting everybody back on the road as fast as possible. We don’t care about the rules. 30 days, this 90 days, that two years, you want to ride We are the barrier removal, folks. It has to leave here. I want you to know, we even have loaner bikes available. You have a routine. Some people have a routine, we’ll make sure it doesn’t get interrupted. You can live without it. You got others makes it easier for us. So we’ll figure this out. Now tell us what’s going on. And let’s see what we can figure out right? Yes, about words. You know him, right, Fred letson. We were not I in them. And the other thing that I really would like, whenever I talk about some little lesson that I’ve learned, I will respect the brands, if that’s okay, right? Because in the 60s Schwinn had a neat program in one of their books, you know, we could hear better if we got, you know, fresh in the horse’s mouth. But to summarize, they said when you build your service department, make sure that the service area is elevated so that the client like is presented into a workspace It is at an elevated level so it’s respected and important. So words matter and little teeny details matter. Like, don’t you ever hang a bike on a saddle nose in my store if you’re a professional because that’s not professional work, you could damage the bike that could fall off that you expose everybody to a lot of risks because you’re doing a lazy procedure because you’re not planting the vehicle securely mentioned in the BMW dealership as you know, we consider these cars on one forklift, Fred, check it out. I just shove a pallet under here. And I can get that BMW lifted with this forklift. Is that going to inspire confidence with the client? No, you know, it’s important to show them some respect. And if the bikes not we’re fixing you know, members. Let’s get doing my seminars where we just lay the magnet or the Pacific down on the floor in front of the service counter with both of us shaking our head like it’s roadkill. Would that ever feel good to anybody regarding Just have their station in life or the bike. No showing some respect and say, Would it be okay, okay, there’s a Pete Slotnick, when I give him, I can give you some great things A to Z, there’s the Z. Pete was a massive fan, would it be okay? If we put your bike in the stand. And when we do, because of these type of clamps that we have, we have to change your seat height to not hurt the frame, or the beautiful paint here is we want to carefully approach how we touch your product. So the other thing about word they have to be based in extreme respect for two types of property, friends, physical property of the bike, it’s theirs. You don’t have permission to touch my bikes ever, ever. You know that mountain bike did a drag do this trade show spread the only mountain bike I made for me with this decal of Brett blending on seat and back in the old days I actually had a million times on the seat tube who ruined the seat tube decal Pretty good, right? But there’s still some Stubbins of Brett Fleming on there when I built that baby in 1983 and I still ride it today. Well, if I sent that to a shop and they grabbed my already ruined decals and ruined a maroon deter that’s gonna really hurt my soul. Because they don’t have a right to. It’s my property, you know. So that’s how you have to have extreme respect for property, even the Pacific in the magnet. Oh, there’s another line, right thread. This bike ain’t worth fixing. Here’s the interpretation. I bet this bike got a lot of stories to tell enthusiastically presented right. And then Would it be okay if we put it in the stand and have a look and see if she’s totally a goner, or not? Sorry for the sheep. Have you seen a fan? Let’s look at this together. You and I both know this bike is dead. Can we bring it back to life in a way that works for both of us and is reasonable, right? Because I’m here to sell your service. I’ll take your money all day long to take this family heirloom. Hey Fred, members what you know, it’s a question I asked at every seminar. These are fun words. every bite mechanics horror, what we wake up at night, you know, the rusty magnet from the beach house that grandpa used to ride the dogs around the cul de sac. See, we didn’t know that right? So we know the rusty magnet from the beats comes in. And that’s bike mechanics are looking at that bike. And we all say, I don’t want to work on that one. I don’t want to work on this a Junker right, like a dead terrible bike is not worth fixing. Allegedly, right? So they come in and they have all three other shops in town said that’s not worth fixing. You know? So they finally bring it into my shop. And they say, Hey, we got to get this thing tuned out. And I say, yeah, alright, let’s take a look at it and see it’s pretty rugged shape. As you obviously know, hey, here’s the deal. We can fix this up to any level, you know, because my job is to sell your service. What’s the story on the bike? You know, tell me why you’re requesting the service search because I want to make sure that I recommend Something if you want my recommendation that’s appropriate to what you’ve got going on. Instead, I get to say it’s not worth fixing. And they say, Well, my dad died. And he had this bike at the beach house. And we always told him, he was gonna get killed on it, because we told him to get a dang tune up on it. And we know it’s not worth anything. But it’s dogs still alive. And it likes to go on the same ride and each house, you know, condominium complex deal and we thought hell would die if we ride the bike the way dad did. Can we at least pay these guys to make it so it can stop in the tires hold air. So we can take old breaths around the neighborhood one more time. So I get emotional and I tell that story because don’t mess with people’s property. That’s emotional. That’s mental, that’s physical. And there are so many blessings available to us. If we say you know what, we can never make these breaks safe. But if we put new ones on it will be safe. Okay, we don’t care. Dad buy it for hundred dollars and then Magna. We don’t care. Don’t you tell me I can’t have my dad’s bike, ride my damn dog around my neighborhood to see how it needs to be handled sensitive, but you can just so destroy somebody by disrespecting them and their property. So find out what the story is. And if it’s beat to death, to say a bit that by got a lot of stories to tell, how did you ride that far without crashing into something, man? That’s what I say to the BMX riders or something like that, right? You got to get enthusiastic about, like Pete Slotnick was another, he mastered another thing, get rid of the known time wasters. You know, the guy that has the 34 nine derailleur, and he wants to trade it for your 31 eight, but you already managed your inventory and you have what you need, right? You have the derailleur he needs it’s 40 bucks. Oh, but I only paid 30 for this one. And Can Can I just trade it and Pete would say well know, our inquiries, man is different than that. But here’s what we can do. I’ve got this one here, it’s 30 bucks. I’ll put it on the shelf back here. And if you need it, you just holler. In the meantime, I’m going to get back on this, because this customer is going to be back towards, he turned his back, smiling and walked away from the guy, the guy’s a deer in the headlights, and I’m watching my company resource payroll being used appropriately, because I want his payroll to go to the person that’s paying us. And I want him to process clients as efficiently as possible. And if there’s never going to be a deal, that’s how it’s going to be. There are really nice ways to handle it with this hyper enthusiastic smile well, and then he would finish it off by and that’s what we can offer. Well, I have it on the shelf, it’s 40 bucks. In the meantime, I gotta get back to this repair and that’s what I can offer. Turn around, walk away, and then the guy just has to make a decision. Am I gonna buy the drill you’re that’s just 10 feet. And pay the extra 10 bucks or am I just going to continue to irritate people in the world for that? $10? And if he’s that kind of a client that will irritate the heck out of someone for $10 then maybe we don’t want him but we can do it differently, can’t we? Now, Fred? Didn’t that seem like the way Pete did? It was like, you’d just be like, He’s so nice. And that guy’s gone. And he usually hangs out for half a day, pumping information, distracting McCann. So we have that obligation. We have that obligation to make sure that the time we’re building our bosses score is give them a good return on investment. How did I have a fun career? Not by being a bicycle lifestyle. I had a fun career by being the person that at 3am for three millionaires would be the guy that would could stapled the plywood to the window of the broken out store. The guy could write the check to the painting company because some guy clamped the stand on the guys beat to break $200 cycle art super restoration job. Whatever, right? That’s what I always was. So when it came to words, they always matter because unlike text and my emails when you know when you have a lot of people interacting with a lot of people. Now if I say that we fell short that, you know, some of these operations work out, but because of all that by gallery for instance, I facilitate the assembly of 10,000 bikes per year and 10,000 repairs per year. So, yeah, it’s hard to sleep at night sometimes. Are those breaks just tight? You know, is this tight? Is that tight? Always think about at night, that’s just like the stress of the surface manager. Is this tight? Is that tight? That’s all I think about at night. You know, one of our mechanic forgot to tighten the guys crank bolt properly that was left on the bench or something, he tightened it and then pulled it out for some other reason. It races up to the races. I got to tighten this bolt on your bike. I got to put the bolt back on your bike the arm was on and he somehow had the bolt on his bench. We got to go so race to crank fixing bolt. But similar type the crank was tightening. He pulled it off for some reason. So when he gets up the race site, second put that both in he goes Oh, cool I got plenty of time just finished Murray fitness training stuck on there with variable Oh, and I wanted to say the words matter Yes they do. And the other thing is we have to be hyper able to use our words to just invite people into a great experience. Me and john Friedrich you know, with this little you know SD scope crafter trying to figure out how to, like hey, we’re in charge of helping people have an experience, you know, like, I have a million dollars that one of these days on a nice sunny day. I’m going to take that free coaster bike down off the display at my local bike shop. And the owner Jess is gonna say she was there for a day Brett to like dig it Regent Street Gate Park is a skate park in my neighborhood is like world class and I would pump around or like the middle aged guy, no one would know that would they? Would you know that a middle aged guy workout best Evers get a super duper Park style BMX bike, and just go rockin in it. have escaped parked for a while just pump up and down the walls past an hour. It’s better than any stupid, you know, Stairmaster machine and then glass lined exercise places smells like people’s armpits. I’ll take out door on a bike. And there’s so many experiences to yet have read. I haven’t read a fat bike on Sam. haven’t read that bike on snow. I haven’t ridden a track bike on a track. Right. And so that was what I was gonna say. If we can facilitate go at all these different levels like hey, road bikes are cool, too. You know, I live in a motocross super town, Michigan, Washington, where my little farm is has the wushu go motocross nationals. I’m really into motorcycle too. And I have the motorcycle guys trained on bikes so it’s highly respected. And you just have to, you know, to push on the pegs and do what you need on a motorcycle. Where are you going to get that beautiful exercise, you know, so I’m having fun riding bikes and motorcycles in this wonderful area. And as soon as I moved to my farm, I wanted a new mountain bike with a dropper post. Because technologies are weird Fred and I told these youngsters at the store, I said, Do you see these pebbles on the site? I couldn’t afford the petals. And I got some current st pebbles, which are kind of the same really low profile mountain petals with all the pins in there and everything. And I also have these shoes called 510. But here’s the thing. They’re usually for, like, mountain bikers are serious with flat pedals with pins, right? And they’re phenomenal. But here’s what the kid said. That was right. He said, issues feels like clipless. And the young man was right. So then a middle aged guy, of course, you would want to buy the top of the line, you know, flat pedal type mountain shoe, because they afford all the same thing they do for the person looking for the high performance, but also protection. And, you know, the wonderful adhesion of the shoe to a pin thread. It’s so confidence inspiring. So the thing is, if you’re a middle aged guy like me that has a super fear of blunt trauma, injury and concussions and stuff, I just I want to know if there’s something that I can get That can help me from having that again. So those are some fun things. And then why shouldn’t you share that with every middle aged person? If you have a bike, I don’t care if it’s your grant, if your mother Fred, that’s riding a bike to the store, I might not put the pins up all the way. But she says, It’s raining here in Portland, my feet are always flipping off these pedals. And I’m a serious cyclist. I never want it to happen again. Well, Doug on it, maybe we could invite that opportunity, right? Like a guy like me, you’d never think that if I walked in your store. The bike that did it most for me was a Chrome, BMX bike was a free coaster, and gum tires, gum grip, I would buy instantly just for the look. But you’d never know that about a middle aged guy. So that experience, it’s the range of stuff that we want to share with our clients like, Hey, no matter what you choose to do, we’re going to honor it and support it even if it’s what we don’t do. So for instance, at bike gallery, we were in a big sophisticated bike town with our clients, all people and it’s just weird. There’s so much knowledge and so much opportunity to Dink around with bite, Chuck. Well, we weren’t Particularly committed to doing a great job with recumbents. Because we knew we couldn’t we sometimes would bring some in. But it’s hard when the staff, you know, universally aren’t perfectly knowledgeable. So we very often did referral to a place called Coventry. So we really, you know, did something like that, or if someone needs to, here’s another wonderful thing. Like, here’s how you interact with another bike shop, a client needed to camp peg parts. I said, Hey, I’d call up river city. Hey, Brandon, do you have a certain, you know, spring for this particular thing? He says, Yes, I do. Can you please hold it to this client? And they come in? Yes, I can. Right. That’s the kind of professional interaction I enjoyed for years. But when you do that for clients, but you also have it already set up at the other store with a friendly agreeable person, you know, to make and maybe spend less time there I keep coming back to you. But you know, it’s so funny when I bumped into Brandon because we our career spanned like a long, long time together as big competitors in the same town right. Top service managers of the top two shops. every interaction I had with him was like that and way Dave Ramsey’s operation is like, so fun to see how different shops achieve success. And that’s what’s fun about life business spreads. However, you’re doing it out there is fine, but just here’s the run world. Don’t be dirty. You know, can I talk about life in previous threads? Tell me when it’s appropriate. Let me make a crazy statement. I buy the tea drips off john Burke’s toilet in his basement. And I’ve seen Mike senior bear but a lot. Now, how did that happen? Well, because, you know, I worked for a big truck dealer and you know, I was able to enjoy some time in John’s backyard. And he has a wonderful home on the lake. And just like any other place when I went to the wonderful bathroom in the basement, I did my business and wiped off everybody else. He dropped just like I would because that’s how I live in the world. You know, and I don’t care. And then Mike dinner Do you know when I did some consulting for specialized, he was in that room ride bikes like every single day. Man in that locker room, you notice them getting the shorts on and going for a ride experience in the product. You know, it’s like, hey, let’s not all fight, we can all fight. You know, one the other. Everybody’s on the mission. And guess what the client don’t know nothing about these fights you silly people’s. You shouldn’t stand front. We can’t identify with brands, we are not brand aligners, we say here’s the brands we have chosen for these reasons. But once you get them, that’s where we can really shine. Once you get this stuff. See my job has always been once they have this stuff, right? It sucked. How did my skills grow? And how did I become a tool designer? Because I saw a lot of stuff getting ruined. I worked at a big operation I saw way too many frames the implant way too many saddles being altered and hopefully put back if you alter a saddle for the purpose of clamping ask permission from the client first. Then when you do ask them if the sight height they have is what is perfect. And should we record it and you know, make sure it’s put back in place, or do you need some help with that? Mm hmm. Opportunity. So You know, the BS of having to altra seatpost for the purpose of planting the perfect frame and the integrity of the finish surfaces is kind of a problem, but it should be handled first with permission then is it right and then when you do raise it turn it 90 degrees to indicate that it’s been grossly maladjusted for the purpose of servicing, which is like a jacking point. You know, make sure that we put it back to where we got it and everything we’ve touched we should improve a tune up in the tune up unless the plane bearing derail your police are swimming in oil and a little dust cap navy seal the industry required all that it required a very high level of standard and all the work that was done under my care. You know, here’s the thing when it comes to like bragging like who knows who and I, oh, I know this race or I don’t know any races and last night all the business people. I’ve been to the giant factories and into giant Phoenix and giant China factories in China, then the factories in Taiwan have been the you know, so many Shimano factory subcontractors in Japan. I don’t know the celebrities like the racist but I know the celebrity business people like I know how this stuff was made and what the barriers Here’s our here’s the barrier. We never received vehicles that are vehicle, they’re just specks in boxes. And we’re the ones that sign earnings the vehicle. So respect to john and Mike, two big guys, right? It was me that signed my name for them 10s of thousands of times, right? It’s like, I delivered the vehicles and signed the name that these vehicles were safe and sound. So that my bosses, my wonderful boss that really earned the success that they had, were protected and insulated from needs of mechanical and dangerous stuff. It’s hard. It’s hard to get 35 mechanics, you know, through seven stores and you know, like I say 10,000 transactions a year. We did really darn good. We did really darn good. But when we failed, it was so avoidable. Right. Whenever we failed, it was avoidable. You know, and by failing I mean, I had to practice for the third time and for the same problem the client has to see Brett, so I was the general service and training manager for the bike gallery stores in Port In Oregon, I started there, in 99. It’s a company that no longer exists, I can talk all I want about it and finance, I didn’t sign a nondisclosure that I can’t I’m not gonna say anything to proprietary, but when I started in 99, the service departments just limping along at the quarter million. And by the time I left in 14, it was 1.1 million with about a million dollars, you know, service payroll. So I felt really proud that we were able to cover the payroll in a service operation where the sales department, you know, gets what they get for free, basically, you know, assembly of the new product, and you know, support thereafter, right, and the use of the service department in getting the new product out the door in other ways, you know, pre delivery and post delivery stuff like that. So we just tried to make it legitimate up there. And you know, Jay did that was really cool when you’re hired yet tonight, the 99 he hired me to turn that place around and it was fun, because my first rule is say yes to everyone. When I turn a service department on I only did it twice for gene and the bike rack in Omaha. And for like Galleria in Portland, to say yes, everybody enthusiastically so and have a nice, clean, well stocked restroom that isn’t great. And try to have air conditioning that makes the climate more comfortable for the client. Those are the things I did in my life. You know, I gave a cool mechanic named Jay Z to the kid rather than being done BMX or drinking, but Dr. peppers and stuff made him look like a daggone mess that it’s hard to get hired, even though he’s the most amazing person in the world. For the client, like the most superstar like you’re the client jgs Anya, holy Look, you’re gonna have an experience, legit, because the guy just lives and breathes by. But I said, Dude, I want to get you hired. And I want to get you on down here and get to Dempsey, because you’re cheated out of so much opportunity because of that bias. You know, your smile, even though it’s kind of you know, not too great. After 15 seconds we don’t care because of your life energy bubbles. Ah, but get that handled. So that’s what I’m proud of threads that I helped mechanic get a set of teeth or, you know, hearing my proudest moment in the world was this. And it was at some seminar, I was somewhere for a company and this young mechanic comes up to me who you know, Those faces of the kids that never even lived on the street or whatever they might be 32 but they look like they’re more like 48 You know, he had a rough life. You could just tell, you know, drugs and street stuff at one point, homelessness. This is the later story, but you can just read a kid’s face, right? So he comes up to me all beaming and he says, Brett, you changed my life. That’s what he mean. He said, I’m 32 years old. I support a deaf wife. And deaf people are discriminated against. It’s hard for them to find employment. I’m proud that I can do that in the town I live. And we have a baby on the way and have a successful bike mechanic for four years or so at this shop. And it’s because of you. That’s what he’s talking about it. He said, my bosses went to one of your seminars once never young, starting the business and I remember him hadn’t even opened it yet, but they’re ready to and they were bright eyed and excited. And they said what can we do to really be successful, the best thing We can find a mechanic, you knew from an unlikely source like maybe a high school dropout or that usually you want to have some follow through, or maybe a kid that’s had a rough life or maybe it’d be a nice kid especially because if you find a BMX head type headset that’s, you know, just even from an unlikely source, find them and develop them because it’s going to take about five years. And then when you lay down your head at night, you know, then brake levers are tight. And, you know, the brake band was tightened on the coaster brake. And that if you really needed to, someone would go staple a piece of plywood over the Windows Store if you were in France, right in your dream, right? Because if you invest in them, they’ll have your back in a really great way. You know, they’ll give you loyalty. And so they took that advice and hired this chair and developed him and buys him every tool he needs and gives him a good salary and benefits and I’m proud of that. I don’t know any fancy celebrities. I don’t even remember the name, Fred. But there’s the moment that I’d love to brag about that I convinced the shop to say Holy crap, these little dirt bags, they got our back, treat them with respect because they don’t have any tools or engineering or nothing. They don’t have vehicles within the engineering protocol. We can’t plug these into a computer. No one tested, the drive trains, the brake, like crazy fluids worked out everywhere, or doesn’t. You know, it’s hard. We get no labor for what we do. We’re scratching out there on our own. So give them every resource, don’t cheat them out of tools and equipment, availability of you know, find an information they need to not screw up your customers work. It’s all about that, like you know, what I’m most proud of is 10s and 10s of thousands of invoices where I took people’s money under official banner when the business hours were open, as representative of the top examples of the brands, you know, you mentioned, you know, I was the factory factory mechanic, I had dialogue, you know, with our biggest vendor for years and years with Jeff G. And it’s like he knew who I was. He knew that if I presented something, I was competent. They didn’t treat me terribly, they really, I knew that the company that I was dealing with back here in Wisconsin, and ultimately had the clients back, you know, they really hooked me up most the time, like most of the times I’ve done it, and then that was really awesome, because then I didn’t have to worry the client didn’t need to know whether I’d get hooked up on the backside. I just said, Listen, we got to get you back out there riding again. You know, when I used to open up the training seminar bike gallery, this would be like 100 people at the no annual dealer, not that many, maybe 80. Whatever, and I get to say some, I’d say who’s the newest person here. Some poor little 19 year old dog from read or something. Raise Your Hand me the you know that right now you could if a client needed a 62 centimeter high end, you know dirt equipped road bike because there’s there’s something even lesser was being warrantied you could loan them Jay graves his bike, go to his office and to take give it to them, you know that one that signed by the you know, most world famous guy. You could give them that bike and loan it to him so he could keep riding to train for that ride that’s important to him. Did you know that you’re empowered to do that on day number one? No. I said, Jay, is that true? And he’s shaking his head. Yes. Because we have no funner time in the whole world and finding some crazy ridiculous solution to keep that plant going uninterrupted in an enthusiastic supported way where we didn’t make it hard for them. You know, that? Yeah. Don’t argue with people like they Hey, it’s hard out there. Yeah, shifting tricky. thing is really tricky. If you’re open to it, I can give you some of the stuff that I learned to make it better for me anyhow. And if that works for you, and you’re open to it, I’d share that. Otherwise, you know, here’s some things you know, that I found on the bike, because it isn’t all about you. I found some stuff. Check this out. I figured out this table tension here. Here’s the thing, clients, everybody listening to this professional. If a customer comes back to your store to turn in adjusting barrel fix shifting, you are delivering a high low, low, low, low, low level of competence in your service department. Because that my friends, notice the shape of it. It’s made for the client. The adjusting bear was made for us when I bought my bike. First thing I did is Dink around with my reach adjusters on my $4,500 retail mountain bike. Because I can’t and I know that it needs to be you know, so this stuff has to be you know, carefully managed.

Chad Pickard  54:54

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Fred Clements  55:08

Sort of a final question. I think we’re sort of getting towards the end. But you’ve worked in a multi-store chain at the bike gallery, you’ve worked in other large stores. How do you get buy-in? You mentioned you have training for your staff, you know, you have what bicolor had five or six locations, I think and what do you do as a manager to assure that each of the locations each of your people is kind of into what you’re thinking and sort of up to speed.

Brett Fleming  55:36

You fired the people that have ever had feedback that read like I felt disrespected and not listened to. Because there’s always going to be, you know, one or two of those that have been allowed to stay along too long because of competency. So at any given time, there were people sorry for when you got fired. It wasn’t a random event. It was with deep heartfelt discussion and sadness, sadness that people I couldn’t figure out how to engage with clients respectfully but so I just tell stories of how important this is to people. You know, like, Oh, I’d love the whole thing where I could just tell the story. But you just don’t know what a bike is doing for someone so enthusiastically approach every single one. As if they’re the most important person in the world that even the boss himself would come out and do this for you and make sure that it really was okay and wouldn’t send a survey later would be right at the table. You know, it kept a couple years ago we went to this nice family Italian restaurant. Oh my gosh, neat. because it’d be exact right point. The chef comes out and checked in with everybody in an earnest way. It’s very interesting with tomato sauce for a friend and you know, it was just so beautiful and the way the waiter interacted with the disabled girl, but Oh, would you like your? She said, you know, what would you like today, and she wasn’t able to Respond the disabled girl. So without a heartbeat, the server said, well, we’ll give you your regular. And that was one perfectly How can you be that good in so few seconds, you know. And you know, and when Oh, here’s the other thing, when a customer called us the same restaurant to the over busy server, and said, what you put in the bag wasn’t what I wanted. I want to say it’s not a soup and a salad. And she had the order down and everybody knew they ordered a salad. But when he got home, somebody was mad, and they both wanted to. So in a microsecond, all she said was no problem. I’ll get the order in right away. You know, no problem. I get the new order and right away, like instantly, we’re going to get you the food you want. We’re not going to talk about what you ordered, whether you’re right or wrong. And I asked her about it. And she says, Oh, it’s too easy. You get into the people’s. You see this person wants to talk this person doesn’t want To talk, I said no lady is not easy. It’s highly sophisticated, isn’t it? And she said, Yes, it is. It is. Some people want to be chatty. And some people want to get the heck out of there. Right? And you have a respect to show, find out where people are. Hey, you know, I see, you know, one another word track visit. Do you have any time constraints? You know, what are your turnaround expectations? Before we get started? We’re a little busy, we’ll have an option for you. We will have an option for you. But maybe not the fullest option to get you back on the road. Does that make sense? Never say we can’t get that tune-up. Sorry. Go away. Are you kidding, Fred? This train wreck of that entire life of that human being that went through all of those things. And though Sam’s formula, remember the time plus money equals j plus m like, Hey, we’re selling time and money, but we’re selling joy, and accomplishment and success. That’s delivered by the Macan. So that was like a philosophy a guy named Sam, somewhere in Minneapolis he could get he said Brett after seminar, you’re missing one important points is all about opportunity cost. If someone comes into your retail establishment is given up what this economist can measure as literally millions of other things. That’s what I want to end this interview with Cincinnatus. Remember, if someone came into your store, they got daycare, they got parking they got scratching their trunk from having to bring that damn thing back for a stupid adjusting barrel that you should have done. Are you kidding me and empower them to do it. So hey, you can’t go wrong with these suckers. Just grab one of these adjusting barrels and turn that sucker till it doesn’t shift and then go back clockwise again and you’ll be good to go. You know or something like that some nice way of explaining how it works. You know, you’ll be empowered when I show people that learn cycle Oregon do these clinics. And when you show people that they themselves can adjust their shifting with a cable adjustment as simple as the barrel adjuster. I’ve never had a client That their bike mechanic told them that isn’t that sad. They’re out there riding, not shifting on a vacation because it’s something they could just stop and turn something to half a turn and try it again and turn it another turn and try it again, and probably be happy. And that’s all we would have told them. So that’s where the words matters to, Hey, where are you on the scale? Do you want any words or not? Because some of them don’t want work? I want it to buy 99 you need a press developer or trade USA you need presto trader, you can say do you need pressors trader? You know, the one like on the car, or the funny one, right? You give them an out? You never put that’s another way you argue with people that you put them through all these tests. Is it Presta Schrader now? It’s hard. There’s a lot of different sizes. Oh my god, I would never shop there again. I would run out of that store. Like Why are you scolding me? I gave up everything in my life to come into a bicycle shop. Which I love bicycles, don’t you? Why are you so mean to me? I’m sensitive. You know? It’s easier No wonder the answers do Amazon equipment shift retails a bunch of mean people.

Fred Clements  1:01:06

effect breathe. One of them on my notes here from one of your seminars was a quote it is unacceptable to be a curmudgeon. And absolutely, that was pretty good. But I guess we’re pretty much done here. At least I’ve asked all that I have you know, Brett Fleming Efficient Velo Tools, email address, Brett, with two T’s at efficient vello.com Brett’s done, as obviously speaking and consulting with retailers in his tool business is what pays the bills. So thank you, Brett, for being here. Anything you wanted to add, as we wrap up here?

Brett Fleming  1:01:40

Hey, we’re trying to get hired to help people have an experience that sometimes it’s a practical experience. Sometimes it’s a joyful experience. And don’t we owe it to them to just do a little bit of an interview? Like, Think of it as an interview? It’s like, hey, you’ve given up a lot to get here. What can we know about you to make sure we do Deliver you a success because we’ve got a lot of stuff available. Even the boss’s bike. I’m serious, man. If you need to keep riding, I’m going to take the boss’s bike, dude. I mean, you’re just chained to the situation. Right? I say, Jay, I’m gonna take one of your BMX bikes. This kid’s, like, just really addicted to writing. It’s his medicine, he has ADHD and, you know, otherwise he’d be in jail. You know, who knows? Because you don’t know that story. Do your friend. That’s the main thing. You don’t know the story. Gently find out and respect people’s property, both mental and physical, and say, hey, how can we succeed for you because I’d like to get hired and help you have a great bicycle journey, or motorcycle journey or whatever it is, you know, trike journey. I don’t care if I’m a service professional. I’m trying to get hired. And you know, maybe I’m trying to get hired in my own brain to facilitate a joyful experience of gliding through the atmosphere carbon running down a trail like an animal, feeling Fast Company The goal getting to work, it’s all good. You know, and I was so happy to have procured that type of experience for so long. And here’s the greatest thing. Bosses don’t cheap out ever, and I never had to I was fully empowered. The last story is a poor woman who comes in with a custom bike custom geometry and she’s like knee short. I understand short, women’s stuff a lot because I ride their bike. When I get to test them, they’re the only ones that fit in Yeah, she had this liking we had talked about total overlap in the bike cost about 30 $500 is not an expensive custom that is mostly the frame, but that’s pretty expensive. So the chocolate overlap was tested. She tried writing at once, and it scared her. And she became fearful of the bike and never touched it for two years. And she came into the store one day with the bike and she’s crying. I get these salts, which is I’m glad I get the socks because that’s serious business and I said, Hey, what’s going on? Well, I bought this bike and I’m spooked about it. I’m just never going to Right. Even though I understood it had to clip overlap, I didn’t know what that meant. And that scares me and I’m afraid to get hurt. I said, Well, I give you all your money back. What? Yes, they do. I don’t want that out in the world. And if we blow you away like this, and just give your money back and take this terrible, terrible feeling away, all I would ask is that you tell people how it actually went down. And then we can sell the bike and recover from it so I can make that decision. And I was honored to have been empowered to be at that level in my career. Like, do you want to brag about stuff? I’m glad I could. And the one lady just changing her shifter angle 12 degrees completely, remarkably changed her shifting after we’d struggled for five different visits, to give her success when I went for a ride with her, and with the same shift and she goes, Oh my God, if you shift gears It was like, heck, yeah, baby. Let’s go for it. And we went on a fun ride. And with that, I am smiling about what it was I did for a living Fred, thanks for allowing me this interview. Thanks, listeners, whatever, if yet you do listen to this and thrive in a city joyful place to try another wonderful new employee. She has a neat little dog, whose ear is that down just to match our worthless dog here. So I’m happy and it’s funny. That’s the other thing spreads. It’s tiny and Mount Hood is out and just gorgeous. So is there anything else I need to? I’ll shut up? There you go.

Fred Clements  1:05:21

Now, I think we’re done. Thank you for it. So thank you, Brett. Thank you, NBDA. And I think we’re out for today.

Brett Fleming  1:05:28

All right, thank you so much.

Rod Judd  1:05:29

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership, and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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After spending 12 years as a writer and editor, Fred Clements worked as executive director and vice president for the National Bicycle Dealers Association for 28 years. He then moved to Interbike in a retail relations role, later transitioning into consulting. He enjoys helping the NBDA with podcasts from time to time and rides about 3,500 miles each year on his road bike.

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.

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Rodd & Kristi Mohn- Dirty Kanza

Tue, 8/18 10:43AM • 33:47

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

gravel, bike, event, ride, women, dirty, bike shops, people, community, miles, year, emporia, cycling, distance, big, pretty, bicycle, bit, finish line, find

SPEAKERS

Rod Judd, Kristi Mohn, Chad Pickard, Rachelle Schouten

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. Hello and welcome to bicycle retail radio. This is Rod Judd from people for bikes and I’m here today interviewing with Kristi Mohn, the marketing manager for the dirty Kansa, and all-around ambassador for all things gravel and bicycle participation. So welcome Christy, how are you?

Kristi Mohn  00:35

I’m great, Ron, how are you?

Rod Judd  00:37

I’m good. Thank you for joining us. So it’s great to be talking again.

Kristi Mohn  00:41

It’s a pleasure, for sure.

Rod Judd  00:43

Good. I wanted to get some insights into what you’re doing with the event this year and you’re sort of overall strategy. Tell us a little bit about your background as a bike enthusiast and you know what drew you to get involved in events in general?

Kristi Mohn  01:00

Well, you know, a lot of it just came down to health and fitness. At the core of it. I was a fairly avid runner in my late teens and early 20s. And as I grew older, I realized that running and my knees and my lower back are not jiving. And in through that process had also been working hard to get my husband to find something to do to stay in shape, and he turned to cycling, which meant eventually that I kind of turned to cycling as well. So it’s pretty organic how I came into it, and that was about 18 years ago. So

Rod Judd  01:34

how did you discover gravel?

Kristi Mohn  01:36

Well, if you’ve ever been to Emporia, Kansas, it’s pretty easy to see how he discovered gravel. Only about two paved routes that you can really ride around this community. But the gravel options are absolutely endless. So it really was pretty much a no brainer. And, you know, it really lends itself I think, to the type of writing that I like to do, which is a little bit more of an adventure. style. I also like the idea of the kind of being out there solo and away from things giving me lots of time to think and explore. So, gravel here was pretty natural, just because of where we fit in the country. So

Rod Judd  02:14

Sure. And of course, you’re a black business person that’s involved in many things. Mm-hmm. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what you’re doing in the black business in general. And, you know, what’s your take on the impact of gravel as a category for black businesses?

Kristi Mohn  02:29

Well, I think it’s been, you know, most people don’t really understand that dirty Kansa has been around for 2006. So this is actually going to be our 15th year of the event. I think gravel has become a very natural evolution of the process of where people are becoming, we’re seeing more and more distracted drivers, the roads are becoming less safe. gravel gives you that opportunity to get off the grid a little bit more and with how we are so connected, in our day to day lives anymore, it’s a reprieve from what we do. 24 seven, they So I think gravel has become a pretty natural evolution of where I would have anticipated the industry to go. I also think it really lends itself to the community, at least in my world It does. And that becomes something. In my mind, that’s really important too. So I think that’s why we’ve seen such a big boom and gravel. It’s just a safer environment and it’s more community-friendly.

Rod Judd  03:26

Okay. Where do you see it going next? You know, obviously, the styles and the technology with gravel bikes is changing. Sea stepping next.

Kristi Mohn  03:36

Well, I hope it continues to grow and bring in more and more people into the sport. And I think that that’s going to be you know, with the evolution of bikes becoming more comfortable and more durable and safer and more. You know, like I said, more comfortable to ride I think we’ll see more and more people choosing to explore the world on two wheels on gravel. And I think that there’s also you know, a lot of these bikes also work well as kind of a do-anything bike. Which I think is also important because if I can be a significant investment, you can have your bike also serve as a commuter bike or a bike Packer bike. And I think all of those things lend themselves well to gravel and to enter gravel bikes in that industry and that sector of the industry.

Rod Judd  04:15

Okay. You mentioned you know, you’re being involved with your husband and writing, what’s the appeal for you still about gravel, why he’s in love with this category, as it is in 2020.

Kristi Mohn  04:29

There’s just in my book, there’s no better way to explore the country, then on two wheels. I like it, because of the distances you can go in the time that you’re allowed. I think because the industry has grown up so much, you know, over the last 15 years, that it’s great because you have all of these different gravel events now that are popping up in all different places. that those are always at least two the all of the ones I’ve been to have been put on by people that are super passionate about the community that they’re in about gravel, and about the location that they’re doing these in. And it means that I can kind of, you know, thank my block on going and spending a great weekend around a great group of people and getting to see some of the best parts of nature in that area on two wheels. I just, I don’t see anything better as far as a way to explore the world on two wheels, as you know, attending these events and, and checking out these areas that people are finding things that they’re passionate about in it. That’s part of the reason I love doing it. And it’s also the solitude that will come from that to exploring those roads when you’re just going out for a test ride and whatnot. It’s pretty awesome.

Rod Judd  05:41

Yeah, that’s great. You know, in terms of events, tell us about your personal experience, riding an event like the dirty Kansa Do you remember the first time you rode? Tell us what it was like perhaps for people who, who haven’t had the pleasure of writing something like that?

Kristi Mohn  05:58

I’ve only been able to do dirty Kansa, two times, the first time was in 2010. And it was kind of I joined the promotions team after the 2008 event. And my husband was one of the original 34 riders back in 2006. And when I came and got to ride the event in 2010, it was right before we were kind of starting is the very first year we moved downtown. And I was pretty anxious about being on course versus being at the finish line because it was something new, but at the same time, dirty Kansa was much smaller than but my goal that year was truly to prove to myself that I could ride 200 miles in one day. So it was simply a finishing goal. And, you know, what would I tell people to expect I mean, it’s obviously a long day on the saddle. You need to know how to feed yourself and how to take care of your bike and all of those sorts of things that we tell you about their real my day ended, I slashed my tire pretty significantly, with about 30 miles to go. And ultimately, the repair didn’t hold. And so I finally called it with around 13 miles left or so and had my husband come pick me up.  But I think a lot of people saw that as disappointing, but in my mind, my goal was to ride 200 miles. And when I got to that point, I was like, I got it, like, I know I can do it. And it kind of, I mean, although I wanted to finish dirty Kansa I also wasn’t disappointed because I felt like I had met an expectation of myself. The team of race promoters at the time is, you know, Jim Cummins, who’s the founder, Leland Danes, who we brought in, and then my husband and myself at the time, the three guys basically came to me in 2017, and they were like, Hey, you want to try to ride it again? Which of course, you know, I did. So I wrote it again in 2018. And that one had my full attention, like, all the training, I didn’t miss a single training ride, hired a coach all of those things, but You know, on that one, it was really, I spent a lot more time I did my homework, I knew what to expect I put the work in. And I really my biggest tip on that from that ride and my biggest takeaway was to ride your race. You know, I didn’t commit to riding with anybody. I didn’t make any of those promises. I just decided to do the very best I could, at my own pace that day on the bike and, and of course, was very dialed with my nutrition and my speed zones. You know, when we got into the checkpoints, know exactly what I was doing and had a really big game plan and ultimately led to a really good success, which was super exciting. One of the things about Kansas, you really don’t know how Kansa is going to play with you that day. You know, you get to do one part of the race, but the rest of it’s up to the elements that you face when you go out there is a good day.

Rod Judd  08:43

Amazing. You mentioned you know the appeal of solitude on a good gravel ride. Tell me about what is some of the highs and lows that go through your head during an event like the dirty Kansa What do you find yourself going mental

Kristi Mohn  09:01

I think a lot of it for me is just the game that I end up playing with myself is that the part of me that tells me that I’m going to quit right now, you know, everybody talks about that. But what’s happened is, the more events I’ve done like this, and the longer I’ve been riding my bike like this, that voice is completely out shadowed by this other part of my brain that like, that’s just nonsense, you know, you’re not going to quit. So stop talking to yourself like that. It’s just the internal dialogue that I end up having where it’s basically coming out to the fact that, you know, I’ve committed to doing something and I really, really want to see it through the best of my ability. Of course, I’m going to be smart and I’m not gonna put myself in danger physically, but at the same time, it’s learning to grasp those highs and lows that you have when you’re out there and talk yourself through it and the way you can then take that and apply it to your everyday life and how you work with people in your day jobs is pretty amazing how that kind of I’m not going to quit attitude can prevail and help you be successful off the bike too. And That’s one of my biggest joys from it.

Rod Judd  10:02

That’s great. It’s powerful stuff. Okay, so for a brand new participant, you know, when you’re out there talking with folks who, you know, well, maybe intimidated, how would you describe your events to a first-timer?

Kristi Mohn  10:17

Well, I think that’s an interesting question, Rob. Because in my mind, dirty Kansa really consists of several different distances. And we’ve done that on purpose that allows you to bite off what you think you can chew and help you grow. And I think that’s what I would prefer to people when they, you know, I get people to call all the time, this is I’m not quite sure about the 200. And talking them through what that would look like and how that would relate and what they’re trying to do, and helping them make the decision of what distances may be the right distance for them where they can be successful, but still, be challenged. And it’s one thing that I really like about our event is that we do have a distance starting as small as 25 miles or as short as 25 miles. I shouldn’t say small because, for some people, that’s a really big deal. We’ve had people that have done the 50 miles that’s taken them nine hours to ride 50 miles. And when you consider that column Strickland last year finished in just under 10, he almost you know, triple lap, the 50, miler, and all intents and purposes. So I think it’s really, you know, for our event, it’s finding the distance that’s going to fit you and challenge you the best and make you feel accomplished. And that’s really kind of more of my focus and my drive at this point, then, you know, saying you have to do the 200 to have it be of any worth. It’s really finding something that’s going to meet your goal and where you’re at in your life and still gonna provide you that experience that you’re looking for.

Rachelle Schouten  11:41

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Rod Judd  12:39

You mentioned your husband was involved in the first 36 or so riders back when the event began. Do you know what motivated the introduction of this right, you know, why did they choose to create the dirty Kansa?

Kristi Mohn  12:53

Well, Jim Cummins and zoldyck our two founders had done trans Iowa, which is a 350-mile distance up in Iowa with Mark Stevenson up there, and they came back inspired from that. So the very first trans-Iowa took place in 2015 with the dirty Kansa on a deal taking place, this first event taking place in 2016. The takeaways they had from that was that 350 seems a bit unapproachable for I mean, 200 miles is a long way, you know, the DK now has the Excel distance, which is 350. But tuner miles is a long way, but they took away the distance might have been too long for just kind of your weekend warrior types. And they also did instead of a point to point ride, which was what Tran Seibel was that year, they did a loop so that you had to leave and get back to Emporia. So those were the big two differences between trans Iowa and dirty Kansa in that first year. That’s that’s what had inspired the event.

Rod Judd  13:47

So you’ve had some experience now with a number of iterations of the dirty Kansa. What are some of the things that you’ve learned from other races or perhaps that you’ve learned yourself that aren’t necessarily written down anywhere in terms of how to prepare, what’s the best way to get the best result out of the event? And what’s the best way to be satisfied with your experience there?

Kristi Mohn  14:12

Well, I think the big takeaway that I’ve learned from all of these events is, you know, watching the finish line, which is where I spend, most of my details are spent at the finish line. And I think, for me, the biggest takeaway is always that you’re, you’re so much more capable than what you think you’re capable of, you know, our abilities really can go beyond what we think we can do. And it’s the DK finish line, and many others out there too, are just such an emotional experience to see somebody that has made these goals for themselves, realize these goals. And it’s really cool too because I think sometimes what gets overlooked a little bit is watching those family members meet some of my biggest tugs that I’ve had at the BK finish line have been you know, not only with the finisher but then going over and hugging that family member. That’s been there. For them on their training ride was there for them in those support towns, it really the concept of bringing that community together and bringing families together and friends together is so prevalent at a race like dirty Kansa. And that, to me is just always a big takeaway. It’s just it just recharges your soul and your batteries to watch one of those finish lines.

Rod Judd  15:19

Great. Let’s talk a little bit about Lifetime’s involvement in the event, of course, lifetime acquired the event A few years ago. What does having a company from the health and wellness space bring to this event? Where do you see the great value there?

Kristi Mohn  15:36

The extra hands on deck, the extra resources have been just, there’s just no value to it. It’s enormous. We needed it. And we appreciate, you know, from the employer community and from the employment event staff. You know, we love the fact that we have a network of people and a team of people that can help pull this event off. It just was to the point where it was really difficult for people. And even though I mean, our volunteer crew is just top-notch, it’s still a lot on for people to pull off on that weekend. So it’s really nice to have, you know, last year was our first year with Lifetime in Emporia helping us and I went home on Thursday evening and took a shower. Which was, you know, a first in many years where, you know, the event starts or 30, you know, Wednesday evening gets here, and it’s pretty much a run till Sunday after the award ceremony. And it was amazing to be we were all sitting in the office kind of looking at each other going, you know, what should we do, and I think all four of us went home and took a shower before the evening gets together that evening, which was, you know, all because we had extra hands on deck help and get everything done. And it was just, it was an incredible feeling to know that that we had we chosen right and we picked an organization that was there to help and support us. So it was a really good feeling.

Rod Judd  16:56

Sure. Talk a little bit more about you know what it takes To put on the event, you know, how many volunteers are we talking about? and staff? What’s the heavy lifting? What goes into it?

Kristi Mohn  17:07

Our event services manager would have to get you the number of volunteers and pass. I don’t know, I even hate to. I even hate to take a guest. Yeah, I know. It’s probably 300 or so something like that. And I might be shy, I don’t know. And I’m sure she’s told me. But it’s one of those things where it’s for me, it doesn’t hit me right in the gut like it’s kind of in one ear out the other. But we’ve worked. I think one of the things that I’m super proud of is how we’ve worked with so many of these community organizations to help them use dirty Kansa as a fundraiser for themselves or help them generate funds to give you so we’re giving back to the community that way. And I think last year’s fundraising totals for all our organizations that we worked with was close to $100,000 from that weekend, and that’s, I mean, from a kid from Emporia to be able to impact my community like that is just really helped. bowling.

Rod Judd  18:01

Yeah, and talk a little bit more pleased about, you know what this means to the city. You know, obviously bicycling can have a great impact on local economies. Please share your thoughts and impressions on what it means to aporia.

Kristi Mohn  18:15

Well, I mean, last year’s study that they conducted after dirty Kansa weekend alone was a giveback of around $5.5 million. I think. So super substantial. And I think that the impact resonates throughout the year. We have people come and ride bikes in Emporia year-round, not just dirty Kansa weekend. So you know from that perspective, we don’t even know the calculation that the as a little race that could is sometimes what I call dirty Kansa or race it could it’s like what is it actually impacting in Korea with and I think it’s it’s a lot of notoriety and a lot of people that come here to ride your round, which is great. Right?

Rod Judd  18:54

You are clearly motivated by the passion for getting more people to ride with you. is obviously, you know, very important to all aspects of businesses and you know, in my opinion, to communities in general, talk a little bit about your motivation for getting women to ride wise women,

Kristi Mohn  19:15

it really came from the fact that when I joined the cycling community here, and in the Midwest, they’re just there wasn’t a ton of us out there. And I didn’t understand why. And I think it boils down to a lot of it is, you know, some intimidation and not necessarily the support networks that women were looking for in there. And I just really felt like coming from a running background too, and I’d seen, you know, 51% female participation in events. And on the running side, I didn’t understand why it wasn’t there on the writing side, because the cycling in my book was easier, more fun, more community-driven and something way easier to share with a friend or a husband or a significant other, whatever it is. Didn’t make sense. And I think it just became a passion for me that I wanted to get more women out there from the competition side and from the camaraderie side and from the fact that I didn’t want women missing out on what gravel was about. And I wanted that shared experience with them. Excellent. Maybe a little bit selfish. Like that. Yeah. Thinking about it from that perspective, like, you know, let’s, let’s do this.

Rod Judd  20:25

There’s nothing wrong with that. If it’s for the greater good, right. Totally. Some of the interactions you’ve had with women during your cycling career, you know, can you speak to a specific example where you really felt like you changed somebody’s life through cycling?

Kristi Mohn  20:41

That seems pretty presumptuous. I can talk about like, I mean, I suppose I probably have changed some women’s life and that perspective. I think, more of what I think about is and you know, I’ve used and named a couple of times this year but and gentle, who is a writer from Nebraska She’s been to a couple of BK camps. She inspires me greatly. She was on the docket to ride the DK 200. Last year and at Camp after just watching her ride and get through some stuff. I had a conversation with her where I, you know, I said, I think the 200 is you’re biting off more than you can chew. And I really want to see you finish. And I knew she had done some other distance events that she hadn’t completed and worked with her to do the 100 instead of the 200. And that moment of her finishing that 100-mile distance was just, it was amazing. You know, I try to think of other women that like Wendy shear she’s in. She and her husband, Jason do ordinary ethics now, which are bike races and community events down in Mississippi. And I think that that’s probably something that I’ve inspired. But, you know, it’s hard to say, that’s just it’s not necessarily why I do it. So I guess I don’t really look for that. If that makes sense.

Rod Judd  21:54

Those understand. You’re involved with a group of women who ride the world. Mm-hmm. Would you talk a little about that group’s mission, particularly the social aspects of your work there? Tell us a little bit about it.

Kristi Mohn  22:07

Women, right, the world was born out of 200 women 200 miles. And that campaign was launched in 2016. To try to get 20% women participation at our 200-mile distance event is that event grew. And we move through things with that. I understood that we weren’t, what I was really trying to accomplish was to get more women at the start line. And although we had been focused on the 200-mile distance, I wanted it to be focused on every distance because it’s not, you know, 200 miles is a significant amount and it requires quite a bit of training. So I was really looking forward to trying to get women on the bike at the start line to the 25 of the 50 of the 100 of the 200 and trying to make a space where they felt welcome to come and ride any distance at the DK and as we were trying to kind of my girlfriends and I hear we’re trying to kind to come up with how that look, we each started committing to how many miles we were going to ride that year and help hold each other accountable. And what came out of it was that when we added up our miles, we figured out we were going to collectively ride around the world. And that’s where kind of the women ride the world came from, and the incentive there and then the motivation there is to just simply get more women on bikes, give them a space to find support. Some of the initiatives that we’re going to be launching out of this will be including some toolkits for ambassadors toolkits for events, toolkits for a bike shop, really trying to make sure we’re giving women the community support that they need to decide to try riding gravel.

Chad Pickard  23:43

As a retailer, I filled out my very first America’s Best Bike Shop application over five years ago. And to be honest, the first time I was a little anxious, I felt the result of the process would either be the seal of approval or the seal of disapproval for my bike stars. It was shortly after they handed The awards that I realized, this is an excellent opportunity to work with staff on our messaging and customer experiences in our stores. ABBS kind of became the coach, we used to find holes in our sales process or staff training. Where else are you going to get critical feedback like that?

24:15

Go to nbda.com for more details and to sign up for America’s Best Bike Shop program.

Rod Judd  24:27

Can you talk a little more about those toolkits, you know, and how would retailers connect and what does that mean for the retailer or the community organizer?

Kristi Mohn  24:35

Sure, and those are all things that are in the works. But the goal here is that you know, we hear a lot of times that bike shops can be intimidating. So we want to try to partner with bike shops and find bike shops that want to be doing things that will make a woman purchaser feel more comfortable, feel welcome to some specific clinic and rides focused on them and just really kind of giving them the space to grow into Cycling where they’re not intimidated.

Rod Judd  25:02

Very good. What does success look like for you in terms of women’s participation in the United States? You mentioned, you know, attending running events where the proportions were much more balanced of mental women. What do you think we need to take it? And how do we get there?

Kristi Mohn  25:18

Well, you know, I think continuing, the one big thing I think I always hear is like, we just have to invite women to participate, you know, ask them. So I think obviously, that’s key is to events and bike shops and organizations and events to just continuing to ask women to participate. You know, what does success look like? Obviously, you know, 50% female 50% male is probably what true success looks like. Realistically, you know, what I hoped for at the 30 Kansas start lines is more shooting at a collective like 35% across all of our distances. We see interesting numbers in our 25-mile distance, it’s actually over 50%. It’s like 55 57% female participation. So I think it’s just a matter of, you know, continuing to make sure we give them to give women, those avenues to be successful and the avenues to have access is the big part of it and feel welcome.

Rod Judd  26:11

Speaking to decision-makers and leaders within our industry and the health and wellness industry, if you could have the floor and ask them to do something to get involved, what would you ask them to do?

Kristi Mohn  26:26

I think anything that I would ask anyone to do would have to make sense of where they are and what they’re doing. It has to be something that that is I hate the word authentic, but you know, authentic, organic, and what they’re doing. It has to make sense. It can’t be forced, it has to feel, you know, natural. And I think you know, continually looking in your own communities for women leaders, and empowering them is important. You know, we did that with big sugar when we launched big sugar down in Bentonville, Arkansas bringing on Gaby Adams is one of our event directors. It was a matter of empowering and the concept is, you know if she can see it, she can be it. Just making sure women have that space and have the opportunity to be leaders is super important.

Rod Judd  27:12

Yes, I’m glad you brought up the sugar. Do you see a younger writer attending that event? So I guess the back of that question is how do we reach younger writers and younger women in particular?

Kristi Mohn  27:26

Well, I think it all comes down to the same things that we’ve been saying. You know, obviously, Gabby’s, although we share a birthday, we’re many years apart. Bringing up young leaders and young writers, it’s just the same thing. Giving them the space giving them the floor, giving them the power to be leaders as we move things forward is super important.

Rod Judd  27:45

What do you think the barriers are specific to women writing in the United States right now?

Kristi Mohn  27:52

You know, cycling isn’t a cheap sport. So obviously, I think there’s always a financial part of it. Women tend to Although they tend to be the biggest decision-makers in the families, as far as finances go, they also are less likely to spend money on themselves. So there’s some training thereof like, you know, you’re worth it and your health is worth it. I think, again, it comes down to support and access, I think we’re doing a better job of it. Especially I think the cycling industry is doing a much better job continually of making sure that space and that seat at the table is available. I think we just have to keep doing all of those things and keep recognizing that it’s not, you know, it’s not equitable yet. But it’s, it’s way better than it was even you know, three years ago, I think.

Rod Judd  28:38

Excellent. So for the next five years, say, what are your personal goals for expanding particularly women, right, the world what’s next, you mentioned that the kids would be available, what is your grand ambition? You know,

Kristi Mohn  28:53

personally, like I just want to continue to empower the next round of leaders. Yeah, I’m not old, but I also I think you know what you said about getting younger people on bikes. And I think that’s important. And I think, you know, the next generation is going to come to the table with different ideas. And they need to be heard, and they need to have the space to do that. So, you know, I want to see, I just want to see that next group of ambassadors grow and be successful and support them, even if we disagree. You know, I think that’s another thing. Some feedback I’d gotten. There was a comment about competition versus camaraderie. And, you know, I think I do, I’m not one of those people that believe you can have both. So I think that I want to see women, right the world grows more leaders as we move forward. I’m also a big believer. I mean, obviously I’ve been championed as someone about women on bikes, but what really what it boils down to is the community piece for me, and I really want to see, I want to see local bike shops, I want to see local bike dealers understand how important their role is in their community. And hopefully, give them some ways to be successful if they’re falling short because I think, you know, obviously, the online stuff is out there. But you can’t build a community online. It’s just doesn’t work. Like I mean one where you’re going out and you know, going for a ride together and then having beers afterward or having coffee or having pizza, or whatever it is. And I want to see, I want to make sure those local bike shops are finding success moving forward.

Rod Judd  30:22

You’re obviously a marketing expert yourself, what are some of the inspirations that you get from perhaps other industries or things that you see day to day that can help us with community building in the bike space?

Kristi Mohn  30:37

realtor, also, and I think a lot of it comes, you know, comes from that, I think, you know, I’m so entrenched between those two communities. And the other one would potentially be music and just looking at how, you know, music can bring people together. Obviously, houses are definitely community-related. I think they all just kind of make sense to me is looking at those things. First, And I definitely am cross-referencing things all the time just in general, if I see something, how can I use that to make dirty Kansa better or, you know, make sugar better? Whatever it is. I just kind of glean stuff from things around me. Very good.

Rod Judd  31:15

All right, before I throw up some final comments, do you have any new events planned? Do you have anything new programs that we can look forward to in the coming year or two

Kristi Mohn  31:26

new events for me personally, or professionally?

Rod Judd  31:30

I’ve seen new iterations of a new big sugar or new dirty Kansa. Or perhaps,

Kristi Mohn  31:34

you know, we, I think we’re always looking at potential ideas for growth opportunities, it’d be silly to not continuously be kind of keeping our eyes open and our fingers on the pulse for things in need, and holes, so to speak, that where we could fill a gap. So those things are always in play. You know, personally, I think I’m hoping to get to some events I haven’t been to just to check those out. haven’t been too rooted, Vermont, which I’m going out to this year. And I’m really looking forward to that. I’m participating in Lead Boat. So I’m looking forward to that challenge and just trying to figure out other ways to continue challenging myself on the bike is important. It provides me inspiration coming back home, for sure.

Rod Judd  32:19

Excellent. Is there anything else you’d like to add? Christy? Anything that we haven’t addressed that you’d like to speak to?

Kristi Mohn  32:26

You know, I think I know, as I said earlier that, that I definitely have been identified as a leader in this getting more women on bikes and I’m, I’m stoked about that. But it’s not just limited to women. I want to see people get out on bikes and try gravel and try dirt and try, you know, even mountain biking. I think that there’s a lot to be learned out there. And I think it’s a super great place to find and build new relationships and find something out new about yourself. And so, you know, as much as I’m stoked on getting more women on bikes, I challenge those women to get other people in their families on bikes, too. I think it’s a really great avenue to explore and learn something new.

Rod Judd  33:06

Excellent. Well, thank you, Christy Christy mon. You’re an amazing ambassador for what we’re doing. I thank you for your time today and good luck with the events this year.

Kristi Mohn  33:15

Thank you. Hope to see you at some of them.

Rod Judd  33:18

Absolutely. 

Kristi Mohn  33:19

Awesome.

Rod Judd  33:20

Bye Now

Kristi Mohn  33:22

Okay, thanks. Bye. 

Rod Judd  33:23

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

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The post Dirty Kanza and the Gravel Cycling Explosion appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Expanding Your Business and Navigating Your Changing Role:  Ian Christie was a teenager when he cleaned bathrooms and did basic bike builds in a bike shop in exchange for parts. He eventually worked his way to a paying gig on the sales floor and realized this was the career path for him. He acquired Summit Bicycles when it had two locations in the Bay Area, and he has expanded it to five, with a staff of 45-60 full-time-equivalent staff members across the company.

In this episode of Bicycle Retail Radio, Ian talks about the challenges of expanding your business and managing your shifting role as an owner when your business grows. You will hear Ian’s thoughts on how good bike shops (even your competitors) are good for the industry as a whole, and the opportunities he sees for his company in the coming years.

Please enjoy listening to Expanding Your Business and Navigating Your Changing Role.

Support the show  (https://nbda.com/articles/donation-form-pg511.htm#!form/Donate)

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Episode 22 – Ian Christie

Tue, 8/18 10:42AM • 41:35

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

stores, bike shops, bikes, bike, people, customers, years, industry, pretty, gravel, staff, sell, area, training, big, build, bathrooms, vendors, run, shop

SPEAKERS

Ian Christie, Rod Judd, Chad Pickard

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Chad Pickard  00:16

My name is Chad Pickard and I’m the president of Spoke-n-Sport Bikes in sunny Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I also serve on the NBDA board. Today I’m going to be talking with Ian Christie of Summit Bicycles, which is located in the much sunnier Bay Area of California. Good afternoon, Ian. How are you? 

Ian Christie  00:34

I’m good. Chad. How are you? 

Chad Pickard  00:35

Not as warm as you are? But yeah, well, the sun is out actually. Which is a huge, I guess blessing for us. makes a big difference when it’s cold out. So yeah, yeah. Sunny and getting warm.

Ian Christie  00:48

Yeah, good. Good for you.

Chad Pickard  00:50

Yeah, the temperature here is 30. And people are starting to think about bikes a couple of days ago was 20. Below that was the actual air temperature and believe it or not, we still see people Bike to Work in 20 below temps which is amazing. 

Ian Christie  01:03

That’s crazy In California and you’re such Fairweather riders once it dips below 60 We’re like, no. 

Chad Pickard  01:09

Yeah, yeah. I lived in Texas for a while. And it was the same temp was the cutoff. And I found myself getting out more in those temperatures because the single track was wide open. There was nobody there. And nobody could see me just crushing the single track. So it turned into a kind of an urban legend. But yeah, so I’m excited to talk with you today. We don’t have a real specific agenda. But I know just this last year, you’re a top 25 dealer with TREK. So congratulations on that. And you run five stores in the Bay Area. Are there 5 million people in the Bay Area? Or is it more than that? 

Ian Christie  01:48

Seven, 

Chad Pickard  01:49

seven.

Ian Christie  01:50

It really depends on like which communities you count or don’t count, but like the traditional burial communities, okay, comes to about 7 million

Chad Pickard  02:00

That is a lot of people. That’s a lot. 

Ian Christie  02:02

It’s not that. Yeah, like 45 miles each way pretty much can get you the whole Bay Area. So it’s not very big.

Chad Pickard  02:10

Okay, so there’s some, is there some geographical boundaries other than the ocean?

Ian Christie  02:16

Yeah, yeah. So the peninsula is definitely landlocked, and then the East Bay, you know that you could set a mountain and then once you get past, really like the first cities along the coast of the east part of the day, that’s really like the valley, you know, almost headed toward Sacramento. What are the areas that we don’t really traditionally count as the Bay Area like Oakland and Hayward, San Leandro, maybe even Walnut Creek, those areas, those are traditionally kind of referred to as the Bay Area? And then, of course, the North Bay, all the way up to San Rafael, Berkeley. And then I really cover like mid-peninsula down to the South Bay. And the South Bay is really like the traditional Silicon Valley. You know, San Jose, Santa Clara. Suddenly all better. 

Chad Pickard  03:01

Okay, well, cool. So, obviously there’s last week it was at a dealer event, there are hundreds and thousands of retailers in the US with, you know, bike stores that you see their names and print here and there, but you never get to know them. Could you just introduce yourself, like, where you came from and how you got into the bike business, and maybe just a little bit about Summit Bicycles?

Ian Christie  03:22

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Ian Summit Bicycles. I acquired the company nine years ago now and it was actually technically my first job. I grew up in Santa Cruz. My dad worked over the hill in San Jose. And my best friend’s dad owned a couple of bike shops, one of which was in Los Gatos and he let me work for bike parts and cash under the table. Through cleaning bathrooms and whatnot. So my dad would drop me off on his way to work at the bike shop and then pick me up on his way back. And I just went from like, you know, shop Grom cleaning things to You know, building basic bikes to help you out on the floor to become a salesperson to the manager. And then I became the general manager of the two stores at the time. And then I was at the point where I had to, I had to choose whether to try to purchase the businesses from the previous owner, or continue on with college. And I chose the bike shop route, my wife continued on to college, she went to Berkeley got a degree blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, I bought the two stores time required. The ownership transition took about four years and we acquired our San Jose location right in the middle of it. So when the transition was over, we had three stores. And then we opened Santa Clara in 2014, and then Palo Alto, in 2017. And then we also moved to the location and remodel the location, all of a sudden, like a span of four years. So 

Chad Pickard  04:59

So Little bit of work there. 

Ian Christie  05:01

Yeah. Yeah, it was good. I always like doing that build out stuff. You know. I think my senior year high school I had six periods of the woodshop. Yeah. Yeah, I was like a TA for this person. And, like, I totally nailed it in. I still wonder how I pulled that off? Yeah. So I always like, you know, building the stores and designing them and, you know, doing the work myself and that sort of thing. So, yeah, that’s Summit Bicycles. big Trek dealer has actually been taught 25 for like, eight years now. Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty much. 

Chad Pickard  05:43

Okay. And so five stores just to give listeners an idea of the volume or the actual staffing size. What’s your staff? Is it 40 – 50 people that you have?

Ian Christie  05:54

Yeah, it ranges. It’s right around 45 to 60 The full-time equivalent, I’d say is like, the range. Right now we’re starting to bump up. So, like the actual individuals, we’re probably into like the 65 to 80s. But we always just look at the SP number. So okay, sure. Full time.

Chad Pickard  06:15

So FTE full time equivalent for those listening. Okay, a lot of employees that’s so with, you know, California’s have some changes with pay and things like that is that I’ve talked to some people that look at it two different ways. They just say that’s a natural increase in wages over time because I think it’s by Is it 2023? minimum wage is $15 an hour?

Ian Christie  06:39

Yeah, all of our stores are already Okay, like so I believe that’s like the state mandate, but then each tourney has their own separate kind of plan. And so like we have stores that have different minimum wages than some of our other stores, okay, but we just apply the highest one to all of them. But yeah, that’s been a huge variable that we’ve had to kind of encounter and realize the last two years especially given like, I mean, the unemployment rate in California is pretty much zero, right? I mean, if you could write open a box with a box opener and you got a job, you know, so the pay is one factor, which, you know, it’s definitely possible last issue, but getting people is difficult. This the volume of applicants is rare. So our last big hire for like, you know, a management position actually came from Florida. So, 

Chad Pickard  07:33

Oh, wow. 

Ian Christie  07:34

Yeah.

Chad Pickard  07:36

Are you finding getting those applicants through? You’re probably putting an ad in a local paper, right?

Ian Christie  07:43

No, yeah. No. So we do like Craigslist. We do everything as we do. This. We do Facebook, we do our own market, like through our own channels. We do, indeed. Zip recruiter LinkedIn. And like we’ve done it all, and we’ve always gotten kind of varying degrees of success from different avenues specific to the position, which is interesting. I mean, it’s not rocket science, but like finding production mechanics on indeed is proving more difficult, but we’ve had more success with it on Facebook, you know, okay, and then vice versa for management positions. So

Chad Pickard  08:25

Your shop is good, like really good. You have the right bikes with the right gear and the right employees with the right training. But there’s that voice in the back of your head telling you, are you really that good? Why not prove it? Sign up for America’s best bike shop program with the NBDA. The NBDA is America’s Best Bike Shop program is designed to identify and reward bicycle stores in North America against the highest performance standards in the industry. Find out more @NBDA.com When hiring a higher level, you know, leadership positions, are you still using those same methods, or are you headhunting going out into other industries and looking for people there to bring them into your organization?

Ian Christie  09:16

So, to answer your question simply mainly, like through indeed, or zip recruiter, however, 99% of our management positions are filled by people who have worked with us for a good amount of time, like, all my managers I’ve ever hired, probably three, and I have a more recent one that we make it four that I’ve been an outside hire. It hasn’t come from within. We’ve had much more success with the ones that come from within and they stick around longer. I mean, we’re pretty lucky we don’t have a ton of turnover on our management positions. So we just did a man University and like everyone went around the room. It was just the managers I think the average length of years with us from a manager was like, seven or eight years. 

Chad Pickard  10:05

Oh, wow. Congratulations. You’re doing something, right.

Ian Christie  10:09

Yeah, for sure. Lucky. Lucky for sure. 

Chad Pickard  10:14

I mean, if you’re doing Mann group training, their leadership training is excellent. You know, if you’re using some of those tools, hopefully, that’s a result of those tools and your wisdom to implement those.

Ian Christie  10:25

Yeah, they’re the right people to give them a lot of freedom to be successful. And, you know, help assess their strengths and complement their weaknesses.

Chad Pickard  10:36

To shift gears a little bit. So you have a total five stores now and you’ve started with two and expanded and move some, what’s your metric you use for? To answer the question, you know, do we need to open another store? Are you moving into places where there are existing stores? Is it you’ve grown? Your staff has grown so much that you have excess staff and you need somewhere to put them? Or excess inventory? What’s kind of your flowchart for that?

Ian Christie  11:01

Yeah, the real motivation through expanding was just internal motivations to grow. And then the way we assessed kind of the barrier markets is really just by feel. I mean, there’s only so much data that I mean, like population data and tech companies in the area, so on and so forth. But if we made decisions just based on that, I think we wouldn’t be as successful as we have been. So we have kind of our model of a store, or historically, our model of a store, which is, you know, three to 5000 square feet and a certain amount of revenue that we think that that area can produce. And then, you know, from there, it’s just going off of, you know, the space and the lease and the negotiations and whether or not that is going to work out into, you know, the financial model of the store, but that’s a whole nother variable in California. Sure. You have no idea but that landlord thinks that what their space is worth right and If they’re going to come down to reality at any point, so, but I think, after doing, I mean, all of our stores really kind of fit that model, I’m really interested in the idea of like a 2000 square foot store much smaller stuff, which is, you know, maybe even smaller than 2000 square feet, and just lower overhead all the way around in being okay with the lower, you know, top-line revenue. So, there are real profitable models there that are interesting, especially when we have everything else done in the background in terms of marketing, like building, you know, HR, blah, blah, blah, like all that stuff can run in the background. Sure, we just kind of folder and another, you know, five employees or so

Chad Pickard  12:44

you’re serving more of a micro-community, maybe a residential that’s got, you know, six high rises in the people immediately surrounding it. Is that kind of the plan?

Ian Christie  12:54

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, just a simpler operation, right. Like, yeah, the stores, we have are pretty intricate, right? And they sell really, really expensive high-end bikes, which, you know, we need certain people to sell, right. Whereas if it’s a more kind of hybrid community store, it’s a much I think those pieces are way more interchangeable in terms of staff, right? Like, it’s a lot easier just to kind of bring them through our training, and maintain them up to date on, you know, up to the $3,000 bikes, and they’re gonna be off and running. And that community, but, you know, we haven’t done anything like that yet. That’s like, almost the exact opposite of what our model is, which is whenever I think of like, okay, Just mind your business, you know, like, if do it, you know? Yeah, you know, don’t make it complicated. So, yeah, maybe it’s the next one. We’ll see. 

Chad Pickard  13:50

Okay, well, I hope to hear about it when it does happen. I hope it worked out. Well. I like the idea of the smaller neighborhood. Bike store. That’s got to be a fairly probably fairly dense area to make it work. So as you’ve expanded what’s become easier for you, was there a while you kind of started with two stores? Was it a race to open a third? Because two is crazy or was it just like you said it was just kind of a natural, you know, you want it to grow? Has anything become easier as you grow?

Ian Christie  14:22

Yeah, definitely. And I’m not sure if it’s easier because we grew or if it’s just easier because we just got better at the things we sucked at. It’s changed, I would definitely say like, things are different, like my role in the company is dramatically different. You know, compared to when we had two or three stories, you know, when we went to our fourth or fifth, so when we went to three, we weren’t planning to go to three, a store kind of came to us who took that opportunity. So that was an acquisition, which was a great acquisition. The interesting thing is like When you have two stores, you could kind of be the guy in each one, right? Like, you could be the main sales producer, you know, and work six days a week and have, you know, go-between at least ours are pretty close geographically. So I could bounce between them, you know, within 15 minutes sitter issues or find new paying customers coming in or whatever, but as I said, you go to three, you’re almost forced to have like to add a layer of management between you and you know, the support staff, per se, right. So like, three stores, we really kind of looked at, like a sales manager, a service manager, and then they reported to me and then I did you know, whatever site buying marketing or what have you, and then when we added the fourth, that one, I mean, aside from building it out, physically, like myself, it really kind of assimilated into The rest of them pretty easily. And that’s what it was kind of like, okay, like, this is different now, you know, like, it’s literally just kind of adding on Legos to the end of creation, that sort of thing. So, and then we did the same for Palo Alto for number five, and that we took that like, I think 70% of that stuff came from another store or other stores, I should say, if we piecemeal that, so,

Chad Pickard  16:29

okay, were there any I mean, so as you’re growing any unintended consequences that were like, Oh, we didn’t think about this, but this is even better, or is it just the ability to we’re getting good at this. We’re repeating it. Everything’s falling into place easier because we’ve been here before.

Ian Christie  16:46

Yeah, I can tell you the build-outs got a lot easier. We went from over like, you know, a 90 day build-out of like lease signed two doors open for business to be Don’t they’ll pop on 30 days, and it probably should have been like 40 days or something like that, like you’re there you know, the inventory was pretty sparse on the floor but like project management in terms of construction and that sort of thing, like we were so on like and we had like our plumber and electrician and our flooring guy like, right, they’re on top of each other one would finish on Thursday at noon, the other one would come in Thursday at one o’clock and it was just like, you know, it was a symphony

Chad Pickard  17:28

now I think you’re lying because it never happens that way right?

Ian Christie  17:31

Oh, it did. I flooring

Chad Pickard  17:34

somewhere plumbers on another job.

Ian Christie  17:38

Yeah, that’s what we learned. That was the thing, right? Like it’s a full-blown game. And like, you just got to be aware of that game and play it right back and get ahead of it right so like, and I literally remember purposely like scheduling everything a week earlier and just like it always did, right. Whether it was because of you know, getting signed off or this permanent or like He said flooring stuck in the back of the warehouse. It didn’t you know, one last box, it didn’t make it on the truck. You know, it all fell into place, like music. So that got easier. But no, I would say everything else is pretty, you know, pretty consistent. You know, if there’s anything that you got easier in terms of the business. It was like, upset by the fact that there are just more mouths to listen to. Right.

Chad Pickard  18:28

I have kids, I get the reference.

Ian Christie  18:30

Yeah. And that’s probably the biggest little reminder rules changes, like, I used to be able to be friends or you know, are like the perception of a friend. It’s like everyone right now. It’s like, I walked into the shop and I’m like this to meet you. And they’re like, I’ve worked here for four months. You’re like, Okay, great. I’m a jerk. Like a complete jerk. I wish that wasn’t there. Like timing having close relationships with My employees. So 

Chad Pickard  18:58

Sure. So For the people listening to this, I mean, I’m a firm believer that, you know, in the same way, that we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of banks and coffee shops, I mean, I think we really do need more successful bike stores and not just opening up a store on a whim, but a plan to open a store and to, you know, to make sure all the right things are in place so that the result is a success. Well, what are some of the roadblocks that those looking to expand should look out for like, Is there one or two huge things that often get overlooked when expanding? Maybe from your own experience or something you learned from somebody else? That maybe was a mentor of yours or? Or you’d talk to about it?

Ian Christie  19:39

Yeah, I, and not just bike shops, a lot of businesses. I’m always kind of curious if they run the numbers or not before they open. Do you know what I mean? Like, I’m like, Did you really think you’re gonna sell 1000 hotdogs a day or something? Do you know what I mean? Like, whatever the business is, I’m like,

Chad Pickard  19:56

let’s not talk about the store. I bought. Yeah, I bought it. So I can talk for hours about that. Yeah, that’s a valid question.

Ian Christie  20:05

Yeah. And so just run the numbers. I mean, like on the build-out on the first three months in the first 12 months, but you think it’s gonna be doing you have enough runway to cover it? If you don’t? What’s your contingency? Like? All that stuff? Right? Because right, it takes time to turn a new store. profitable, right? Or even break even, you know, we’ve been fortunate that they’ve, they’ve happened quicker than we’ve budgeted. That’s because we ran the numbers constantly and massage them constantly and you know, we’re overly conservative in which makes you approach everything the right way. You know, the build-out how much you’re going to spend and the least, which you’re going to live with for X amount of years. So yeah, that just runs the numbers. That’s my biggest recommendation. For sure.

Chad Pickard  20:54

are you guys doing that in the house or using an accountant to help Oh, yeah, that no, no in the house Yeah. So in your build-outs, is there one thing that you forgot in the first build-out? That’s the ongoing joke for continual build-outs. You know,

Ian Christie  21:14

I would ask my staff, I would say the one thing I probably would do differently on the build is not to make such nice bathrooms. I don’t know why, but I made like, kinda like marble tile in the bathrooms and that like, and I did it all too. And I’m like, why did I do that? They’re beautiful. They look great. Yeah, we’re big believers in clean bathrooms for customers, but you don’t need to spend you know, do you have

Chad Pickard  21:41

to have like an espresso machine in your bathrooms to

Ian Christie  21:44

No, no, I didn’t go that far.

Chad Pickard  21:48

Yeah, I tell you what, I love a nice bathroom. And sometimes even. I mean that we joke about it, but there’s something nice to a nice bathroom. I mean, I think it’s important. So I’m gonna say good for you for putting a little extra into your bathrooms and hopefully, your customers appreciate it. And your staff. 

Ian Christie  22:05

Yeah, no we’ve gotten is. So, I mean, there are much worse things you can do an adult than, you know, put a little extra time into the bathroom. So

Chad Pickard  22:17

yeah, okay. So obviously, you know, you’ve probably read the news about our industry, it’s the national numbers are, we’re selling, you know about the same number of bikes or less or a little bit more depends on who you ask retail dollars are going up. What does our industry didn’t need to do? We’ve kind of stagnated a bit. There’s been, in some regions, there’s a lot of bike stores closing, the national numbers show that there’s quite a few opening, but currently more closing than opening, but not by a huge percentage. What do you see that we can do as an industry to change those numbers to create more growth, more cyclists, more people coming into our bike stores

Ian Christie  22:56

is a question of the decade right or last decade. I don’t know, to be honest, like, I always wonder like, how many of those bike shops that close our shitty bike shops, because I mean, let’s be honest, like, you know, a bad bike shop closing is good for everyone. And a good bike shop can do wonders for other bike shops. I remember when my largest competitor moved right into town right next to me. It was like, Okay, are we gonna die? Or are we going to improve and like, that store has gone down? Any year since they moved in, they’ve only gone up. So it’s interesting because bike shops really represent the bike industry to the end consumer. It’s, it’s the most important part of the whole chain. Right. And I think it’s going to be a myriad of running our businesses better, right? Being tougher on our vendors and being kinder to our customers. Right? And which I think overall, we’ve gotten a lot better at like, in terms of bicycle shops actually providing some sense of customer service. Compared to 20 years ago. I feel like it’s night and day. Do you know what I mean? And it’s good to see the standards that were judged by our customers now. Yeah, because a lot of times we meet them, you know, and that was not the case, right? Like bike shops were super intimidating, non-welcoming stores were people were met with attitude. That’s why the previous owner started summit, right. He wanted to get into road riding, there’s a jerk out there. He’s started a bike shop. So yeah, it’s a mix. The bikes are going to help that your bikes are interesting because it’s obviously only going to raise the average, like the price of the industry. But it could also help us sell more bikes period, right. Which isn’t the truth. A trend that we would expect, right? E-bikes are getting more people, you know, into our bike shops that we typically don’t see. Which is crazy, right? So, five years will be interesting to see bikes are gonna are going to do all sorts of crazy things to our numbers.

Chad Pickard  25:17

How are the bike sales affected your stores over the last year, two years or you’re seeing growth in your area?

Ian Christie  25:24

Oh, yeah, definitely was a few years back. I don’t know, I forget how long ago but the E-bikes were always kind of like there and we kind of did them and you know, we didn’t really have like, a solid stocking plan for e-bikes. And then there was one year where they sold as much as kids bikes. He’s obviously you know, like, one 10th of the units. But yeah, right. That was like the year where it kind of clicked for all of us like, Okay, this is, this is finally a category and let’s treat it as such. And you know, you hear the numbers. It’s crazy. Since Some shops are seeing, you know, like 300% growth in effects and they’re already doing e-bikes a decent amount. So it’s exciting to see. It’s funny, we do this for merchandising thing every year, twice a year. And this year when we did it, we were like to put all the bikes together still, or do we put each specific type of E-bike with its respective category? You know, like, the road with road bikes and mountain bikes and mountains and so on. You know, it was like there’s so many now and they’re in every category, and it’s so saturated. And when you start to talk about it with the customer, like do you treat it as just e-bikes Are you treated as an option within the mountain bike line or the road line?

Chad Pickard  26:48

Give your customers a reason to come back to your store. Sell them the NBDA is Ride it Daily extended service plan. The only service plan that pays you your shop rate for extended service and worn He claims, finds out more about rides @NBDA.com. Are you seeing the customer that’s buying an E-bike? Is it a different customer? Is it someone that is, you know, they were an avid cyclist? And now they’re just that’s the progression of their cycling? Or are you seeing a new customer come into your store that has maybe different shopping habits that are unfamiliar with the way the bike industry sort of works? And they’re just a different customer? Are you seeing any of that?

Ian Christie  27:34

Oh yeah, you both Yeah, I mean, we sold, you know, performance mountain bikes or a mountain bikes, and he rode bikes to like, our road club, you know, avid cyclists that are super in shape and on Strava with tail ends and all that stuff. And then we see this, you know, a couple over 60 we just bought an RV and want to go across the country, you know, so yeah, it’s everyone.

Chad Pickard  27:59

So with that, you know, the couple that has the RV, you know, maybe new to cycling. Are there any specifics? That’s any differences in the way they shop as opposed to the cyclist?

Ian Christie  28:12

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Okay, they don’t care what the rear derailleur, you know, they’re like what rear derailleur? You know, they’re like, you know, how’s the saddle? Am I comfortable? Is this gonna get a flax file? This is it. You know, those are the things, right? Which, you know, we’re somewhat used to, like we sell, you know, casual. As you know, some people would say, as I’m putting your quotes up, you can see normal bikes. Right? And those are typically the same, the same set of questions or concerns, right? How’s this look? sort of thing?

Chad Pickard  28:44

Sure. Any other categories that you’re seeing any growth in is gravel, something that’s growing gravel, electric gravel, is that thing yet out in California?

Ian Christie  28:54

We haven’t seen any electric gravel certainly growing but I kind of just categorize that as you know. roadies that want to take mountain biking. So, like, for me, that’s just the road market diversify within a 700 seat wheel more or less. Because the road market is as declined so much compared to where it was, like five years ago now just definitely helped. Sure there was a year in the middle of November, we actually saw a pretty good increase. It was almost all attributed to disk. So but when you add in gravel for us at least it’s pretty flat, maybe a little up last year. But yeah, gravel, sun, gravel has, if anything, it’s kind of brought out these events and rides that are way more kind of social and fun and less racy trick, which I think is overall good, at least in our area. Like there’s an event where it’s like, there are bands and they camp and the family goes out and there’s a thing for kids and then there’s like it’s a thrill ride. There’s a big gravel ride, you know, at the end of it or something like that. So that’s really cool. I see. Those are nice. Yeah, a little bit slower speeds a little more inclusive.

Chad Pickard  30:11

Yeah, I hope events like the social events I hope to continue to grow in all markets.

Ian Christie  30:17

Yeah, we need like the glitter run equivalent for …the awesome

Chad Pickard  30:22

I let’s stay away from the glitter, maybe something a little. So with a density of over 7 million, do you have a lot of events in your area? Is it? Do you find customers trying to decide Oh, do I go do this gravel ride or this charity ride? Or is it further than not that many events?

Ian Christie  30:43

When the season starts, there’s an event every weekend, if not two or three, okay. cycling events. So that’s not even counting, like running or you know, music in the park, you know, any of that other stuff? calls people and there’s always stuff, but you know, it’s good overall. It’s good. You know, there’s enough people to satisfy. Yeah.

Chad Pickard  31:04

So the next five years, what’s something that you’re really curious about in our industry? You know, maybe it’s a product, maybe it’s a, you know, a different, maybe it’s online sales, maybe it’s creating an Instagram account. So you can actually sell through Instagram, what are some of the things that you’re curious about in the next five years?

Ian Christie  31:22

But no online business? Interesting, I find their particular roadblocks given that we are approaching it from a brick and mortar store, like part of what makes us you know, brick and mortar with a good value proposition to our customers is the fact that we have brands that don’t, that largely don’t sell online. Right. But that also makes it impossible for me to sell them. Right. So it’s kind of catch 22. So that’s interesting. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to crack that in that. The training is a big one that I tend to come back to it seems like every two years were just trying to improve our training and kind of the saturation of the knowledge that we learned from our consultants and the rest of the industry. And then getting that to our managers and then allowing or teaching our managers how to get it from them to their staff effectively. We did our own like online training module, I think two or three years ago now on Miyagi. And I did a horrible job of like me with an iPhone. No, this horrible beard in the bathroom sort of thing. So like, this time, like, I need to upgrade that and then upgrade the content. That’s really good. Doing like product reviews. In YouTube stuff is pretty interesting. We just kind of tinkered with that we threw Dart against the wall, and that actually, turns out to be pretty successful by view count. Like it actually hasn’t amounted to any money.

Chad Pickard  32:52

You know, we haven’t even seen like an uptick in sales on a tire that you reviewed or

Ian Christie  32:58

No, I mean, not a to validate, you know, five grand and camera stuff, so it’s fun. So it’s good for our brand. Like, I think it effectively communicates what we’re about what we’re trying to do. And it’s also good for the staff to do what they like. So

Chad Pickard  33:15

yeah, probably creates a little bit of a, or gives your staff a little bit of authority over some of those products. If your customer sees Oh, Ian’s talking about this tire, he obviously knows about tires. I’m going to go there and buy my tires. Yeah, for sure.

Ian Christie  33:30

Yeah, definitely. And, you know, we were shut like we did one for a bike, some Santa Cruz, like, like our first real-time. And we’re like, what’s, you know, random goal, what’s a high amount of years and it was like, 1000. We had no idea. Roughly 30,000 views or something like that, right? We have, like, yeah, we’re just jokes we like, we don’t think anyone wants to listen to it. Like that. Apparently, we’re entertaining enough to watch 30,000 times. So We should put this on YouTube. Yeah.

Chad Pickard  34:07

So training is one of the topics that interest you. Do you have a metric for how much your staff needs to be trained in a week as a full-time equivalent train per week or per month or year?

Ian Christie  34:20

We don’t have those metrics yet. We are those goals in place. Rather, we do have, like we use track University and they all have to be guides and that sort of thing we checked in on that monthly, they’ll have to be 100% on our Miyagi we check in on that monthly so it’s more staying current as we just get just to the main new thing, which I mentioned before. And we kind of got into this idea of doing 10-minute training things on specific sales tactics every day, right? Just so we’re kind of honing our skills on the sales process. You know, constantly and 10 minute bites are pretty easy to pull off. So, you know, even in the season between the manager and a sales guy, so that’s going to be kind of the new standard operating procedure we put in place for practicing or training whatever verb you want to use.

Chad Pickard  35:17

Okay? similar to like a stand-up meeting in the morning, just get everybody on the same page and hopefully, cover the same topic enough that you hit the people that aren’t there every day and yeah, 

Ian Christie  35:28

yeah, exactly.

Chad Pickard  35:30

So you’ve been in the industry, how many years now? 15 – 16.

Ian Christie  35:35

Sure. Okay. Yeah.

Chad Pickard  35:38

A lot of years. How do you recharge? I mean, do you ever just like oh my gosh, I got to go into a bike store again, and I gotta tell someone why they got to pinch flat. What keeps you recharge what you mean? Your role obviously has changed a little bit from you were cleaning bathrooms at one time to now you’ve got five stores. And so just to change a job, or position and responsibilities, probably key Going a little bit, but what do you do to recharge? Is it books on tape? Is it speaker’s mentors? Is it a spa day? Or quarantine yourself when you’re sick?

Ian Christie  36:10

Yeah, my routine helps me kind of stick with a rhythm that is pretty sustainable. I mean, I have plenty of I’ll call them vacations, but uh, you know, vacations with kids or vacation trips.

Chad Pickard  36:27

And trade shows aren’t vacations either. I think I need to add that on there as well.

Ian Christie  36:31

No, they’re not. Yeah, I get away enough in my own personal life works fine, but my routine is pretty crucial to, you know, not going crazy every day. But honestly, like, I have a great staff. Like, there’s not many times where I like dread opening my inbox or dread going into a store. I’m pretty fortunate that way. I mean, there’s the stuff that always comes up, obviously, but yeah, I’m pretty lucky my routine. I work out a lot A cup of five workout for 90 minutes, come home. And everyone’s typically asleep when I get home, which is awesome. And then I journal and then I get the girls ready for school, drop them off, and then head to work. And then at night, I go back to the gym with the kids to give mom a break. And then we finish up the night. Yeah, that’s a pretty stable routine. 

Chad Pickard  37:24

You get some ride time in there as well.

Ian Christie  37:27

Yeah, yeah. It’s sporadic. Like it’ll just be randomly a buddy will have a Friday off. Let’s go, you know, sort of thing I like if I have to meet with a vendor that’s on a bike, you know, sort of thing. So yeah. It’s a lot harder to pull out, you know, a three-hour permission slip stage and my kid’s slides but I go every now and then

Chad Pickard  37:53

throw them in the car.

Ian Christie  37:58

Yeah.

Chad Pickard  38:00

time and money weren’t an issue. What would you do to get more people on bikes in the Bay Area? Besides giving them bikes? Or maybe that’s the answer?

Ian Christie  38:10

No. And so there’s this energy board. I forget the name of the company, but there’s some energy organization that I just talked to last week that’s trying to put together a rebate program for e-bikes. Okay, and I see Colorado did something like this a couple of years ago. And it sold a lot of like so that I would petition heavily whoever’s in charge to do that would help a bunch. The time it is, you know, do we in our vendors have enough inventory? Is that you know, chips that weigh that heavily. So, which is a valid

Chad Pickard  38:47

question with Yeah, you know, the process of having tariffs and having to pay those tariffs before bringing inventory in means that a lot of our vendors are bringing in less inventory at a time and then also, you have The Coronavirus preventing, or some facilities just stopping production. Correct. Your season is different than mine because I’m in the cold north and you’re on the coast. Have you seen that as a challenge yet? In the last 90 days, six months?

Ian Christie  39:16

Not yet, but we’re aware of it. I mean, we, like we definitely, we’ve been to these before in terms of when our vendors have, you know, under forecasted inventory. And so there’s kind of a game or, you know, operating procedure that we have to go through, which is fine. It just takes more management in work to kind of stay on top of, but it has the potential to be that this year, which honestly is good, right, like, you know, dramatic swings taken out of it. Like we would prefer to sell everything at full pop. And, you know, tell people No, sorry, like, we can’t give you $100 off a 40 $500 bike. Like I have two people behind you that want it you know, sir thing. So I remember when the methadone changeover from the 50 to 100. And like we actually marked up by like, that was the shortage that we were going through packing like we marked up the 5.2, madone $250. It seems crazy that we would do that. But like that was the demand back then. Right. So, yeah,

Chad Pickard  40:22

it will be interesting how that plays out over the next six months. I feel we’ve our industry has always had a lot of inventory. Maybe not necessarily the written query. But if vendor a doesn’t have it, vendor B probably does or unacceptable. Yeah. replacement. Anything that you want me to ask you that I haven’t asked, you

Ian Christie  40:42

NO

Chad Pickard  40:44

Well, I think I mean, I’ve got a ton more questions but we’re just under an hour. And I want to thank you for your time. And I wish you the success in whether you grow or not grow more stores or add that smaller 2000 1500 square foot store. I think that’d be. I like the direction of some of the shops in our industry that are doing that. Some have already had some success. So I wish you the best with that. Yeah.

Ian Christie  41:09

Thanks, Chad.

Rod Judd  41:10

 Appreciate it. This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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Chad Pickard
Owner, Spoke-n-Sport – South Dakota (2 locations)

In 6th grade, Chad took apart and rebuilt his first coaster brake hub.  It was that curiosity that kept him working in bike service shops from the age of 14 till buying Spoke-N-Sport in 2001.  Mountain bikes and Hans Rey ignited his passion for technical trail riding a few years later.  Chad’s work experience is almost 100% bike stores but he is always looking to other industries to improve the customer experience in his two stores.  Chad serves on the bike committee in Sioux Falls and has played an active role in defending the rights of cyclists at the state level including the most recent 3-foot / 6-foot passing law.

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.

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The post Expanding Your Business and Navigating Your Changing Role appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Tips for Strengthening the Dealer/Vendor Relationship: It’s no secret that the relationship between dealers and vendors can be filled with tension. A strong relationship, however, can give shops a competitive edge as vendors go the extra mile to help you to keep your customers happy. From product advice to supply chain insights, your vendors are an essential part of your success.

In this episode of Bicycle Retail Radio, James Ayres, Domestic Sales Manager at Haro Bicycles, and Phil Cohen, NBDA board member and owner of Chain Reaction Bicycles, throw open the doors on their thriving dealer/vendor relationship so that you, too, can enjoy the benefits of a match made in heaven.

Please enjoy listening to Tips for Strengthening the Dealer/Vendor Relationship.

Support the show (https://nbda.com/articles/donation-form-pg511.htm#!form/Donate)

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Episode 23 – Phil & Haro COMPLETED

Tue, 8/18 10:42AM • 48:33

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

retailers, customer, bikes, business, bicycle, manufacturer, dealer, Haro, relationships, year, conversations, vendors, brand, talk, chain reaction, store, buy, expectation, people, sales

SPEAKERS

Rod Judd, Chad Pickard, Phil Cohen, James Ayres

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Phil Cohen  00:16

Hello, this is Phil Cohen, one of the board members of the National bicycle dealer Association. I want to welcome you to today’s podcast that is a part of bicycle retail radio, which is a podcast of the National Bicycle Dealer Association. If you’re not a member, please join. We appreciate that our support and our goal is to continue to bring bicycle dealers to excellence. And today, what we want to do is we want to talk about relationships between bicycle retailers and their vendors. They can be strained and I think after we finish today, maybe we’ll all have some ideas on things we want to do. To improve those relationships, before I get started, I want to kind of paint a picture. If you’re driving, please don’t do this. But if you’re not driving, what I want you to do, is I want you to close your eyes. Okay? Now, I want you to imagine, imagine your best customers, the customers that love your shop, the customers that just get you and they get what you do and they get what you’re about. And they would drive 30 miles past 10 other shops to come see you. The customers that we absolutely when we see them pull up, we love that they’re coming to our stores, and we just love everything about them. We can’t get enough. Okay, now what I want you to do is I want you to go the other end of the spectrum. I want you to think about the customers that when they pull up, everybody in the shop has a sigh and they just go Oh no, not this guy. Again, the customers that you wish would find your competitors. The ones you’ve suggested that they find your competitor. And for some reason, they just keep coming back. They, they take up a lot of your time. They don’t spend a lot of money. They are always complaining. We all have those customers. We all have both types of customers. Now what I want you to do, as I want you to open your eyes, I want you to think about it. I want you to think about what type of customer Are you because, in the bicycle business, the retailers are the customers for the vendors. And a lot of times I think that’s lost. And I think there’s a way to be a good customer. But I don’t want us to lose sight as retailers that we are the customers. And if I didn’t introduce myself, my name is Phil Cohen. I am a bicycle shop owner. I have a shop here in Evans, Georgia, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia. And we’ve been here for this starting our 30th year Now, what we do here is we try to have great relationships with our customers and our vendors. And speaking of vendors, I’ve got one of my best vendors, one of the vendors that I believe, just get it, and I’m thrilled with this company. And I’m thrilled with this fellow I’m about to introduce and his name is James Ayres. Now James doesn’t get a big head, but I believe that you as a sales Operations Manager for Haro, bicycles, I believe that we have a great relationship and I try to pattern all my relationships with my vendors after our relationship. And I guess that’s what I want to talk today about our relationship and about why it’s good what we can do to improve relationships in our industry, and what we have to do to make things work you know, we’re in the same boat, we may be indifferent ends. To the boat, but we want to keep sailing towards our Bright Futures together. So James, introduce yourself if I didn’t do a correct job and tell us about yourself and what your job is.

James Ayres  04:11

Wow, I don’t even know where to start. What kind of words. Thank you. Thank you. Well, as Phil said, my name is James Ayres on the Sales Operations Manager here at Haro bikes. starting my 13th year MRO came to the vendor side, a little bit of a weird route. I was previously on the publishing side, moved out to California in 1999, and was lucky enough to land a job that was then ride publishing doing ride BMX magazine, and for those of you who might remember it’s a title called BMX Business News. So, you know, seven or eight years there, came over to the Haro side got to see you know, in-depth how the business works and, you know, been here ever since, you know, and then as Phil said, I think we certainly share he talked about great customers and the ones that you like seeing come through your door and I think pleased to say that, you know, anytime we see chain reactions, number of, you know, pull up on any of our other IDs. You know, everybody kind of jokes like, Nope, I’m getting it. No, no, no, that’s my weight. So let’s talk to me. It’s a fun relationship. Okay. How did I do? Did I cover everything? Is that good?

Phil Cohen  05:14

Yeah, yeah, that was great. In fact, I think about how it started, you were actually traveling with one of the reps The first time I met you when you actually walked into the store that was probably I don’t know, at least 10 years ago. And I believe I think you’re right. That was our first meeting. And it was nice for somebody from the home office to come out and see a little Podunk store in the middle of at the time, just a suburb outside of Augusta, Georgia, and we’re just a single store location and how do we rate that we get somebody of importance like you to come to see us. But, but I think that that was the beginning of a relationship that turned into a friendship that turned into, you know what it is today, which is a strong friendship and mutual respect for each other and what we do and how we value each other. And that to me is just that’s what I search for and I yearn for in all my relationships. I was thinking about it, if you think about relationships, you know who in their work in any aspect of your life? Why would you want an adversarial relationship with anyone, you know, life’s tough enough to go on that or not this person or I got to deal with this person or, you know, we should try to search for happiness and enjoyment in our workday and our family life and everything like that. So I was just thinking, you know, a lot of times we depend on vendors and their relationships strained. And maybe the vendors depend on good customers that sometimes they wish they didn’t have to depend on. But, you know, we can fix all that we can make these relationships good and healthy and strong. And that’s kind of what I want to talk about today. I really think James that early owns when you told me, I think you may regret it now, but you gave me your phone number your car and you said, Hey, call me anytime you want. You’re like, oh man, that do that. But then I pick up on it. I’m one of those guys, I took you up on it, I called you. And I remember, our rep was telling us how we were doing. And I thought, Hey, we’re having a pretty good year. And I remember I used to call you and ask you how we were doing, probably to the point where you’re like, Oh, no, not this guy. But because we weren’t. But I really wanted to know I wanted to know where I stood because I’m just the one store location in a smaller market. And I really liked the idea that it was important that I was an important customer. And I think what you guys did you guys made me feel like an important customer. Even though when the biggest story even though I didn’t buy the most stuff. I felt valued as a customer and that went a long way in making these have a fond feeling towards your brand, as well as the people their horror

James Ayres  08:01

That’s awesome. Those were fun days, they are fun days. You know, I remember some of those conversations, you know, where you would call me up and say, Hey, you know, how am I doing? How am I tracking, you know, compared to last year, and it was done in such a great atmosphere to where we would have fun with it. And we would joke about it. And we would talk about, you know, maybe other competitors who were in that marketplace. And, you know, I would joke Well, you know, these guys, you know, these guys bought, you know, Kenmore mountain bikes, you know, do you have any floor space? You know, what can we do? You’d say something like 10 more bikes, I’ll give you an order for 20. You know, it was just that kind of back and forth, where it was never, like, I don’t think either one of us ever felt like anybody was trying to turn the screws on the other person. It was just super fun to have those conversations, you know, and to talk about things like year over year performance, and how are things trending and what are you seeing in your marketplace that, you know, maybe I’m not seeing on a national level, or maybe vice versa, what I’m seeing on the national level that you might not be seeing yet so I love those colors. Because it told me that you were engaged in your business with us. And then it gave me a chance to kind of, you know, have a little bit of fun with it. And I’ll tell you what if there’s one thing that I know about our conversations, we’ve not had a fun conversation. So I think that’s just a testament to our glowing personalities.

Phil Cohen  09:18

Thank you, right. It’s always fun, always fun. But I think early on, I remember, I think even one year I was thinking, you know, hey, how can we be one of your top dealers or what constitutes? So I even think one year you guys did some awards for some of your top dealers. And fortunately, we were able to get one of those awards. And I think maybe even genesis of that might have been some of our conversations. I don’t disagree. I can picture the award in my head. If I’m not mistaken. We gave it to you during Interbike. If I’m not mistaken, you did. You did give it to me during Interbike and I was very proud and I’m in my office right now and it’s sitting across the room and next to a couple of other special things, and it’s a special moment because it just shows, you know, our hard work along with your good service. That’s what we can do you know, and it’s, it’s pretty fun. Pretty fun. Agreed. The biggest thing I think that people struggle with, and I think that we got off on a really good start as we had a really good communication because I think a lot of times, vendors want to just shove as much inventory in, and I’m sure you know, there are lots of programs to help us sell-through. But I think a lot of times, the programs aren’t well thought out or they’re not thought out with the dealer in mind. And I don’t think sometimes the dealers have an understanding of what the manufacturers and vendors have to go through to get that product in place. And I know you took a lot of patience and a lot of time with me to explain to me, you know why it was Difficult to change this or change that or what the lead times were and why you’re out of bikes and what happened. And, you know, you forecast this and you forecast double and you sold triple. And then it made me not any less disappointed that I didn’t have a product to sell if you had a gap in inventory for two or three weeks, and I ran out too because we were doing really well. But why that happened in what you were doing about it. And I felt like a true partner in the business and I felt like I was kind of an insider like you were telling me things that maybe they’re not for public consumption, but there was nothing wrong with you explaining to me how you guys got in that bind and how you’re getting out of it, and how I fit into that. So I think communication is key. absolutely key. And if we as dealers don’t let you know what our needs are they In, how are you going to know? Then we have to understand what you guys go through to so we can be part of the solution to inventory is thinking about back when we first started back in 1991, we opened. And it was pretty much every model of every bike was sitting in a warehouse. And I’m sure that cash flows on, it’s healthy for the manufacturers because it seemed like they had a lot of inventory sitting around. You could just call up anytime you wanted and get a bike sent right away.

James Ayres  12:32

Those days are pretty much gone. I think. I think you’re right. And you know, just to circle back around on something that you touched on. One of the reasons why I like sharing some of that insider info with you was because you were receptive to hearing it. You know, when we talked about lead times and we talked about forecasting, and we talked about, you know, the sourcing parts and those things, you gave me a chance to explain why we were where we were, I think two Often, you know, retailers shall remain nameless, you know, it’s not uncommon for a manufacturer to hear, you know, something along the lines of insert brand name here. Oh, those guys are out of bikes again. They’re idiots. They’re morons. They don’t know what they’re doing, you know, they can’t forecast it. You know, in some of those conversations, I don’t even get the chance to explain why the supply chain broke down at what stage the supply chain broke down. That’s something that I always appreciated with our conversations was not only did you want that information, but you were also very receptive to hearing it. So anytime I’m able to explain why we got in the bind that we’re in that’s a welcome invitation to me if you know our company, PRESIDENT JOE Hawk, he has a saying, and that thing goes bad news can be good information. That’s always what I felt like, you know when we were having some of those supply chain issue conversations. Okay, so what I’m about to tell you is bad news, but it’s good information. And more importantly, I can tell you how we got here and maybe even more important than that, how we work our way around. I think it’s a total give and takes, there are things that I’m going to know about our business Tardos business, just being inside these four walls, that if I share that with you, that will make you a stronger retailer, whether that’s when inventory is coming in whether I see a sale price coming up on a certain model or overstocked on, things like that. So I feel like because you gave us an opportunity to explain why some of those hiccups were happening, that made me want to be more forthcoming isn’t the right word. But when I would see a potential sale opportunity coming up, you’re always the first guy that I reached for because like we talked about, it was a friendly environment. It was a friendly relationship. I was able to explain something, so therefore I felt like okay, I just had to give some bad news. Let me see if I can help with some good news.

Phil Cohen  14:46

Yeah, that was the case because it made me feel important. It made me feel valued, that you would share information like that with me. And it also, I felt like you guys are truly my partner and I want my partner to be successful. I want my partner to be healthy. I want my partner to be there for me. Because guess what, next week, next month next year, I need more bikes, I need you guys to be able to provide high-quality bikes in a timely manner. And so I want to know, Hey, what happened, why this happened. Plus, if you give me a heads up three or four weeks out before the troubles coming, or you give me some visibility, now I can hedge a little bit, I can bring a few more bikes in either from you or from another company, I can make a contingency so that I have products in the store to sell. And I’m not having a bad month because everybody ran out and I don’t have anything so and I have those relationships with other vendors too because I really try to cultivate them. And because of that, I think, you know, my business is better. I think I’m a better customer. You know, I used to joke with you. I said what makes a good customer something I think maybe I don’t know if he said If I said it, but we were talking to buy lots of stuff and pay for it on time, and I’m like, Oh man, I can do that, you know. And there were times when I couldn’t buy lots of stuff, and I struggled to pay for it on time. And that’s part of the process. Think of a business learning how to be a great business, which is what the NBA, we want to make all of our businesses great. I’ve won so much as an NBA member and joined groups like p two, to help make me a better customer. And I think the investment you guys and companies and you know, our industry makes in strengthening retailers, the better off we all are because he shipped me lots of stuff and I don’t pay for it. That doesn’t work out for either of us. You know, if we come up with programs that aren’t feasible, that didn’t work out for us, so that communication allows, I think sometimes for people in different markets, tailoring those programs. So it makes sense For the dealer, you know, we’re all different. I was thinking about some of our board members summer in Arizona, and they don’t do any business in the summer because it’s too hot. And then some of them are in South Dakota and they don’t do any business in the winter because it’s too cold. And you know, we’re here in an area that’s nice most of the year in our business, you know, drops off seasonally, but not as bad as other places. And, you know, we’re all different. We all have different needs. And I think when I can communicate my needs to the company, and you can work with me, and I get my bikes to want even the right amount, the right time, can turn I can pay for them. I mean, everybody’s happy. At least I thank you

James Ayres  17:41

very much. So and I know that’s not always an easy puzzle to put together. And I think that’s why, you know, those check-in conversations once every few weeks, at least once a month, are so key to both of us being healthy. Again, I can kind of share some things that I’m seeing within these four walls. You can share immediate needs while and future needs with me. And we kind of take it together as a team. I can’t think of a time where we haven’t been able to find some middle ground on just about anything. And I think this kind of circle back around to, you know what we were talking about earlier in the week. One of the things that I think is key for both sides, you have to be a good listener.

Phil Cohen  18:22

Oh, man, I’m glad you said that. Because I mean, think about it as retailers. And when I train my salespeople, I said, hey, what does that have you? God gave you one mouth and two ears, you know, you’re supposed to use them in that proportion and try to explain to them, Listen, listen, the customer will give you the information. You have to be able to know which questions to ask and then shut up and listen, they don’t want to know how awesome you are, what ride you did last week. You’re here to serve them. And that’s the point that I really want to drive home to the retailers. retailers. We are the customer the name outside my store doesn’t say hi back says chain reaction. Now I’m proud to be a hora dealer. But my brand is Chain Reaction, and I’m the customer. And I need to be treated as such, we always talk about another thing I think funny. You know how people say the customers are always right. Well, a lot of times the customers aren’t right. But the customers are always the ones that bring the money. And without the money, we can’t operate. So we have to serve our of our customers, and we have to give them value. So they’ll keep coming back and keep bringing the money. And sometimes I see vendors that forget who the customer is, I questioned that. And I’m like, wow, that’s not really that’s the tail wagging the dog. You know, it just, you know, I don’t know, do you? What do you think about that as far as the retailer’s being the customer and we’re not always right and sometimes we’re paying the ass but we are the customers? You know, you’re there to serve us, I believe, I guess you have two customers, you have the retailers and you have the end-user. We do. We do. But I think at the end of the day, it’s important to know what order those two come in. And I also think that it’s important to know that at the end of the day, here’s the reality. There are way more suppliers out there than there are retailers. No doubt about it a level shop like yours, you have got the pick of the litter, you could carry any brand that you want. So at the end of the day, if a brand like Haro is making life difficult for you, in no way, shape, or form, should we be getting your business? So I think that’s something that’s monumentally important for all manufacturers to realize is that Hey, guys, at the end of the day, the number of retailers out there, it’s not getting any bigger and if we’re really being honest, the number of good retailers out there is shrinking just as proportionally. So the idea that we could be in an A level shop if a manufacturer isn’t thinking along the lines of What can I bring to this retailers business? I think they might be missing the boat a little bit. Yeah, I like the way you put that what can you do to serve your customer, the dealer and that’s the thing you know, service it’s about service. You know, what do you do? You guys do a lot of things you design and your spec and you build a great bike, but you know, lots of people do your app, right? else do you did what sets you apart? You know, what’s gonna make people like me want to be a Harley dealer for life, you know. And the thing is, you can’t rest on what you did last year. You got to be good this year. You got to be consistent. And you know, fortunately, you guys are and that’s another thing about service. When we have warranty issues. You could build the best bike in the world if I get bad service in your warranty department or bad service in your shipping department. I mean, that drags your image down if we have the greatest bikes in the world and my guys don’t assemble them properly and make sure they’re set up right Don’t tune them up properly, then, you know, we’re gonna lose. So I mean, we have to be consistent and how do you guys at Haro feel about the service you give your dealers? You know, what do you guys talk about? Because I know there’s so many aspects of vendors service to dealers, you know, do you prioritize any particular one? Do you struggle in some areas? You know, how do you feel about especially service because service has so many dynamic points from anybody’s perspective. But how does Haro look at what you bring how they value, I guess what you guys do for your retailers.

Chad Pickard  22:40

As a retailer, I filled out my very first America’s best bike shop application over five years ago. And to be honest, the first time I was a little anxious, I felt the result of the process would either be the seal of approval or the seal of disapproval for my bike stores. It was shortly after they handed out the awards that I realized this is an excellent opportunity to work with staff on our messaging and customer experiences in our stores. ABBS kind of became the coach we used to find holes in our sales process or staff training. Where else are you going to get critical feedback like that? Go to NBDA.com for more details and to sign up for America’s Best Bike Shop Program.

James Ayres  23:24

Well, I think it’s probably safe to say that if I were to categorize us or picture us, I kind of feel like we are the little Engine That Could you know, we’re a 23 person organization and oftentimes, admittedly, we work in a very reactionary atmosphere. That’s not always great. But I think one of the things that we pride ourselves on and this is hopefully, anybody listening to this would feel the same way our sales department always always always will try to give the dealer what they’re asking for. Yes, we have a printed dealer program, you know, a certain level of buy-in you know, buy as many bikes you get this personal level this stating, we understand though that although that is a printed program, there has to be some flexibility in that. So I think that speaking is a sales department or even an organization overall if there are things that we trip on because of our size, I don’t know of another brand out there that will go the extra mile to try to make it right when we realize that we’ve made a mistake, and we’ve caused a retailer an inconvenience. And that’s it. Boy, we could spend an hour just talking about that alone, you know, reaching out to a Chinese battery manufacturer to try to source keys for a customer who lost their keys to their e-bike battery like that, where it’s you know, would be natural for anybody and another sales target to say, well wait a minute, that’s not my job. That’s one of the things that I’m kind of proud of with our sales team is that is a phrase that you just will not hear out of this organization. It’s not my job. We always, always, always try to help where we can and I think that just kind of spirals back around to the point you made about being a good listener. I understand that again, there’s a program out there but if a retailer is telling me, hey, I’ve got a special circumstance is there something that you can do for me in this special circumstance, there’s always always always I am 100% convinced of this believe it beyond a shadow of a doubt, there is always something you can do. The middle ground might not be where either party wants to be, but there is always a middle ground. So I think that’s where it is incumbent on the manufacturer to be able to find that middle ground and be able to find it through a conversation where neither side is getting all crazy you tell me what you need from me and then I tell you where I can meet you. And you know, hopefully, we settle on some common ground but at the end of the day, you know, especially you know, with chain reaction horror, Oh, those are always easy conversations to have only when we were open the credit departments they card. No just kidding. Just kidding. That was a joke. No joke.

Phil Cohen  25:56

That’s funny because it is your warranty department. It is your Sales Department is your accounting. I mean, they all work together. And it’s like, things aren’t always perfect and you have issues. But maybe it’s because you’re a smaller organization, maybe because the culture that Joe has set up there, the culture service, but maybe it’s that reason why I don’t have trouble talking to somebody in shipping or talking to Amy, about a bill or for having a cash flow issue and tell her, Hey, we’re gonna be late this month, or if I’m right up at my limit, and I say, Hey, can you go ahead and ship that? She’s like, Well, you know, but once we communicate really well, it goes back to that communication. Because a lot of times dealers don’t know that they have auctions and also dealers, a lot of times I think just like a bad customer, a bad dealer will take advantage of the vendor, take advantage and end up trying to beat somebody up over something. You don’t do that to your partner. He should never do that to your partner. You should say, hey, wow, you got screwed up. Can you make it right? But you know, just like we have abusive customers that walk through our retail stores, and I’m sure there are dealers out there that are not the greatest ones and you wish they go away. You know, how do you deal with stuff like that? Nobody likes to turn away business. But at some point, you know that hey, abusive customers need to go away. If you’re

James Ayres  27:23

just like you described in your introduction, there are definitely numbers that pop up on our caller ID where literally, it seems like wow, the entire sales department had to go to the bathroom at the same time. Yeah, we definitely have the 100% and I think that’s why you asked a great, I don’t know if it was necessarily a question but you were kind of leading into it. There are perks isn’t the right word, but there are benefits because of where you are in our food chain. And I guess if I’m going to be totally transparent, you’ve earned a lot of the things that we do from time to time. You know, you need a bike shop, free freight, you know, out of our California warehouse, whatever. I’m going to do that because I know that on your next order, you know, when I say, hey, Phil, I’ve got a 2017 carbon hardtail, you know, what can you do for me on it, you’re going to be like, you know, I can help with that. So it’s a very reciprocal relationship when it gets challenging is when you’ve got to kind of look at that dealer and say, Mr. dealer, you know, you’re asking me to send a 90-pound e-bike from one end of the country to the other. You’re asking me to cover the freight on it because you ordered it two days late. Can I meet you in the middle and split the freight with you? You know what, I’ll just go buy it from somebody else, then. You’ll never hear anybody in our sales department say, you should do that. Do you know why? Because you bought six bikes from us so far in the last year, and now you’re facing, you know, you’ll never get that out of our organization. And I’m not proud of that. But I think the flip side of that coin is for those dealers who do earn a few special favors here and there. You’ve earned every last one of those things that you mentioned early on, you buy lots and you pay your bill on time. That in this industry is gold. And I think that’s one of the things that any manufacturer could agree on is it is baffling to me when we get retailers who are 90 plus days past due yet you’re friends with them on Facebook and you say that they just went to Cancun? Wait what not that never happens, does it?  Never… No

Phil Cohen  29:25

Well but that really comes down to the quality of customer you’re dealing with because if you have a customer that has that much contempt for you that they would take their dollars and not pay their bills and I understand struggling in the last 30 years I should have gone out of business twice I was just too stupid to know the first time and the second time I got I got real scared and said whoa Something’s got to give you know their ebbs and flows in our businesses. And you know, none of us are perfect. A lot of us are enthusiasts and we know a lot about bicycles and we love the sport. We love people. Sometimes we’re not great business people. And that’s why I think, you know, our industry needs to help us, help us make good choices. Don’t send me 60% of my annual volume in one shipment. And I’m not going to be able to pay for it on time. That just doesn’t make sense. In loading us up, it doesn’t make sense, being a good partner makes sense. I just hope that when we work together towards a common goal, which to me would be being a good customer buying lots of stuff and paying for it on time when you guys make programs that allow us to do that, so we don’t hang ourselves, you know, don’t give us enough rope to hang ourselves. We’re going to be better customers long term. And a lot of us need some coaching. We need some handhold and that’s what the NBA is here to do. It’s to help you know, we want retailers to be excellent. We want retailers to continue to grow and to continue to thrive, not just survive. I just can’t say enough over the years since I’ve been NBDA member, how much I’ve gotten mentorship and Dino, there’s some really sharp people in our industry. And I have access to those people through phone calls or emails. And they’re there. Most of them are very, very helpful if somebody like me calls up so, you know, having that ability, and I think a lot of the best vendors, they also have people in place to help me if I’m struggling, and I can talk to you or I can talk to Amy or I can talk to somebody who can help me figure it out on things that I’m not sure about, or at least just be a sounding board. Those are extremely, extremely helpful situations. I’ve used those to my advantage. Once I learned that they were out there for me, I’m not shy, I will pick up the phone and call so that’s, you know, going back to why you gave me your cards so many years ago and you rue the day Did that right?

James Ayres  32:03

I don’t know what what you could possibly be referring to.

Phil Cohen  32:09

Hey, I have your personal cell phone number. So that was really when you’re traveling and you see my phone call, you’re like, what is he calling me about? I’m gonna be patient this week? Not, that that happens often or last week?

James Ayres  32:28

Yeah, I think that’s such a great point about when you have an issue and you need a contact on the inside, knowing that you’ve got a resource with that manufacturer that you’re working with. I think ultimately, at the end of the day, we all just want to be able to help whether that’s from a manufacturing level helping our retailer whether that’s a retail level trying to help their customer, I think, you know, in this is I think just human nature. You know, where we struggle is when we have that retailer on the other end of the phone, and if we’re not able to solve a problem, maybe he is a retailer from New England and it’s the middle of winter. And he’s in the shop today. And he’s just lonely. And he wants to talk about everything under the sun. Not saying that those retailers exist. But when they do, it’s kind of like, Okay, then I gotta find a way to. So the long story short to that is, whenever you call, the calls are irrelevant. They’re purposeful, they are usually either expressing gratitude or asking for a hand with something. And that’s something that I could do something with both of those calls, I can accept the kind words, and if there is ever something that you’re in a jam with, I can move heaven and earth to make sure that that jam goes away quickly. And I think that as manufacturers, that’s, that kind of needs to be our role with all of our retailers. Because at the end of the day, what I know for sure is that this is business that we have to earn. It does not come inherently to brands like us and like you said early on. If we’re not going that extra mile then we don’t deserve it. So I’ll tell any retailer that would like to call me up how appreciative I am of their business. Even the ones that Challenging those guys, you know, they make the world go around too. So you just try to meet as many needs as you can at the end of the day.

Phil Cohen  34:06

Well, and hopefully we think about our challenging relationships in any aspect of our lives as ones that are in transition for the better, because there’s always hope. You know, I think a lot of times, once people have better understandings of each other, they get along a lot better and they understand and that’s the thing I think when you’re talking about, if I call up and I need something, well, I try not to be too needy, because like, I need to bank you know, have in our bank account between us I have to, you know, have a good balance because I never know one day I may be in a bind, and I may need you to pull a string and do something for me special. And I don’t want to be the guy that every time you turn around, oh no. What does he want this time? I want to be the guy who’s a good customer, but you know, the one or two or three times a year that some happens? I need something to happen. I was like, I can have expected to happen. You know, in a lot of times, I don’t believe my expectations are unreasonable. And that brings me to expectations. I think in our relationship, I think expectations and those having those expectations defined really go a long way and what quality of relationships we have. So how do you feel about that word expectation?

James Ayres  35:24

I think it’s a great word. I think sometimes it’s a bit of a loaded word. But I think that in our business, it’s an important one. Because I think that you know, what characteristic is inherent to our business. The word preseason, everybody has a precision program, in the way I was taught in this business was that the precision time period, you know, when that outside rep walks in with that shiny new catalog, and you know, and he opens it up to page one, I was taught that that is basically the time where you sit down and you partner and you go through and you say, Hey, I can do really well with this model in my shop, this model, I really don’t have that customer. And I think that’s where as a manufacturer, we have to trust you to know that you are the expert of your market, you’re the expert of your market, you’re the expert of your business, you’re the expert of your customer. So I think that there is that expectation out there that when we do launch a precision program, and we go in, and we, you know, open up the shiny new catalog, it’s a give and take what’s going to work for you what’s going to work for me and at the, again, tying back into that word expectation. I’m going to expect that there will be something on my menu that you’ll find appealing and want to order. And like you said, You know, I will expect that you’ll, you’ll order it, you’ll pay for it on time. When a customer comes in and asks questions about it. You’ll be knowledgeable about the brand, you’ll be knowledgeable about the product. Because ultimately, that’s where I see the most value, not only in a chain reaction but in all of our retailers. You guys tell our story. At the end of the day, it’s my belief that you can have the fanciest website in the world but that website isn’t going to tell our story to face to face as a retailer would. And when it’s a retailer that’s excited about the brand excited about the people behind the brand. That’s gold, that’s gold to a manufacturer. So again, kind of, you know, going back to that word expectation, I would expect that there are things you know, that I’ll rely on you on throughout the course of the year, being a good brand ambassador, telling a consumer you know why there’s value in this bike versus competitors. And I think there is an expectation on my end, you know, some of them we’ve touched on before, you know, certainly no shortage of inventory and supply chain issues over the last year, year and a half. And I think a lot of manufacturers could probably say that, but I have an expectation to make sure that when you do call in and you do need a favor, you do need a sounding board, that we’re there to meet that need. I’ve never understood how a manufacturer who doesn’t know your business to the level of detail that you do could come in and say you know, this product is right For you, this product is right for you. I think that they can certainly ask if they can try something in your store. But that’s always been a bit of a dysfunctional thing for me when a retailer is telling me Look, you make a great $10,000 carbon wonder bike, but we just don’t have you know, the Tour de France guy coming in here that’s not our market. You know, if you want to sell that level, buy it, you’d need to go see Johnny dig, we’ll down the street, that kind of thing. So I think as far as expectation goes, it’s something that needs to be tempered and talked about and put on the table early on, whether it’s the preseason time period or their relationship in general. And not only do I have to understand it as a manufacturer but so does my entire sales force, whether that’s an inside sales rep or an outside sales rep.

Phil Cohen  38:44

I really appreciate the in-depth description. You put a lot of value in the bicycle retailer. You know, we’re the tip of the spear out here for most brands and most products. There is a lot of good shops out there. And then there’s a lot of shops that aren’t And some of those shops aren’t doing the job. Some of them are doing a great job. We try to get better every day is our store great. I tell people our stores great 50% of the time, the other 50% keeps me up at night. And, you know, we have room to improve as a store our training, lots of things we can improve. And we need to try to continually get better, go ahead and raise the bar challenge the dealers to be better. But what happens when you have a dealer that doesn’t step up? That’s not a good dealer. Are you just gonna continue to do business with that dealer? Or do they eventually go away? You know, because I think bad players in any market are bad for all of us. Just curious how you feel about that.

James Ayres  39:48

It’s interesting statement. If I’m being totally transparent, I would say that we have a pretty high percentage of our dealers who don’t rely on as an anchor brand who do well. With 50 units a year with us, it doesn’t mean that we like them any less, but we understand we’re not a huge part of their offering. And that’s okay. We would we love to be positioned in every chain reaction out there. Sure, we would certainly make my life a lot easier. But I think just because they’re smaller, and they buy less from me, I think ultimately, at the end of the day, again, he goes back to you hit on so many good points at the beginning of this. We enjoy doing business with people that we enjoy. So if I’m talking to one of our dealers, who has 20 or 30 or 40 bikes with us a year, I understand that I need to cultivate their relationship first. Because if I’m a good salesperson what’s going to wind up happening, or at least my goal is, what I hope happens is that over the years as we continue to work together, he gets that sense of just kind of like what you alluded to at the beginning of the phone call. Somebody on the other end of this line cares about my business. He keeps calling me once a month to check in on me. I don’t admittedly buy a lot of products from But you know what he’s easy to work with. He does make a competitively SPECT bike, I’m kind of tired of getting the screws turned, let’s give this a try. At the end of the day, that’s kind of what a salesperson’s role is, you know, you keep feeding those relationships, and you hope that there’s no more business to be had there. I think the one thing that we can kind of all agree on is this pie is not getting any bigger. I don’t think the overall bicycle market

Phil Cohen  41:26

and reward is only right. So, unfortunately, it’s not getting bigger, but we’re working to change that at every aspect.

James Ayres  41:33

Absolutely. And I think that there are so many people out there that are doing such important work. But at least right now, what I know about this business is that if Haro has a successful year, that means we took market share from somebody else, and it works exactly vice versa too. So it’s being able to cultivate those relationships, ask the questions, be able to get the retailer on the phone and just say, you know, Hey, I know you’ve only bought BMX bikes from us in the past. Would you be willing to try a couple of our kids, you know, entry-level mountain bikes throwing it out there? 98% of the time, you might get told no, but 2% of the time, you might get told Yes. I think as long as you can ask that question in a friendly way to where the dealer understands, you’re just asking for an opportunity. That’s all you can do. That is true.

Phil Cohen  42:17

And I guess I take it for granted because we have a great relationship and, and I really, really, really go out of my way to try to cultivate good relationships with everybody in my life, especially the people I send money to every month. So no ex-wives, I don’t have any ex-wives of sending money to..

Chad Pickard  42:38

What does being a member of the NBDA mean? Go to nbda.com to learn about member benefits, programs, and preferred partner discounts.

Phil Cohen  42:51

As we come to a close today, are there anything you want to add any specific things that maybe we didn’t touch on the You know, we could talk about relationships in business, because a lot of these things translate over to every part of your life, you know, positive relationships.

James Ayres  43:08

Yeah, I think that two big things be a better listener than you are a talker. Understand that there’s always a middle ground there. And it just at the end of the day, be a kind person. You know, this is supposed to be a fun business that we’re in. And I understand that dollars are getting traded across the table, you know, every day, but like I said, we do business with people that we enjoy talking to, and we want to have conversations with so that’s where being just a good-hearted human being, hopefully energy a little bit of this along the way.

Phil Cohen  43:41

Well, I think that goes a long way. I was going to add at the end, I wanted to challenge all the vendors just remember whether you dominate the market or you’re just struggling to break into this market. Don’t forget who your customer is. Don’t forget that they are the customer. customers need to be treated properly. Whether they’re buying an $8 tube or a $10,000 bicycle, their customer in the guy that buys the $8 tube today might buy the $10,000 bike next week. You know, they need to be treated with respect and kindness and patience in vendors. Please remember the retailers are the customers. And I would tell the retailers, remember that you’re the customer but remember how bad customers act and don’t act like that. And work hard to be a great customer when a great customer calls the people on the other end, smile and are happy to answer the phone. And I think we should work really, really hard for all the retailers to be great customers. And with we all do that if we’re all looking out for each other, then we’re going to be great partners, then we’re going to all be profitable then we’re going to grow this pie and everybody rides off into the sunset half. Amen to that. Amen to that, or vintage bikes as long as it were on bicycles, right? Got two wheels and a set of pedals. I’m a happy camper. Well, James, I really, really appreciate you taking the time today to speak with us. I think good relationships make for a good life. And none of us are in this by ourselves. We depend on each other told somebody we’re sitting in different parts of the same boat. So if the retailer’s go down, you guys might be up in the front of the boat, but you’re coming with us eventually. So we all got to work together. And we can all be strong in this industry can be strong. Yeah, we’re down in stowage. You guys are up in the first class, maybe up on the top, maybe you’ll get in the lifeboat quicker. But no, that’s kind of what we believe it with anything else, James?

James Ayres  45:40

No, I just wanted to say thank you to you and NBDA for having me on and giving her this opportunity. Like I said early in the conversation, you know, these are always fun. So I seriously appreciate it. It’s been a good time. If anybody wants to get in touch with you. How can they reach you? Easy. Lots of phone numbers on our website www dot hora. bikes calm were pretty easy 1-800-289-4276 which would also be one 800 by Haro, DUI Haro, email wise again, pretty straightforward letter J as in James, and then my last name Aryef So if we read it across, it’ll kind of look like j rez at Haro bikes calm. I said hate mail as well. Please don’t send nudes. Just a joke. Just a joke. Let’s try to have a little fun with this. And yeah, as Phil will attest to I’m pretty flaky but I will absolutely positively get back to you. I’m working on that. That’s a 2020 goal of mine to be a better responder. Well, you do pretty good most of the time

Phil Cohen  46:38

is well, that one time. Remember that one time and we’re not gonna talk I? Yeah, we don’t need it. We don’t need to talk about that. You were traumatized? Because you got a new picture of me in the mail. Maybe that was the therapy goes a long way though. Yeah, exactly. Well, we always have fun we always cut up but one thing I was gonna say my name is Phil Cohen. You, anybody, wants to contact me it’d be Phil at chain reaction ga.com ga for GA. We’re not the big guys in England or Ireland or wherever they are. Chain Reaction ga.com. And my phone number here at the store is 706-855-2024. If anybody has any comments or questions or wants to chat, I love to chat. I’m a chatter. So anyway, we had fun. Don’t forget, if you’re not a member of the NVDA, please join. What are you waiting for? The other thing is a bicycle, retail radio. We have these podcasts, and they’re excellent. I don’t know how good this one is. But we’ll have to wait and see that we’ve got a bunch of them up. I recommend anybody in our industry to listen to them all and come back because we will be doing them adding new ones several a month and there’s tons of great information from a lot of different people. So join the NBA with To bicycle, retail radio, and let’s all be successful in this business. And again, James, thanks for showing us today.

James Ayres  48:06

I appreciate it. My pleasure. It was a blast.

Rod Judd  48:09

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

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The post Tips for Strengthening the Dealer/Vendor Relationship appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

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Episode 21 – BMX Foundation

Tue, 8/18 10:42AM • 44:05

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, program, USA BMX, BMX, started, kids, people, cycling, bicycle, track, ride, talking, retailers, stem, school, foundation, BMX track, sport, realized, hear

SPEAKERS

Rod Judd, Pat Hus, Mike Duvarney

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Pat Hus  00:16

Hello, this is Pat who’s coming to you from the Bicycle Retail Radio presented by the National Bicycle Dealer Association. And today I am here with Mike Duvarney, who is the executive director of the USA BMX foundation. And we have a really interesting discussion planned for today. But before we jump into a conversation with Mike and him telling us a little bit about himself, I thought I’d just give you a quick background on me been in the bike industry for close to 40 years going back to Newbury Park, California. My dad bought a bike shop when I was 14, manage the store and college, and eventually led to an outside wrapping job and ultimately have worked for a number of companies in the bike engine. Including Cannondale American bicycle group. Titus Easton Bell sports fan most recently was with Interbike for almost seven years as the trade show director. Today, I am a consultant in the industry and working for a number of different companies on specific projects and looking for my next challenge my next opportunity. So that’s a little bit on me. I won’t bore you with any more than that. And now I’d like to turn it over and welcome, Mike. Mike, welcome, and thanks for being a part of this.

Mike Duvarney  01:27

Absolutely. I appreciate you having me. 

Pat Hus  01:29

So I spoke with john David a couple of weeks ago and he told me his background who was the executive director of USA BMX, but tell me your background, give us your background in the related industry. And then how you got to USA BMX. 

Mike Duvarney  01:43

So John, and the majority of staff at USA BMX or BMX, right, they grew up in it, they know it, they know it, well. These guys really cut their teeth and BMX at USA BMX. I mean, there is the staff here that have been here since the 70s. A good percentage The staff have been here 20 years or more. I know it’s crazy. I’m the exact opposite of that. So for 16 years, I worked in the camp and after school and education market, people hear that they think sports camps so they think of a local kid, or local coach meeting some people at the parkour gym. This was a large scale 11 different sports, multiple states, hundreds of camps going on in a week. So that really helped me and prepared me for a lot of this has helped with our success. I sold that business in 2017. My true passion is developing youth programming. I started a consulting group. In my first month, I had zero clients. Within a few months, I had some of the largest names in business, USA BMX, eventually was one of those clients. I started out 10 hours a week and 2013 helping develop which would be some of our first educational programmings. Four years later resulted in a full-time opportunity. He’s the executive director of the foundation. 

Pat Hus  02:56

That’s fantastic. You came from a very different background. Great to hear somebody that has that broader perspective and brings that to the table every day. I got to believe that helps you with what you’re trying to do. 

Mike Duvarney  03:07

I guess it just depends on which side of the table that you’re on. I like to think that it helps. And I like to think that I have a different perspective. Not everyone agrees with me and I respect that. But I note that I am truly passionate about what it is that we are doing. And I bring that to work with me every single day. I think I have the best job in the world. And I have some very, very lofty goals here at USA BMX foundation. At the end of the day. I just want to put more kids on bikes.

Pat Hus  03:36

That’s awesome. Let me ask you this. Do you ride bikes now that you’ve been a part of this crazy industry that we like to call home? Are you riding bikes now?

Mike Duvarney  03:45

Do you mean my crazy collector like the rest of you? Yes, I’ve started so I’d always had a mountain bike. And like most people, that bike just collected dust in the garage, but once I started, I realized that I have an opportunity once one of these guys say, Hey, you want to go for a ride and I’m out riding with, you know, an Olympian, I should probably take advantage of those opportunities. That’s something I’m going to regret if I don’t do that, and then just also realizing that it’s like golf, how much business is done on the golf course, I realized how much business was done on bikes. In fact, for the longest time, the CEO of Sam’s Club had a podcast called Business on Bikes. And so for me, I thought, you know what, I need to ride more. So that developed into a couple of other bikes, and then I really went all in and got a gravel bike. And I absolutely love this gravel bike. It’s the best bike I’ve ever owned. And honestly, you could take away all my other bikes and I’d be happy with just this bike.

Pat Hus  04:39

That’s so great to hear you say that because it is the bike of choice these days. It enables you to go wherever you want to go. If you want to go off-road and you can if you want to go around on the street, you can it’s really the most versatile thing that’s happened in a long, long time. So

Mike Duvarney  04:52

glad to hear you’re out there. Well, I gotta tell you, it was forced on me if I’m being brutally honest. It was forced on me and I didn’t want If I didn’t want to be that trendy guy, you know, and I got the bike and I started riding it. And it didn’t take long to figure out why it is so popular. I absolutely love this bike. And so you know, now I’m already looking at the next level of a gravel bike. So I’m in hook, line, and sinker. 

Pat Hus  05:18

Awesome. All right, well, let’s shift gears a little bit because we did a podcast couple weeks back with john and he talked a lot about us a BMX really painted a very encouraging and exciting picture of what’s happening in the BMX world today, and it’s great. And I want you to bear in mind, our audience is primarily weighted towards bicycle dealers, bicycle retailers. So that’s who we’re talking to here today. And I think John really expressed to them the opportunity that’s happening within the BMX world and a lot of these retailers who maybe have said, you know, BMX is not important to our business anymore. Maybe hopefully, they’re rethinking that way of approaching the business. And today, we’re going to shift gears over to the foundation side and again, With a retail flavor, let’s think in that those types of terms, but I think everybody needs to understand a little bit more about the USA BMX Foundation, how it got started, and how it correlates with USA BMX, the sanctioning body? 

Mike Duvarney  06:13

Great question. And I’m sure we’ll chop this up into smaller segments, but the short of it is from the mid-90s to 2013 that USA BMX Foundation was a nonprofit organization that housed our race for life in Waunakee scholarship, two wonderful programs that have been in existence for a long time. You can find more information on our website, USA BMX Foundation, org, but from really then 2013 to 2017 is when I came into the picture, and we started to really see what the foundation could be, and really gearing it more towards youth and getting more kids on bikes. And so we started to develop that youth programming. We came up with a set of programs like I said, I was working 10 hours a week. And as we develop these programs, we needed to get out there and tell the world about it. And we really didn’t do a great job of that from 2013 to 2017, we went to a few educational conferences, did some email marketing, really did zero social media. And so the programs grew virally over that period of time. And so from 2017, is when we really started getting going, we launched full time 2017, we launched our track modeling program or other read ride program, which I know we’ll probably get into all that hired or second staff members, December 2017, and then our third staff member, and from there, it just kind of taken off. And so now we’re a fully separate, fully functional 501 c three. And our goal every day is I mentioned before, and I’m sure I’ll say later on in the podcasts a dozen times our mission purpose is to get more kids on bikes.

Pat Hus  07:45

Yeah. So talk a little bit more about the goals the foundation, obviously the overarching is getting more kids on bikes, but there’s a lot more depth to what you’re doing and you guys list them on your website, these six Foundation’s goals. Can you talk a little bit more about those and That’s gonna dovetail right into some of the programs that you guys are doing today?

Mike Duvarney  08:03

So I’ll break it into two parts. I’ll talk about the goals of the foundation, and then kind of our mission, vision, etc. But then I think the real important second part of this is, how do we work with the sanctioning body? How do we work with USA BMX, right? How do we actually say BMX? So our mission statement is pretty short and simple. It is creating a passion for education and sport through cycling. And one of the things that people point out all the time is it doesn’t say anything about BMX. We are all about BMX, and everything we do every day involves BMX, but we’re about getting kids on bikes, and I believe that if you fill that funnel, the more kids you put on bikes, the more kids are going to ride BMX and so that guides really everything that we do. And then the second part of that is how we work with the sanctioning body. We utilize the framework and infrastructure of their tracks, their track operators, and athletes. And so you look at USA BMX I know john touched on 320 plus tracks, and each of those has a track operator board, etc. that network allows us to really plug kids into that framework. Each one of our programs provides a trial membership to the local BMX track. So not only are we working with the kids in the schools each and every day, thousands of kids per day, literally but where there’s a specific call to action to get all of those kids out to the local BMX track. And I know you and John talked a lot about the growth with USA BMX. I think a lot of that growth comes from their initiative with this programming, but they’ve invested so heavily in

Pat Hus  09:41

This, the part that I love is what you guys are doing at the school level, which is, again, we’re talking to a retailer audience here. And this is where I hope we can paint the picture of opportunity for these retailers to get more involved. But I love the fact that you guys are going into the schools and talking about things and getting kids out on And getting them engaged in multiple ways. So you guys really have four cornerstones that you are focused on in your education initiatives. Can you walk us through those four and kind of give some depth of what they’re doing and what the kids are doing?

Mike Duvarney  10:12

Yeah, absolutely. Before I get into each one of I think one of the things if we’re talking specifically to that retailer, part of the reason these programs have been so successful is the approach. And I have met hundreds of deeply passionate people that have spent their entire lives in the bike industry. And I think that’s a positive and negative, right because when someone’s passionate about something, they lead with it, and you can see it and you can feel it and I totally get that. But if you want something you’ve never had before, you have to do something that you haven’t done before. Right. So with these educational programs, their educational programs for cycling programs second, and some people don’t know how to react to that. But these are truly educational programs. And what I mean by that, is we take the auspice of education specifically STEM education, science, technology, engineering, and math, or in some cases, steam, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. And we use the bike as the framework to deliver that education and the educational term for that are disguised learning is disguised learning concepts. And so through that, these programs have been vetted. They’ve been aligned, aligned, meaning that you hear so much about today’s educational standards. People are teaching to the test schools and teachers are teaching to the test. These programs are aligned for specific grade levels. So the things that are talking about in the classroom are in these specific programs. And that’s part of what has really helped with the growth of this. So when I’m out talking or our track or our athletes are out there talking about these programs, their educational first cycling second, and that is open so many doors for us. So the first program that we came up with was the STEM program, and it’s basically an eight chapter, BMX program where students are going to use a bike to learn for Friction resistance or conference, etc. Bikes are simple machines. And as I start to use those words, a lot of different visions go through people’s minds. Just to give a very specific example one of the chapters, students are going to ride the bike with a stock tire. On a BMX bike. It’s a smooth tread tire, and they’re going to talk about the handling properties of that tire. What does it sound like? It’s smooth, it doesn’t really make a sound. What does it feel like it feels like a tire? Well, now the students are going to swap out that front tire for a super knobby, aggressive front tire. Well, that has now changed the handling properties of that bike, very similar to studded snow tires on the front of the car. How does it sound while it’s louder? How does it feel it’s bumpier. Well, that results in more friction, more resistance, slower times. I mean, I say that and we all get that. But if you’re a fourth or fifth grader, this stuff all of a sudden it’s like a light bulb goes off in your head and this is the program that I wish I had when I was that age. So total. That’s the first program. It’s an eight-chapter program developed to get kids on the bike and really help them understand and overcome that barrier to entry to have it.

Pat Hus  13:10

Are you teaching the teachers to present this? Or do you have people that are going into the classroom and doing this?

Mike Duvarney  13:16

I referencing my sports camp history and model before what drove me insane almost literally, was the fact that we have hundreds of tamps going on a week and those were staffed by staff that had direct reports to me and, and it was something that we are managing. And so before I even came to USA, BMX, I had in my mind, this vision of the next thing I was going to develop, which was going to be a teach the teacher model, and get out from under that way of managing all of that. And so that’s exactly what all of these programs are. So the program is student-led student taught. There’s an instructor there to help them, but we sell this as a kit, which includes five bikes, five helmets, tools, stand alternative tread tires. And we ship that to the schools. And then that school that boys and girls club that KCC, YMCA, etc, use it for school time after school time summer camp. And the numbers for that program are actually pretty staggering. So to date with just that stem kit alone, we sold 781 of those stem kits. Well, if you if I’m a retailer, and I know there are five bikes in each of that, you can do the math and see that that’s a ton of bikes. Yeah. So you know, and so that’s 781 Park stands that are in schools across the country, you know, and so the great thing about this program is, most people when they think stem, they think tech and technology. These programs are not consumable, right? It’s something that they’re going to use and kids are going to go through it. And so we have some of these programs that have been in place since 2013. Since we initially started, were 10 kids at a time go through this program. There. schools that have had hundreds of kids use these programs time and time again. And so it’s truly something that happens literally every single day. And I’ve had people question and asking challenges that you can go to our website, there’s a map of where every program is around the country, you can see that there is a USA BMX Foundation STEM program going on every single day, somewhere in the United States. So it’s pretty amazing to think about, but all of that is being done by either volunteer or after school program providers, teachers, track operators around the US.

Pat Hus  15:34

Okay, that’s what I’m wondering have to figure out and your target age and grade for the STEM program, you’re looking at fourth and fifth graders primarily, is that right? It’s really third, fourth, and fifth, I use the example of fourth and fifth, it’s really when they start getting that dexterity that familiarity. And honestly, with the 20-inch bike, it’s also a size thing. So it’s really geared towards third, fourth, and fifth. I know I’ve been going on and on about the program for a while because, you know, I love it. I’m very proud of that. But one of the things that surprised me the most about the program is how many middle schools we have purchased it because it speaks to that kid. That kid that maybe missed it the first time around, you know, when you’re in the classroom and you’re starting to get that glazed overlook. And some of these concepts, you put a kid outside on a bike, they just get it.

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Mike Duvarney  16:35

Do you mind if we jump into the track modeling program?  

Pat Hus  16:37

No, absolutely. I was going to preface this but before I jump into the track modeling, to me, this BMX STEM program is ideal for setting the stage and get the kids excited about it right and not every kid’s gonna take to it but a lot of them will and they want more. And now there’s another organization called Project bike tech that’s out there today that is at the high school level were and they’re actually starting to look to Towards Middle School. So now you got a kid hooked. Now there’s something that they can graduate into at the high school level where they can actually learn how to become a bicycle mechanic and become valuable coming out of high school or during high school. So there are programs out there that are coming together to really where we can start growing the next wave of not only, you know, riders, but people that could actually make a career out of the bicycle industry, which is exciting. So anyway, I just wanted to share that story, because I think project bike tech would actually align really, really well with this. But let’s talk about it because I was watching the videos online and I really got a kick out of it. Man, how fun would it have been to do what you guys are doing with these kids on the track modeling, so talk about track modeling in the school because it’s really cool. 

Mike Duvarney  17:44

So track modeling program, it came to existence, from the fact that I had teachers calling and saying, I love the STEM program, but it includes five bikes and an only serves 10 kids at a time. I need something that incorporates my whole classroom or grade level. And so as I started sketching out ideas, I’m a big believer in the arts. And I really wanted something that was hands-on something that was able to reach more kids. And it came from this idea of a school asking to build a track. And the school said, we’re interested in building a track, but we want the students to build the track. And as I started talking to them, I thought that they were talking about building a replica scale track. And they were talking about building a life-size track, right, and, and so as we started talking through this, I started sketching some ideas out. And then when I realized what they were talking about, I was like, here’s the program. And there were two folks at the Tulsa Sports Commission that I worked very closely with on this and they’re big partners of ours. I know you and John talked about the facility in Tulsa a little bit. And they were really starting to champion our STEM program. And I said, What do you guys think about this and I laid it out. And then we just sat there brainstorm. for the day, and that birth really tracks modeling program, and so it’s a steam program. It is only for fourth graders, it’s aligned with in fourth grade. And I’ll put this challenge out there because it’s something that I think people have a hard time getting their mind around. This is the only program that I know of that encompasses an entire week of school, bell to bell Monday through Friday, 25 plus hours of instruction. The schools give us this entire week devoted to BMX. And so students start by conceptualizing their idea of what a BMX track is. They’re watching videos looking at pictures, they understand the history of BMX back from the flat track days and how it’s evolved into an Olympic sport. And as that has changed, how the tracks have changed, bikes have changed, technology has changed. And then from there, they start working into groups. And I’ll tell you, Pat, this is that secret sauce to this program is this next part, which is the social and emotional learning and it’s a big buzzword in education. Right now, but so many people today are trying to figure out how do I work with other people? How do I work in groups, you know, we don’t work really independently, we work with other people, we don’t get to pick who we work with. And so this program really targets that. And so there’s a big focus on group projects and roles. And it’s a major focus on design planning, engineering, architecture, and construction. So they Skype with one of our pro athletes, and they get to ask them their first-person perspective, what is it like to ride a BMX track? What features do you like? What do you look for in a track? And so they start to build these concepts of what their track could be. And then they ask questions of a track builder or real track builder, and what features work well together. How tall should my features be? How many berms should I have? How tall should the tabletop be? And so they’re getting to ask questions from a track builder and there’s some interaction and now they’re starting to layer in the educational world. They call it scaffolding to suddenly scaffold these countries. concepts. And then really the highlight of the program is on the third day the students go out to the local BMX track, and we split them into three groups. Of course, they get to ride the track, one of the groups is going to ride the track. And the majority of these kids are riding a track for the first time and many are riding a bike for the first time. So imagine never riding a bike and then going on a BMX track. And people just lose their minds when they hear this, right, because they’re trying to envision it and it’s exactly what you think it is. It does not go smoothly at first, but what you see is confidence. And you see these kids grasping it, and your kids fall. Yeah, kids fall, and they get right back up, and they go again. And now we’re building resiliency, which is a big part of building kids today. So one group is riding another group is learning how the track features and the stem component factors into those tracks features. And those berms that they thought on the video were six or eight feet tall. They realize they’re 14 feet tall and they can’t walk Upon the smoke like a cereal bowl. And then the last part is the third group realizes the track has a system and the track cannot operate independently of these systems. Why do we have like, extend our operating hours, and make it safe? Why do we have a snack bar? Why do we have a parking lot? Why do we have speakers, and they realize that you know, independently these are components, but they all work together to form a system. And so now they’ve taken their knowledge that they’ve built from the videos and their own sketches and designs. The knowledge from the pro rider, the knowledge from the track builder, and their firsthand personal experience, they go back, make some revisions. And now they build a replica scale model of their own BMX track and they build it out of the dirt. And so they build on a two-foot by four-foot board. And one of my favorite things to see is when adults see these kids doing this for the first time and we bring all the dirt in we bring all the supplies in and all day, Thursday and all day Friday. These kids spend the day building bringing their creations to life. And so it’s really heavily rated in the earth sciences and mathematics, scale and repin ratio really aren’t introduced to fifth grade, these kids are understanding how to bring all of this design to life. And it’s really, really amazing to watch. And then on the last day, we hand out trophies and awards. It’s judged by a panel of local communities. And a lot of times that attracts builder, retailers, we often invite retailers to come in and partake in this. And it’s really a wonderful thing to see. And so as an asterisk, to all of that. We’re working on some really cool stuff. There are some organizations nationwide that have seen this and their heads exploded, and they’re trying to get us to take it to astronomical levels. We’ve had a couple of different groups ask us if we can do this across 20,000 schools. And the answer is no hard, hard. No, you know, and just mathematically figuring out the hundred 80 days of the school year, getting all of those kids out to the track, it just doesn’t happen. And so We are working on a way to scale this. We’re working on some VR AR technology where students don’t have to go to the tracker if there’s not a track nearby. But we are working on some really exciting things with some really fun partners to make this happen. And so it’s a steam program again, specifically designed for fourth graders.

Pat Hus  24:18

 Awesome.

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Pat Hus  24:44

Just because we got more stuff to cover. I’m going to shift gears on you. And have you talked a little bit about the reader ride program at the root of it. It’s similar to just you know good old fashioned AR and AR points that I remember my kids having to read and get their AR points but you’re Have a little different spin to it, talk to us a little bit about reading arrive, Read the ride comes back to the concept I mentioned earlier where I wanted something a whole school could do with a whole school to do at one time and get behind reading is reading. I’m a horrible reader. And the funny thing about myself is I have a passion for education and learning and I hate reading books. I’ll read an article, I’ll read anything online. I love absorbing information on learning, but I hate reading long, boring books. And I don’t think I did it enough as a kid and Harry Potter wasn’t around then, you know, back then it was Choose Your Own Adventure or one of those books, right? But for me, I want to instill a love of reading in kids. And so we encourage kids to read minutes or minutes whether you’re reading a newspaper, a comic book or a book, top reader for each grade level gets a variety of prizes. The top reader for the school gets a BMX bike and helmet. And it really is that simple. And it’s funny to see schools implement this program and the kids that they thought would participate or not The ones that are participating, they have kids that they would have sworn are not readers and hate reading those kids like myself. And they come out of the woodwork to own that bike and win that bike. And so it’s a great program. We have it going on all across the country.  Fantastic. I’m like you, I’m not a big reader. But if I was a fifth-grader, and I knew if I read a bunch of stuff, I have a chance of winning a bike. I’m all about it. So are those bikes? Part of corporate sponsorship? How do you guys come about those bikes are they donated? Can a local retailer be the donator of the bike and helmet? How does that work? 

Mike Duvarney  26:34

So all of our programs include some sort of cycling hook or cycling component like, you know, even our school speeches and our school program, which I think we’ll talk about in a second, but really, forever and ever. We were supported by Free Agent and KHS. You talk about retailers and bike dealers. I got to give a shout out to Wayne de Grey with KHS and Wayne taught me everything about this bike business and I learned so much from him. He was our partner on this for really six years, almost seven years. So with that he really was our main sponsor, our main provider was until recently mongoose came to us. And mongoose really loved what we were doing. They noticed, you know, all of the thousands of kids we are impacting. And so we’ve been talking to them for forever over a year to try and put this together. And so now, the bikes that we provide for all of our programs, and this is new for our STEM programs for our readers to ride programs, track modeling, everything is all mongoose bytes.

Pat Hus  27:36

Okay. Well, I just glad that they’re down. Go ahead. 

Mike Duvarney  27:38

Well, I was gonna say, Pat, I’m glad that they’re getting bikes. I will say that I have had local bike shops to come to me and ask if they could donate a bike to read the ride. My answer is yes, absolutely. Yes. 100%. We provide the prizes, they provide the bike, and that gives that dealer that plugin all day every day. Yes, yes, yes. And I’m We’ll talk about, you know, bike dealers and getting them more involved. You know, hopefully, we do at some point, but absolutely, yes.

Pat Hus  28:07

Okay, good. Good. Good, good. Good. So talk about motivational speaking in the schools and trying to inspire these kids. And how does one go about that? What kind of speakers are we talking about? And how broad is that today, your motivational speaking piece? This came to me when I stood on a stage a few years ago, in front of some elementary school students, and I realized it just dawned on me. I mean, I’ve known it for a while, but it’s that it was that striking moment where I realized I am no longer cool. And 49 years of age, my cool and, and I could be up there giving, I could be like the Oprah like giving every kid a bike. They wouldn’t care. I’m still not cool. And we do give out a lot of bikes for various things. You put a BMX athlete in front of kids and these kids see themselves. They hear the stories of these athletes starting to ride and young age and sticking with it and overcoming all of their obstacles and injuries that resonate with these kids. And what I found in the more I started learning about our athletes within the sport is every writer, every athlete has a story. And I was so fortunate. When I started in this, I started asking people if I’m going to latch my wagon to one athlete, who should it be? And universally, everyone said, Donnie Robinson, Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins, it’s got to be Donnie Robinson. So I meet this guy, this Donnie Robinson guy, and he’s an Olympic medalist. 2008 Olympic bronze medalist. 2009 UCI World Champion, multi-time world champion, you know, BMX Hall of Fame. I mean, this is the guy and his accomplishments on the track have been great. But I’ll tell you what this guy has done since he retired. And what he’s done for the sport of BMX, and what he’s done for cycling is unbelievable. And so when I realized that Donnie had a message And his message was, how far can two wheels take you? And it was a metaphor for his bikes, taking them all around the world. And his bike was his thing. At five, five, he realized that football, basketball, soccer, all of those other things were not his thing. Cycling was his thing. And I was like, we’re on to something. So Johnny’s message was, maybe hockey’s your thing, maybe cooking is your thing. Maybe acting is your thing. But how you find your thing is by trying new things. And it was really that partnership with Donnie that helped me understand this, and seeing the way they react to him versus the way they reacted to me. And as I started going out and learning more about our athletes and our stories, I started expanding our stable of speakers. And I’ll tell you about going out to schools now. We have a couple of dozen athletes that do it. And every message is different. But the reaction from the kids is all the same. It’s truly incredible. And so These motivational stories, you know, the stories on failure. They’re stories on equality. There’s a variety of different stories. And we have someone speaking in a school somewhere in the country at least once a week. And before every one of our 30 plus nationals across the country. We’re going into schools and speaking. That’s awesome. Nobody was talking to me back in the day, but this, I’m really glad to hear you say this. And I think it’s super important. These kids that age. They need somebody to inspire them. And I think BMX is attainable. It’s a bicycle like you said, you don’t have to be six, one at 13 years of age to be on the basketball team. There’s not that pressure. So I love it. You’ve got these guys going out there. These folks. Talk to me a little bit about how a local bike retailer can engage with the foundation and the work that you guys are doing at the school level. Is there an opportunity for them to sponsor How do they lend a hand? How do they get involved and have a translate to these families and these kids coming to their business You know, this is a tough one for me because I’ve seen the best and worst of the cycling industry as a result of reaching out to bike shops. And you know, I think it’s important to be clear and honest with this. You know, I hold sent Facebook messages to shops, asking them to get involved and some of them just haven’t responded but worse. I’ve had others that flat out told me you know what, this isn’t for them and it’s not their target market. And yeah, it just sucks the wind out of my sails. But at the same time, you look at Ben’s Bikes down in Tucson, or the Bicycle Shack in Arvada, Colorado. There are two examples of people that I could call right now and say, Hey, can you help me with this? And they’re in they ask the question. All right, tell me more about it. And then they asked, How do I get involved? And then once they started seeing it, and once they started seeing the love and passion these kids had for cycling, they just got it and what I realized is there’s a correlation. Both of these people are successful in their shops, as a result, Some other things, but I think they just did it all the way around. Right? And so yeah, I can tell you that going back to our STEM program, I get a lot of jokes because I have been able to negotiate that we ship bikes on assembling to schools and allow kids to assemble them, and then write them. And people are like good watches. So you know, the bikes are shipped directly to the schools in the STEM program, the kids assemble the bikes, and then the kids learn to ride those bikes. And they’re like, how does that happen? Well, we were able to work it out the same response we get when we have kids that have never ridden a bike before, how they’re able to ride, and a BMX track. And sure there’s some risk involved. But the reason I say that is the bikes go through a safety check and that STEM program, but your bike dealer and you want to get involved. It starts right there. And then they have so many questions. And one of the biggest questions I get is that someone will take a picture with their cell phone is what is this and it’s a chain breaker in their toolset. They’re like, what is this? It looks like a whip. What is this? You know, and they don’t know what it is. And they want to know what it does and how to use it. And there’s only so much that we can handle from a national level. At some point, we need some people on the local level that want to be involved. And the schools would love some way to have someone come in and talk about their own cycling experiences, and how they got involved with like you were talking about with Mercedes and project bike tech and her group and how those kids get involved or how their work today can lead into a career within cycling. And so there’s a variety of ways to get involved. I mentioned judges for the track modeling program. I mentioned donating bikes. The thing is, is all I’m really asking people for in this is their time, I think that it’s time and recognizing the value of this customer for the long haul because if they get up in front of a couple of hundred kids each year, even if 10 of them become hooked on cycling. Guess who’s going to be buying a mountain bike when they’re 15 And they’re racing in Nikah, or they’re just passionate about they go ride with their dad or the mom or whatever. That’s what we’re trying to get across. It’s a BMX bike, it’s a 200 $250 bike. It’s not a huge margin generator for retail. But down the road, that customer who started off in your store is a BMX, or he or she could very easily become an enthusiast mountain bike, or maybe even a road cyclist, or, you know, who knows, but we’ve got to start somewhere. And there’s a long tail here that I think retailers need to recognize. It’s more of an investment. And it’s an investment in time at this point. 

Mike Duvarney  35:35

So I heard this from a retailer and I’m going to repeat it. Two people walked into the shop. The guy walks in, by himself that wants to buy a $3,000 road bike, or guy walks in with this kid that wants to buy a $500 BMX bike, who are you going to help? And I thought for sure, he was going to say the road bike guy and he says, BMX and he says, I’ll tell you why. Number one, I’m going to have that customer Life. And the people in the sport are constantly upgrading their components, their racing flight, and they’re going to grow as the sport grows. And as their love of cycling grows, they’re going to start collecting bikes, as we joked about at the beginning. And the second part was that the complete bike is called a complete bike because it’s complete. You may not see that guy for another five, 610 years. And I thought that was so dead-on. I know, it’s not everyone, but so many of these retailers. They do not think about that long tail on that lifelong customer.

Pat Hus  36:31

Yep, I agree. Just because we’re getting near the end here. A couple-three more questions here. I still want to come to you with it. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys are funded. How’s the foundation primarily funded? And you mentioned mongoose? Is there any other support? I don’t know if Wayne D is still involved in the cage, si. But are there other companies that are investing in your programs and in the foundation? What more can the industry be doing to help support your initiatives, Mongoose is a large funder of what we’re doing at this point, we are a foundation. Last year we secured over $100,000 in community grants. And this year we’re on track for 2020 to surpass that. So we’re funded a with a large donation from USA BMX, be from the BMX industry, see from grants and other donations, just like any other 501 c three. And then the second part of that you were asking about, what was the second part of your question?  I’m just wondering if the supplier community besides mongoose was, you know, taking an active role. And if there was any investment on their part.

Mike Duvarney  37:36

It’s coming around, I will tell you that the more that these programs get out there, the more some of these groups see what we’re doing and really begin to understand it. You’re starting to see more and more and I mean, I’m excited about that. 

Pat Hus  37:50

Good, good, good. Well, I think that you know, us doing this, these two podcasts, hopefully, this starts to filter out and starts to have an impact because I think the more you guys and JOHN mentioned that when he and I had our conversation how we’ve got this incredible inertia going behind us a BMX, and it’s not getting out to the market, the bike industry doesn’t realize To what extent the success you guys are having and that there’s growth. There’s a lot of BMX companies that when you talk to them, they’re kind of snickering and they’re going, Yeah, we’re killing it, we’re up 25%. I mean, it’s great. But that story needs to get broadcast a little bit louder to a bigger audience. So hopefully, these podcasts and the more and more what you guys are doing at the school level, it’s going to start to filter up to the companies that can make a real difference, and can help expand the programs that you guys have already laid the groundwork for. So I’m encouraged by that. But here’s where I just kind of wind things down and just have you speak to how do you see BMX fitting into the overall cycling ecosystem? You know, the whole big picture? Where does BMX fit into that? 

Mike Duvarney  38:58

this is a tough one because I think that there’s a lot of people that see it as a kid sport. And it’s something you do for a little while, right? And I get that. But really, it’s where the cycling industry starts. And there are a couple of things. Number one, I think listening to some of the cycling industry talks about getting more kids on bikes. And then the next thing out of their mouth is talking about trending paint schemes, or apps or all of that stuff. I mean, please, that is not going to get more kids on bikes, it’s not going to get more kids and bikes at all. And so they want to get more kids on bikes that look at the people that are getting kids on bikes. And it’s not just our organization, there’s a ton of grassroots organizations out there that are doing it. And the other thing that I’ll say about it, is you go through our photos, you go through our videos, we are hitting every single diversity, and every single gender point out there. We are seeing just as many girls on bikes, and just as many people of color on bikes, if not more, and so I think that overall every kid Starts their journey on a 20-inch bike at some point. And I’m not saying that every kid needs to race. I get that. You know, recently, we had a great meeting with Nika. And one of the things I learned about Nika is that you can be a member of their team of one of their cycling teams, but you don’t have to race and my head exploded. I was like that is so genius. The kid wants to feel a part of something bigger and better. And so why not be a part of a cycling team and you just go out you practice all the time, and maybe racing isn’t your thing. I am all about BMX. And I am all about BMX racing and the wonderful work that tons of people have done before. But it’s about time that we look at this in a different way. And so I think that when the industry realizes that this isn’t a kid sport, and it’s something that people do for a time, and they realize that this is really where that long-tail starts, I think that you’re going to see those people start to see growth in their business and a shift in their business and you look at some of the other programs we offer, like our BMX racing league, that’s another wonderful program actually founded by Donnie Robinson that we talked about earlier. manufacturers are starting to come around to these items and look at them and tilt their heads go the life and seen that before. How do I get involved in that? And so for me, we are a family sport. And what other sport can you get out there and ride with your kid, your kid races and then a little while later, the brother-sister races, mom races, and dad races? And I just love the fact that our sport, in general, recognizes people of all abilities, all races, all genders, all colors, and that every single person can race.

Pat Hus  41:37

Love it. Mike, you did a great job here. Man. I really appreciate everything you’ve shared with us today. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your valuable day. I know you’ve got a lot of things on your plate. So I really, really appreciate you taking the time to spend with everybody today. Is there any last comment you’d like to make to our audience just as a wrap-up? The very last thing I would say is that there’s a lot of great work going on. Right now within you cycling and people say all the time, well, I didn’t know about this, or I didn’t know about that. And I will tell you that there’s a group of folks getting together, forming a movement right now in the cycling coalition. And I’m sure you’ve heard about it. And you’ll hopefully have tat from people for bikes, the youth cycling initiative on in the future. But there are a lot of good minds, a lot of people that are putting a lot of time and energy into figuring out how do we get more kids on bikes? And how do we keep kids and people on bikes? And I think that the results of that as you’re starting to see that now come out, and the effects of that, but long term, I can’t wait to see the next five to 10 years. Hallelujah. My friend, I am a big fan. I’m on the board for People for Bikes in the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association. So I’ve been in those preliminary discussions about our youth initiatives and what we need to be doing to cultivating the next wave of cyclists. If we don’t, we run the risk of losing more and more of them and we all know how important Like is to a kid. It’s that first taste of freedom, right? I remember getting on my bike and riding to the store and we can’t let this generation this next generation of kids not have that experience in their life because they’re, they’re getting sucked into these digital tools that take him away from outside and getting outdoors and doing things as a family and you guys are really leading the charge. I applaud your efforts. Once again, I thank you for your time. And I’d like to just wrap up by saying thank you all for listening and taking part in this. And this is the bicycle retail radio, presented by the National Bicycle Dealer Association. Thanks

Rod Judd  43:40

for listening. This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.

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E-Bikes and Building a Mission-Driven Bike Shop:  Karen Weiner and Brett Thurber opened a bike shop ten years ago in California’s Bay Area with four e-bikes on consignment, and no previous bike shop experience an asset that enabled them to bring fresh eyes and a creative approach to creating a mission-driven business model. They began by operating out of their apartment and delivering bikes by the trailer, and today, The New Wheel has two locations, an offsite service center, and 28 employees.

In this episode of Bicycle Retailer Radio, Karen Weiner talks about the challenges and benefits of being an e-bike only retailer and how they have built their business around the unique needs of the e-bike consumer. Karen also talks candidly about the tension between dealer and bike manufacturer needs and goals, and how The New Wheel leverages their service department to enhance the rider experience and build customer loyalty.

Please enjoy listening to E-Bikes and Building a Mission-Driven Bike Shop.

Support the show  (https://nbda.com/articles/donation-form-pg511.htm#!form/Donate)

The New Wheel’s MISSION

Our mission is not only to change how we get around but to bring good things and fresh ideas into the lives of people in our community and California as a whole.

We uphold our commitment to our customers through careful selection of technology, top-notch service, and an unwavering optimism for the future of transportation and electric bikes in the Bay Area.

Come visit our electric bike shops in San Francisco and Marin County.

Episode 20 – Bicycle Retail Radio

Tue, 8/18 10:41AM • 38:10

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, bike shops, bicycle, electric bikes, people, ebike, customers, margins, brett, industry, store, ride, wheel, sell, riders, buy, membership, service, product, suppliers

SPEAKERS

Chad Pickard, Rod Judd, David DeKeyser, Karen Weiner

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

David DeKeyser  00:16

Hello and welcome to another episode of bicycle retail radio. My name is David Dekeyser. I do retail consulting for the NBDA is the P2 Consult program. You can find more information on that program and all the other great benefits the NBDA provides its members on the NBDA website NBDA calm. Today’s guest is Karen Wiener, who along with her husband, Brett Thurber, owns and operates two e-bike only retail stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. And with that welcome card, and thanks for taking some time out from what I can guess is a busy day to join us.

Karen Weiner  00:54

Thanks, David. Nice to be here.

David DeKeyser  00:56

So most of the reason tailors that are going to be listening to this probably own and operate traditional retail bicycle stores where they’re selling a wide variety of different products. Can you kind of give us a history of your business? what spurred the idea to do an e-bike only store and kind of bring us up to the present day, just to give us some background and context. And first, I want to say you’ve been open for 10 years. So congratulations on that. Yeah. If you can kind of give us a little history of your business. That would be great.

Karen Weiner  01:33

Absolutely, yeah, this will be our 10th year, but where we started doesn’t look anything like where we are today. So Brett and I met at UC Berkeley, and he was studying history and I was studying anthropology. It was 2010. And you know, we were all it was, well, no, we’ve met before that but in 2010 when Brett graduated the company economy was essentially in shambles. And we decided, well, Brett became interested in the idea of electric bikes as transportation. He was a very utilitarian bicycle, let’s just get to school get back that’s about it. Had a, you know, specialized commuter bike, and I am originally from Denmark and have been back and forth a lot and used a bicycle heavily between high school and the end of college. And so I was also sort of a practical bicyclist. But the idea of electric bikes was sort of, you know, it was on the margins of things. There were students that we were talking to at Berkeley who had come back from war, and we’re using electric bikes to get around people who are handicapped. There was an article in The New York Times that talked about these bikes that they were using for vacations and tours in the Swiss Alps. And it sounded like magic. It sounded just unbelievable. And so Brett started to look for something similar here in the Bay Area, because all of a sudden, he just realized that it was such an obvious way to get around and wasn’t really able to find much. There were a couple of very small e-bike retailers and one bicycle store that carried the track ride plus bikes. And so the truck ride plus was really the first high-quality e-bike that Bret ever tried. And when he tried to be realized, man, this is unbelievable. Why is it not big news? So first, he tried to get a job with a regular bike shop specializing in electric bikes and nobody wanted to hire him because they thought that the market was too small. And so we opened a little e-bike shop out of our apartment, we had basically four bikes on consignment that were in our little one-bedroom apartment. And my dad and Brett built u bike-powered bike trailer. And he would go around to farmers’ markets and street fairs and try to get people to try electric bikes. And then if somebody bought one, he would deliver it to their house on this trailer. And so that was you know, about the first nine months or so. And then we ended up working with a friend who was opening a bicycle rental business for tourism in San Francisco and Brett had a small wall in that shop and helped start the shop and staff at in exchange for being able to have a sort of quasi brick and mortar space. And that’s when we realized that having a location was really important because you had customers who were making big investments. So at the time, the bikes we are selling were already over $3,000 which was a Big deal. So they were making major investments. And we realized how useful it was to have, you know, a mechanic on hand and to have a brick and mortar space that people could kind of experience the whole experience. And so I graduated that year, and we decided to open the new wheel in San Francisco. And we were for once lucky because of the economy because we were able to find a really sweet spot for a pretty good deal. Finally, and the landlord decided he would take the risk on leasing to a couple of 20 I guess we were 22. At the time note, we’re 23. So the landlord took a risk on us and we opened with about $50,000 and a lot of hard work, and we’ve been growing it from there. And so now we have two stores, an off-site service center. And we have I think today we’ve got 28 employees.

David DeKeyser  06:01

Wow. That’s a lot of employees to handle.

Karen Weiner  06:06

That’s a lot of employees. Yeah. But it’s a lot of bikes. So so we sell a lot of bikes. Everybody’s very busy. You know, we’re in a pretty, we don’t have much seasonality, so we stay busy all year long, and bikes if even in the rain, people are willing to ride the bikes more than they’re willing to ride regular bikes. So, you know, 27 full-time employees is not quite enough at this point, or 28. We’re still hiring.

David DeKeyser  06:35

How big is your store’s square footage twice?

Karen Weiner  06:39

small compared to most bicycle stores, they are about 1500 square feet each depends on how you measure them. We have outdoor space on both of them in both stores that we can move bikes in and out of basically between 1500 and 2000 square feet each. Okay. Is that enough space for you? Or would you? Does it seem like there’d be a lot of elbow-rubbing going on? Yeah, so there historically was a lot of elbow-rubbing going on. So we opened our first store with just 1000 square feet. And by the time we signed a lease for the downstairs area there, I think we were doing like, I want to say almost $2 million of business out of it out of 1000 square feet, and the amount of elbow-rubbing was obscene. It was really you have to like who you work with, and you have to be driven, you know, be really patient with each other in the Bay Area. You know, we have benefits like less weather fluctuation during the year, but we’ve got some pretty serious downside to and rent is one of those. And so we don’t really have any choice. We can’t afford a bigger space. And so it’s actually a really useful challenge for us. It’s challenged us to develop a model that’s really unlike most bike shops. And it challenges us to keep our inventory moving and to slim and you know, make tough decisions. So there are benefits and it’s difficult.

Chad Pickard  08:15

Your NBDA membership helps support bicycles, retail radio, go to nba.com to join or renew your membership today.

David DeKeyser  08:27

So the basic business model that you guys have out there is, Are you trying to appeal to a broad range of e-bike consumers, you’d mentioned kind of the practical cycling, who’s kind of your core consumer that’s coming into your stores.

Karen Weiner  08:44

Our customers, for the most part, are people who are riding to work or riding for some sort of, well, so historically, our customers were very, very practical. So in San Francisco, Most of our customers are commuters or take their kids to school. There’s very little San Francisco City Life is extremely pragmatic and busy. And so you know, riding a bike is the fastest, most affordable way to get around the city. And so anybody who’s kind of thinking outside the box is our customer, essentially. So we’ve got you to know, everybody from babysitters to people who are executives to retired people to high school students to buy bikes from us

David DeKeyser  09:37

is primarily a transportation-based purchase.

Karen Weiner  09:42

Yeah, it’s a heavy transportation base. Now in our store and Larkspur. There are a lot more leaders. There’s a history of mountain biking and recreational bicycling both road and mountain that is much stronger. So we cater to a lot of people who ride by From Marin to San Francisco, you can ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. And if you ride by bike, you save about $7 per day, just on the toll that doesn’t include, you know, parking downtown or whatever. So there’s a lot of people who ride in. But then there are, you know, we have, I would say, an older demographic in Marin. Often, people who have spent their lives on bicycles and a bike have the opportunity to stay on a bicycle. And, you know, one thing that we really didn’t, weren’t involved with and didn’t see coming. Well, we saw it coming, but we, it wasn’t our race on the edge. It wasn’t our The reason for being originally is a cargo bicycle. So, you know, an electric cargo bike is about, I don’t know, hundreds of times more useful than a non-electric cargo bike, especially in a hilly place. That’s become a major part of our business after the launch of, you know, mid-drive motors by Bosch about five years ago.

David DeKeyser  10:59

So you’re I was looking at your website, which is absolutely beautiful. And I think that anybody that’s selling e-bikes should probably spend a little time on your site, it would be helpful for them to understand how you’re presenting the product. One thing that I noticed is obviously, your stores have the fairly small square footage, you carry a lot of brands, I’m assuming that you have a very kind of curated selection from each brand. Mm-hmm. Is that hard work to deal with your vendors at all Do you ever have where they would like more floor space? Or how have you kind of navigated those waters?

Karen Weiner  11:37

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that there is well there are a couple of things that I want to touch on from what you said, right? The first thing if you do look at our website, look at it from the perspective of understanding that what we’re doing what our aim is, is not to present product, it’s to present our service. So part of our Service is the product that we carry. But that’s just part of it. And so we’re qualifying customers, as new wheel customers or not new wheel customers through our website. And that’s been a major part of our existence since before, you know since we opened. So for I think for years, we’d invested more in our websites, and we had invested in our storefronts. So that’s just sort of a little background because it’s been a very, very useful tool to make sure that the people who are coming into our store are the right people or people who are going to be interested in the services that we have to offer. And that sort of dovetails into your question about I think the relationships that we have with our vendors. Our model is, again, because we have the challenge of our natural environment, which is super hilly, super bumpy, super salt, watery, heavy use e-bike riding We simply can’t sell some types of electric bikes, I mean, customers would be really disappointed with the performance. And so we’ve always come from the perspective that our job was to curate the best bicycles for an experience here in the Bay Area. And I think, and our perspective in terms of how we work with our vendors, with our vendor partners, is that we need them to succeed and they need us to succeed. So we try to be in really close contact with them, we’re usually talking about a product, you know, way ahead of when it’s actually going to be launching so that they can have a sense of what you know what our feedback is, what our interests are, what problems are that we’ve had with a current product that we would like to see fixed on new product and if we do see that fixed, how many units we think will sell. And because we’re focused, we’re able to move quite a few units of every bike that we sell what you Don’t see on our website is that unlike most bike shops, our model is to have inside our stores, all of our bikes, our demo bikes, you don’t actually see hardly any stock bikes at all. So when people walk in, they can touch and ride and rent and kind of experience every bike that’s on the floor. And then we have a warehouse where we stock new bikes. And when you choose what bike you want, we deliver a brand new bike. And so that helps us manage floor space. And it helps us really, you know, people the test ride is the magic sauce, the secret sauce, and e-bike sales. And generally speaking, people want to buy what they’ve tried. And so you know, it’s a matter of working with suppliers long term, helping them forecast, making adjustments as needed. And, you know, working to be good partners. I’m so amazed. Seems to me in the Bike industry, there’s a lot of tension between retailers and suppliers. And of course, there are moments of total tension at the new wheel between our suppliers and ourselves as well. But it seems to me that nobody wins if anybody loses. And so these sorts of unequal power dynamics between brands and retailers, really I understand the legacy they come from but they don’t serve anyone very well going forward.

David DeKeyser  15:29

That was very well put the kind of the nuts and bolts of your business then I’m assuming with the very high cost of living, the high cost of your retail space, you also have a warehouse. The margins on e-bike product have been it’s a definitely a conversation in the traditional bike shop world. Are they enough? Are they not enough? They’re obviously higher dollar sales. Where do you stand on you have such a really a different model than the traditional bike shop? By far? What kind of margins Do you like to see? And are you able to get those?

Karen Weiner  16:11

So the new wheel started selling e-bikes and working with an e-bike. importers and distributors quite a while before. I would say before the major brands got into it at all. And I think that you know, a lot of bike shops aren’t that sure are serious about e-bikes yet. And I would argue that a lot of the major brands aren’t that short or serious about e-bikes yet either and that’s reflected in the programs and in the, you know, manufacturing and stocking decisions that are made, and so, you know, very succinctly 32% isn’t even close to enough to be able to To sell and support a rider on an E-bike for any amount of time. And I think that you know, I think it’s an unfortunate thing that, you know, regular programs are proposing margin like that I think some start as low as 28% that I’ve seen because e-bikes have the potential to completely revolutionize the bicycle industry. But at a 28% margin, it’s just not gonna happen. You know, you can’t have the staff on hand to know the product well enough. You can’t have the expertise to support the customer well enough. The customer is quite well educated because most of them have done research online. There are a lot of players online, they’re not all bicycle industry players. And there’s a lot of garbage online and so a lot of our job in the store is to re-educate riders so that they make a purchase that’s going to be you know, joyful and sustainable and profitable for the store. I don’t know if I answered your question, David.

David DeKeyser  18:07

Yes. I don’t think that you gave me the number that you love.

Karen Weiner  18:12

Basically, yeah, I think the lowest we’ve ever gone is 35%. That’s your margin. And we make up to, you know, 40 or 42%, depending on how we negotiate and what kind of preseason we’ve written and how we’re taking bikes and how we’re paying for bikes. So that’s our range.

David DeKeyser  18:35

The reason that I’m so interested in that is, I think, kind of my own background, but then right now, for kind of your traditional bike shop e-bikes are obviously what is kind of the first thing that comes out of everybody’s mouth if we start talking about what’s hot, or what’s happening or what’s coming in the future. But then retailers are struggling with the idea of the margins being so low and that there’s all of this, you know, there Higher dollar sales. So they, it’s okay that they’re lower margins. And that’s not really necessarily the case. And you said it so well, that they require a much higher level of knowledge from the salesperson. They require much more mechanical work as they kind of go through the lifecycle of that product. And that all is going to require a little higher margin in order to make everybody happy. So that’s

Karen Weiner  19:29

kind of Yeah, the customer the writer comes from a different perspective like the writer is probably most often they’re buying the most expensive bike they’ve ever bought in their life. They’re understanding it as equivalent to any you know, high dollar item that you would buy. And so they have expectations about the performance of the bike and the warranty on the bike. And there’s a lot of education that goes along with you know, the bike industry does stuff like they put crap He breaks the crappy disc pads on a bike and an E-bike rider can blow through those pads and 200 miles. Now, how do you explain to someone who just spent 40 $500 on a bike, that they have to spend $250 on brake and rotor upgrades, you know, 30 days after they buy their bike, that sort of thing is, like, just it’s a real challenge for the shop, and for the customer and for the industry as a whole like they’re shooting themselves in the foot. So my belief is that there are way too much building bikes for price points instead of building bikes that have value and showing their value through performance. And that’s just the sad state of affairs that the bike industry is in.

David DeKeyser  20:51

Well, hopefully, somebody will come. Everybody’s trying to hit that magical price point. And I think that That’s where a lot of that product development goes. And then it’s the things that you can’t see the brake pads that end up becoming a cost-saving, but then it turns into an upsetting situation, not too far down the road.

Karen Weiner  21:17

So right and it’s not only brake pads, it’s you know, the quality of the wheels, the brake pads, the, you know, drive, train all the stuff that you think you can get away with, you can’t get away with on e-bikes because if you want to keep these people on e-bikes and buying, you know, quality, proper product instead of rad power, or, you know, discount Chinese stuff, you’re gonna have to give a better rider experience and those brands are doing and you have to show yourselves to be bicycle experts. And I think too often you know, the bike industry does not show themselves as being bicycle experts to their customers.

David DeKeyser  22:00

As far as labor goes and keeping the bikes on the road, do you do anything differently than the traditional bike shop? You know, you get a 30 day warranty one year on the parts and a lifetime on the frame. And then basically, you can come back and get a tune-up if you’d like. Do you offer more of a labor or service package to kind of keep them on the road? Do you do anything of that sort?

Karen Weiner  22:24

Yeah, absolutely. So all of the bikes we sell come with a minimum two-year warranty. So that’s one of the first questions we ask a supplier when we begin negotiations with them, we just won’t carry anything that has under a two-year warranty. So the supplier most often or the supplier always covers the cost of parts replacement. Increasingly, we’re asking suppliers to cover labor, especially if there’s any sort of persistent repetition in the problems that we’re seeing. And we cover labor otherwise, A customer who purchases and he buys from us does not ever walk out having to pay for any part of a warranty. The other thing that we do is we offer what’s called a service member. So one of the important ways of keeping people on electric bikes and keeping people excited about electric bikes is sort of reframing for them what their service expectations need to be about bicycling and bikes generally, you know, in whatever way, you know, I never worked in a bicycle shop before opening new wheels. I only know what I know through personal experience in bike shops and talking to a lot of people over the last 10 years but you know, bicycle service expertise has been devalued to a really massive extent in the last many years and so what we do is we try to give some value back to the bike mechanic and to the shop. Because we know that that’s an area where we can really compete and where we really stand the chance to improving the rider’s experience on their bikes. So we sell service memberships, which are available only to customers who buy bikes from us. And that’s an annual package that covers tuneup labor, brake pad installation, tire installation, to a replacement, that sort of thing. And so those are reoccurring memberships of either 149 or 249. They actually also include we have a partnership with a roadside assistance company. And so anybody who buys one of our memberships gets roadside assistance for their e-bike. And so they have a problem. They can call a number and essentially a cab or a tow truck comes and picks up their bike and brings it to us. And so that is, you know, another one of the services that are I think, pretty well, it’s wonderful. I think we have we’ve got tons of customers who Come get service with us every year because we’re literally in touch with them saying hey, you paid for the service, bring your bike in. We’ll take it for three days turnaround, you know, a great tune-up and our goal are to have the bike as good as new back to them at the end of that and that makes people feel really good about riding their bikes.

David DeKeyser  25:18

So I’m assuming you have a fairly good sell through then on those memberships.

Karen Weiner  25:23

Yeah, we do. Okay.

Chad Pickard  25:27

NBDA is the newest program is called rides. It will increase your store revenue and customer loyalty. It’s exclusive to NBDA members, go to nbda.com and join today.

David DeKeyser  25:42

So there’s obviously we’ve talked about the differences between traditional, some of the differences between traditional bike shops and the new wheel and how it relates to e-bike sales with your kind of greenness, if you will, coming into the bicycle industry. Do you feel that that was much more of an asset than it was a liability, not knowing how you were supposed to do things in parentheses and kind of some of the institutionalized issues that we seem to have? Do you feel that that was basically an asset that you came into this fresh?

Karen Weiner  26:17

Yeah, I guess so. Ah,

David DeKeyser  26:20

because you’re doing things so differently. Yeah. I mean, it allows us to be creative, right? It allows us to think about this as a business instead of just like a bike shop, like a mission-driven business that has an important reason for being and that is motivated by things that are bigger than just like, I don’t know, we’re motivated by bigger picture stuff. And so I mean, I’m mostly thankful that we had the stroke of luck to start when we started, and that we were in our 20s and had tons And tons of energy. I mean, Brett and I worked, you know, nonstop, no vacations, seven days a week 10 to 12 hours a day for basically five and a half, six years. And I certainly couldn’t do that now and I’m just in my mid-30s, you know, but that’s what allowed us to open with a real a pretty small, initial investment. And just keep things rolling. Keep things tight, learn a lot, and keep our mind open. I certainly Yeah, I mean, sorry, I’m not being very succinct. But yes, it was a huge benefit not to know what we’re doing. You said something in there that I thought was pretty funny about You started it and we’re trying to run it like a business, not just a bike shop.

Karen Weiner  27:48

Yeah, I mean, no, I think that’s

David DeKeyser  27:51

in that statement.

Karen Weiner  27:53

I’ve had the opportunity now to work with a lot of bike shops that trim there’s a real set of cultural assumptions about running a bicycle shop. And there’s a real dynamic that has been cultivated between suppliers and retailers and riders, and between the kind of the past and the present and the future. And you know, I think that needs to be, we need to shake it up because it’s not very functional. It’s not a fun way of doing business. And fundamentally, like if you can’t pay your mechanics, a decent living wage, or you can’t have salespeople who know what they’re talking about, or able to really support riders, I think there’s a problem with the business model. Right? Well, hopefully, but there’s also this like a huge benefit. I mean, the bicycle industry is unlike really any other industry right now. Because we still have our shops, you know, and there’s still a reason for us to exist, which is service and local stores. progress in the bike industry is something that I think we all need to get much more serious about talking about. Excellent.

David DeKeyser  29:07

So as we kind of start to wind this down, one of the things that you had mentioned was that you have a bigger purpose for your business or that you feel a bigger purpose to it all. And can you kind of touch on what that means to you a little bit? And what the value that you feel that you’re adding to not just your customers, but to your community?

Karen Weiner  29:28

Um, yeah, I mean, so it’s pretty straightforward. We just have an environmental reason for existing. Any trip that you choose to take my bike or a bike rather than by car actually has a pretty profound impact on the environment. And so what e-bikes do for a landscape like the Bay Area is they make bicycling fun, easy and convenient, just like they are in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. again. So that is extremely motivating, especially because when you get people set up with the right bike, and you service that bike well and you treat your riders and your customers, well, you really stand the chance to see people rack up a lot of miles on their bikes. So it’s not unusual for our customers to put, you know, anywhere from between one and 5000 miles on their bikes per year. That’s what most people put on their bikes. And I like to say we’ve got the benefit of the odometer. Like most bike shops don’t know how many miles their customers put on their bikes. They know whether their chain is worn out or their tires are worn out. But you know, there are many factors that can relate to that. So we really get to see the impact that we’re having every day. So that’s the big picture. It’s really about changing the way people move, giving opportunities here in the United States. To make real change in something that is as entrenched as car culture as because in cities, especially riding an E-bike is just way better than riding a car.

David DeKeyser  31:15

And I’m assuming there are some cost benefits as well. I don’t live in San Francisco, but I think that owning a car and paying to park it and all the things that go along with that are much more expensive than owning an E-bike.

Karen Weiner  31:27

Yeah, there are costs, benefits, health benefits, you know, consumption benefits, stress benefits. I mean, that car is really expensive in San Francisco. There’s also bad traffic, bad parking, you’re, you know, going to get a parking ticket every now and then that sort of thing. But I kind of thing that’s only like a small, very easy to access part of it. Once people start riding bikes, you know, any bike shop, the person who listens to this podcast will understand that you know, bikes change lives. And if you are really serious about e-bikes, and you are really serious about getting people on them and helping them use them a lot, you’re just seeing a lot more lives change. And that is very motivating and very fun.

David DeKeyser  32:14

Okay, I have a curveball for you, do you? How do I put this if I want to kind of ask you where you see the E-bike, going, not just for a New Wheel, but for the bicycle industry. One of the things that I’m the most fascinated about your business is that you obviously have built interoperating very good business based just on e-bikes. And the bicycle retailers are just looking at the E-bike. There’s some that have done great with them, but many are just starting to look at those bikes and get into them. What number one, do you feel that there’s any threat to an E-bike only business, and have you ever considered doing traditional bikes, or is that just Something that would not happen. And in the next three to five years, do you see any really major changes? This is a loaded question and how your business is going. As it relates to, I guess, competition in parentheses with the traditional bicycle shops that may become more e-bike oriented.

Karen Weiner  33:22

I think two things. I don’t think the new wheel will ever carry regular bicycles. I think that one of the strategic mistakes that a lot of bike shops make and that a lot of bike manufacturers make is kind of thinking that you want to be everything to everybody. And I think that’s just a recipe for disaster. So we won’t be doing that. Do I think that the arrival of e-bikes in regular bike shops poses a threat to the new we’ll know I think that it poses an opportunity to buy shops, it also poses a number of real challenges to bike shops? And it poses the opportunity for the industry to do better. And for the new wheel to do better, the industry needs to do better, there need to be more bikes sold more ridership, more infrastructure, this needs to be a bigger topic in more places. So I hope that in three to five years, we’re talking about, you know, federal rebates for people who choose to purchase e-bikes instead of an electric car, I hope that we’re talking about, you know, massive infrastructure increases, which will help a huge number of new people get on to e-bikes. And frankly, the new wheeled can’t, can’t support a change like that in the Bay Area. by ourselves, we would need a lot more players and a lot of bike shops to get into this. But unfortunately, I don’t think that’s really how The bike industry is thinking about it. And that’s why you see those lousy margins. And the sort of this is just another part of your lineup so that you can service and serve the needs of you know, the baby boomer who walks in your store who wants to step through a bike or wants to keep riding a mountain bike or whatever. I don’t think that our industry is thinking in very visionary terms as a general rule. And so, you know, I hope that if it will have any impact, it’s to try to help people getting, you know, to help us all think in bigger ways. So you don’t have to think in the same big way. But let’s think big picture. Let’s think about what success looks like. And stop being so worried about, you know, the competition of your neighbor, or the success or failure of your neighbor. Really, we all need to find more success, and that needs to be the goal.

David DeKeyser  35:54

That’s a super refreshing answer. That was very good. Is there anything that you would like to kind of go out on in our conversation, I threw up really bad curveball questions. I apologize.

Karen Weiner  36:05

I mean, the one ad I would make there, though, is that, you know, we are already seeing competition from a little bit from bike shops a lot from online discounting brands, and also just this new micro-mobility player. So Uber and Lyft. And, you know, electric scooters and solo wheels and all this stuff. These are all essentially forms of competition. I think e-bikes are the best. for a lot of reasons. I think the bicycle platform is the best. But competition is a good competition just makes you work harder and be smarter and think bigger. So I’m very motivated by the competition.

David DeKeyser  36:48

Awesome. What is your website address? Its NewWheel.com?

Karen Weiner  36:53

No, it’s www.newwheel.net.

David DeKeyser  36:57

Okay, anybody that’s listening, I think it would be great if they checked out your website I thought that it was so unique obviously to the bicycle world, the way that it kind of navigated I really was impressed by it. As you said, it’s you’re not necessarily selling the product you were qualifying customers. And that makes much more sense when you explain that to me after I had played around in there for a little while. But, Karen, this was super fun. I wish we could keep going because I have so many more questions that I would love to ask you, but we’re pretty much out of time. But I super appreciate you coming on today. This was a lot of fun.

Karen Weiner  37:37

Thanks for having me. And yeah, let’s keep the conversation going. We all gotta, you know, grow this pie and float this boat a little bit higher. 

Rod Judd  37:45

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership, and member benefits, join us @ NBDA.com

David DeKeyser and his wife Rebecca Cleveland owned and operated The Bike Hub in De Pere, Wisconsin, for nearly 18 years. In 2018, they sold the business and real estate to another retailer based in a nearby community. David now writes the Positive Spin series on Bicycle Retailer and Industry News and he writes articles for the NBDA’s blog, Outspokin’. David also provides business consulting through the NBDA’s P2 Consult Program.

The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

Learn more about the benefits of being a member and join now.

The post E-Bikes and Building a Mission-Driven Bike Shop appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Strength Through Adversity – One Retailers Post Recession Success:

Learn how to roll up your sleeves and dig into your shop’s data to become more profitable in this episode of Bicycle Retailer Radio. Joseph Du Bois opened his first Trek store in 2006, survived the 2008 recession, and now owns nine Florida Trek locations that have put customers on 50,000 bikes. Using a values-oriented philosophy and sales-driven mindset, Du Bois has mastered the art and science of running a profitable, economically resilient bike shops.

In this podcast, he shares how he makes data-driven decisions to optimize inventory turn and how his shops offer services to offset low product margins. You will also learn what happened when Du Bois downsized three shops into smaller locations, and the formula he uses for managing and calculating his payroll budget. No bike shop owner can afford to miss this episode.

Please enjoy listening to Strength Through Adversity – One Retailers Post Recession Success.

Support the show  (https://nbda.com/articles/donation-form-pg511.htm#!form/Donate)

Joe Du Bois and Jane Avery-Du Bois teamed up with Marc Lubin and opened a Trek Concept store in the new Coconut Point Mall in Estero Florida. Their mission was to energize people with our passion for cycling both in and outside our business. Through quality products, superior customer service, and unique opportunities we aim to be the hub of the cycling community.”

The strategy paid off, leading them to open a second store in neighboring Naples in 2008 and 5 more Trek Bicycle Stores across Florida.  The stores have made a big impact in the cycling community getting 115,000 customers on 50,000 bikes!

Here are just some of the accolades the stores have been awarded over the past decade:

5-time award winner – Top 100 Bike Shop ( Bicycle Retailer & Industry News)
4 Years consecutively selected by NBDA as one of America’s Best Bike Shops
#3 Electra Dealer in 2016
#5 Trek Dealer in 2016

Looking forward the Trek Bicycle Store will continue to offer the best bikes in the world and invest in the sport of cycling. We will continue to support local cycling advocacy initiatives, sponsor clubs and events, and lead safety and skills workshops.

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Joseph Du Bois

Tue, 8/18 10:41AM • 45:16

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

sales, store, inventory, payroll, business, bicycle, bike, category, years, people, big, product, started, employees, bike shop, sell, point, run, gross margin, customer

SPEAKERS

Joe DuBois, Chad Pickard, Rod Judd, David DeKeyser

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

David DeKeyser  00:16

Hello, my name is Dave DeKeyser, and I’m a bicycle retail consultant for the NBDA is a P2 consult program. You can find more information on that on the NBDA website NBDA.com. You’re listening to another episode of Bicycle Retail Radio. Today we have a really interesting guest’s name is Joe Dubois. He and his wife Jane own and operate nine trek stores in Southwest Florida. They have kind of been through the wringer with starting the business in 2006. By 2008. They had gone into the financial crisis. And Joe with that, but don’t you give us a little history

Joe DuBois  01:00

All right. So, as always, history goes. And I’ll go back just a little bit further, because, you know, I got into the bike industry in the early 90s. Probably like a lot of people who got into bikes, they just loved riding their passion for and just felt at home and bike shop. So I did that for a number of years working for the retailers, basically assuming different roles throughout that period of time. And when it came to us to finally open our first store in 2006, you know, we decided to go with Trek, your truck concept stores, we picked the location down in Southwest Florida. And it was one of that pre-recession. I know, in our previous conversation, I was referred that time or just like, people basically hated her money and they just didn’t care. They just wanted to get rid of it. So like, I think it kind of gave us a false sense of our abilities at that point, because when we opened up, we just hit the ground running and started breaking records with trek corporate. I know within our first five months, we passed the million dollars, over 2 million in the first year. And that’s where I say it kind of gave us this false sense of our abilities because it was that time where money was flowing with everybody. And they just weren’t really thinking, 

David DeKeyser  02:14

what was your goal that first year that you hit 2 million?

Joe DuBois  02:17

 It was one trick basically told us like, hey, if you hit $1 million in your first year, that’s pretty solid, like you’re doing well. So when we hit it, within five months, we’re like, it’s a little different than what we were thinking, you know when the recession came in 2008. It really started to hit the fan around November. I remember for us and for us, we actually ended up opening our second store about six months earlier. Here we go into the recession. We have two stores, big rents, lack of inventory, and not in a good position as most people were at that time period. So we really need you just Look at what were we going to do that would allow us to survive? Because there was a lot there were a lot of people, especially in this part of the country that was hard hit, and it was freaking stressful.

David DeKeyser  03:13

How much? How much of a hit? Did you see that after, say, going into 2009? What kind of a hit did your business See? 

Joe DuBois  03:22

It was approximately 25% 30%. But this is like some people might look at that. And they say, that’s not that bad. 25% You know, we have 50% or 40%. The part that was a big wake up call for us was up until that point, we really focused on net profit. And when the market fell out, it didn’t really net profit really wasn’t the crucial metric for us to be looking at. And I didn’t know that at first. Like it took a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of reading books, talking to consultants, accountants and just trying to figure out what the hell was going on in our company because like I could see a p&l profit loss statement. And it might say, you know, just an arbitrary number and might say, you know, we made $25,000. But that’s $25,000 worth sitting in the bank. So even though I may, on one hand, be showing a profit, the cash just wasn’t there. And that’s where I knew that was going to be the death of us if I couldn’t get a grasp on cash flow. 

David DeKeyser  04:26

So let’s get into that a little bit. So you had made $25,000. It’s not in the bank. It’s obviously on your floor. And that kind of leads into this getting lean kind of conversation. I think that that’s something that is extremely interesting about your business is how many turns you’ve seen and accomplished a huge amount of turns, but you’ve kind of wound that back. Let’s talk about turns and the getting lean and what that means to your cash flow.

Joe DuBois  04:58

Sure. Prior To the recession, our terms were around two could have been, you know, anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5. But it was probably pretty, pretty consistent around two terms. Once we learned really, inventory management, once we really understood cash flow, healthy categories of inventory, we were able to hit significantly reduce our overall investment in inventory. And basically, we took our turns from around two, we’ve had him as high as six. But once you start running inventory, that lean, you’re leaving money on the table, you’re missing opportunities. So we’ve been able to scale that backdown. And you know, right, we’d like to stick in that for a strange could be for 4.5 but we’re usually right around there.

David DeKeyser  05:50

That’s gonna surprise people. You know, a lot of people consider that to be running it a little too lean, but through your ability to really optimize the inventory that you’re carrying in each category, I think is, is how you’ve gotten there. Is that correct?

Joe DuBois  06:08

Yeah. And that’s where when I go back to 809, where we really started to dig into our inventory because that was one of the biggest expenses that we had. It was the biggest thing that was tying up our capital or working capital. So we really wanted to get an understanding of that. And, you know, by doing that, we were able to really apply parados principle, which is, you know, the 8020 rule. So we looked at, you know, where do we generate the majority of our sales from and for us is probably a lot of bike shops. It’s like sales. So we were able to take all of our bicycles and figure out which ones are largest revenue drivers, we broke them down per category, and we looked at average sales that the category was producing, we looked at average inventory. levels, gross profit, and gross margin for that category. And we were able to quantify what our target price should be as far as what our margin, are we selling this product at too low of a margin, are we carrying too much inventory? In this particular category in order to generate a positive cash flow eye-opener for us as we like to chase the road bike sales. You know, everybody feels good when they sell a high-end road bike, a 510 thousand dollars plus road bike, you know, it’s a good day. So we had a lot of inventory dollars tied up in that particular category. And what we were able to figure out was the amount of inventory that we were carrying for the number of sales that it was generating. Every time that we were actually selling a road bike, it was actually creating a negative cash flow for us. So it was kind of like a punch in the gut for us back then. Because so much of our marketing, or messaging, everything was focused on deriving this one category. Have products for us that every time you’re doing it, it was actually creating negative cash flow. That was probably one of the biggest eye-openers for us. And it doesn’t mean that we pull back and we don’t sell rode bikes anymore. But our inventory levels are nowhere, what it used to be where I look at road bikes, and then what we do today, and our sales are higher today than they were then with a quarter of the inventory levels that we had was one of the biggest eye-openers for us really like getting granular with our inventory, understanding inventory turns, you know whether or not we’re, we’re charging enough, because that’s a big thing too. Like sometimes we would negotiate too aggressive with customers. And when I say too aggressive, we would our price would be too low, we’d end up selling product for too low. And once we cross a certain threshold, you went from a positive cash flow sale to a negative cash flow sale. And what we were trying to do at that period of time was minimized or eliminate as many areas that were creating negative cash flow. For us as possible, 

David DeKeyser  09:01

and once you did that, you also assuming found categories that maybe you could either invest more inventory in or promote heavier because those categories were actually more profitable.

Joe DuBois  09:16

 Absolutely. And, you know, the good thing about understanding the numbers was, it also kept us in check, because I might look at a certain category and they all managers were killing it over here. We’re having good sales, we have a good profit, and it’s creating positive cash flow. Let’s put some more dollars into this. A capitalist to know like it’s okay to increase your inventory to generate more sales, but you have to do it very methodically. And you just don’t increase it so much because you could take a good category and turn it bad if you invest too much in inventory and you don’t have the sales to correspond with that same increase. 

David DeKeyser  09:58

Excellent.

Chad Pickard  10:00

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David DeKeyser  10:13

As far as the margins that you’re you’re looking at when you’re looking at these categories, Is there ever a time where you feel that the margins are too low to support a category? And if you get to that point, how do you address that? 

Joe DuBois  10:28

So I personally used to all the product that is a bicycle retailer sells is a too low margin, it’s not something I can necessarily change. I’m not the manufacturer on the retailer, you know when we look at certain products, some of them you just have to sell in a sense where it creates a complete experience for the consumer. So you know, we keep that in mind. We definitely try to offer other services that would offset the low margin being produced from products. So the Simple is charging for installs. When a customer buys a bike, the old bike shop where you buy a bike today, and we’re going to give you x percent off of everything that you buy just to get he bought a bike from us, or we’re going to instantly give you a kickstand or automatically throwing up bottling cage. We stopped all that stuff. You know, we can’t afford to be losing those gross margin dollars by just giving stuff away, you know, even goes at a deeper level. As far as you know, I always like to talk to my team about you got to value yourself. You know, like we’ve done this for a really long time. We can true a bicycle wheel in five minutes because we’ve done it for 15 years. That’s where it’s something, don’t just give that stuff away for free and value the mechanics time. So when somebody sells a bike and they get a computer and a cage and a kickstand, that’s taking a skilled mechanic time to install those parts properly. Gotta be compensated for it. So we’ve definitely over The years and we didn’t start like this. But over the years, we definitely make sure that we charge for our time, whether that be delivery. Like I said, installations, we like to offer extended service plans, anything to help increase the labor dollars to offset the low gross margin that you get from products. 

David DeKeyser  12:19

Perfect. So let’s pivot a little bit to expenses. We’ve talked about cash flow, your categories turn. Now, when we get into your actual expenses, obviously, the two biggest are going to be payroll and rent. I know that you and I have spoken and that you have moved some stores around in order to save on rent expenses. And you had said something in our first conversation that I thought was interesting about going uncomfortably small and having a very large dollar amount for your square footage per dollar sales and 100 If you can kind of get into that because I think a lot of times retailers are looking to be in that perfect location, the A-plus location, I think you call it that that necessarily does not have to be all the time.

Joe DuBois  13:13

No, no. And I just the one thing I do preface as I said, I’ve been in the bike industry a long time, and I’m familiar with a lot of the people that make up the bike industry. And the conversation we’re having today. I was nowhere even at that level 10 years ago, or maybe 12 years ago, it took me a lot of learning. You know, I wasn’t type person barely got out of high school. I wasn’t college trained or anything, but I took a strong desire, I had a strong desire to learn as much as I could about the business. And through that journey, I’ve been able to analyze and learn and understand profit and loss statements and gross margins and return on it. I like it so much. So I just want to make sure like some of the conversations we’re having today. I know for a lot of Bicycle retailers out there, they just might go over their head, or they might not fully conceptualize what we’re talking about. Either most definitely there, I just want to make sure that people understand that aspect of me, but to go into all your debt, you know, and I and I still to this day, trying to learn as much as I can, and try to rethink and reanalyze, you know, how we do business and there’s, there’s most definitely, you know, we do some things really good, but I’m probably gonna be my harshest critic, and I’m always going to see the wrongs that we do. And I think that’s also a very good trait where it just keeps me pushing to try to not be comfortable with our own status quo, and instead just constantly be raising that bar. So I just wanted to put that out there before we got into the rent and what we’ve done because you mentioned a plus location. That was most definitely our mindset for many years as we’ve all heard it location, location, location. And that’s what we did. But we also know that location, location, location costs money, PAC money in the beginning, when we open up in these awesome locations, with big rent larger stores, six 7000 square feet. It was a good pre-recession, just because the sales were there and I was able to support it. But once these changed, we started seeing our rent, and we like to keep track of our rent as a percentage to gross revenue, total gross annual gross revenue. You know, when we first started out our rents were in the 8% range, then next year, you know, 9% and 10%. And then every year your lease will have some sort of rent escalation. So we were just seeing this it was constantly going up. So even though we would get sales going higher, the rent was also going higher, and if you had a one-off year, it would throw that percentage very not in the right direction. You know, I know we were seeing some of our rent purchases. As high as 14%. And when you’re running your ramp at 14%, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for actual profit, take-home net profit at the end of the year, this past year this past summer, actually, you know, we had a few stores where all the leases basically were coming due at the same time. So we made the decision to really look at the square footage that we needed to analyze our sales per square foot, figure out what we were doing in that particular area or those particular locations. We looked at our stores that were more profitable, we analyze where those sales per foot were, and we tried to figure out what that sweet spot was for these new stores because we had an opportunity to change our lease, downsize, relocate to do something we weren’t locked in at that point. So we took that opportunity with all three locations and ended up downsizing. We downsized one which was about 5300 square foot store down to 2200. So we caught that one more than half took another location and removed it from about a 5000 square foot space to about 1800. So, again, less than half, we took another store that was right around 4000 and moved it to about 1000 square foot space. And that kind of goes a little bit into what you were talking about before as far as stretching ourselves to get uncomfortable. It was a big lesson for me to learn this past summer, what that process looks like to downsize a store to relocate a store, not just from the construction aspect, but more so the part that surprised me the most was how the staffing process that and how they dealt with it and there was like, it kind of odd but there was like almost like a mourning period for we had this big store. Now we’ve got this little store and we’re forced It was weird. It took about two weeks, two to three weeks post the move for the staff to start to lift the morale. And it was really interesting. I never would have known that I never would have to get it. But it was this adjustment period for them. Because now they can no longer just hoard products like ordered garbage for lack of a better word. You know, they were forced to say, do we need this? Can we discard this? We don’t have all this extra space for all these things, we have to run much more efficiently. So when I mentioned stretching ourselves to a point of uncomfortable. Now is what I meant. It was like we were going to be forced to make certain decisions that we didn’t have to make before because we had ample space. And this was the first time that I was doing something like this and talking to some people. They’re like, Yeah, you do have to expect a little downslide in sales because you know, you’re moving your store, you don’t have the same you know, there’s a disruption to the flow of things. So I took that into account when creating an annual budget for 2020. The surprising part besides the mourning period or the grieving period for the employees was we’ve actually done better in all the locations than we were in a bigger space, like considerably better, which is kind of, you know, it boggles my mind. Because one would think, Wow, if you have a bigger store and you have more inventory, well, then you should sell more. But that wasn’t that hasn’t been the case with us. And, you know, going back to before I mentioned, the parados, printable, that was something that we applied when we were downsizing because we’re like, okay, we can’t have just a $125,000 in inventory, and a 5000 square foot space, can’t have that same amount of inventory in a SpaceX lab. So how are we going to choose what product stays and what product goes? So by applying the previous principle, we’re able to really figure out this is where we’re going to sell the most, this is what we will sell the most of. Now, you know, one advantage that we do have that a single store company wouldn’t have per se, is we have SR stores, we leverage them, we’re allowed to are able to have a store that is smaller, doesn’t carry as much inventory maybe doesn’t have all the bells and whistles and high-end stuff that some of the other stores may have. But they’re at our disposal, we can transfer products from one store to the neck, so we won’t lose those sales. We do have the inventory in hand, but it’s strategically placed with all the different stores definitely an advantage to having multiple locations that we’ve been able to utilize that also another advantage for us to be able to keep our inventory down a little bit. Even if it’s a single store business, you can still apply so much of that.

David DeKeyser  20:49

What do you think is the reason that you’re doing more sales in.. I mean,  these spaces are half of the size and the experts told you you’re going to see a little bit Have a drop. But you haven’t seen that one of the stores that we talked about is it’s under 1000 square feet. Is that correct? 

Joe DuBois  21:08

That’s correct.

David DeKeyser  21:10

And it’s doing fairly shocking numbers out of a size that’s just slightly bigger than maybe a three-stall garage. Yeah, you know, to put that into a comparison of how much space that is, why do you think that is? Have you? Do you have an answer or an idea as to why you know?   The few things. So location does play a part in it. And I’m not going to say that this is a plus location by any means. It’s not a plus location, but it’s in an area that is traveled more and has a little bit higher population to it. So So even though it’s a smaller footprint, geographically, it’s in the right area, even though it’s not like this, a plus real estate, amazing views and everything like that. It’s not like that. So that’s going to be one thing we’ve definitely been elevating are e-bike sales, that definitely plays a part in it, and we still get good road bike sales. So I would probably say, geographic plays a part in E-bikes and road bikes,, those are some big movers for us, but it’s still at the very small store. So I go right back to Alright, well, we can only stock so many bikes on the floor, which ones are we going to stock that has the greatest opportunity to sell. And that goes back to what you said in the very beginning as far as inventory terms. The last thing on you and I spoke about this before, like, you know, when you look at a bike sitting on your racking, that’s tied up money right there that you can’t reinvest in your company, you can’t hire new employees, you can’t invest in the new product, that’s the latest and the greatest, or if you’re a business owner, and you’re doing well and you can pull that out and passively give yourself Have a little bonus. It’s tied up in that product and not based on the sales floor. So I look at everything, all the products like making sure that it’s turned in because inventory is like a luxury to any living animal if it needs to flow needs to bring the oxygen to the organ. If the inventory doesn’t move, if the blood doesn’t move, it died, things die. It’s very important that we’re really focusing on what is turning. I hear people always all the time talk about I’ve got this bike, it’s three years old. I’m like, Why? I don’t even I can’t even understand that like how businesses run with inventory that is years old, and even one year old. You know, we have a thing we’re pretty much right around six months. If that bike is hitting that six-month mark, we got to send it home. We call them ugly babies and they just got to get adopted. We’ve got to send them home and it’s the year we are slashing that price. We are I don’t care Just get rid of it, you can sell it at cost. And there are times I sometimes I’ll even sell it below cost not very often. And I’m gonna try to do it as rarely as possible. But every once in a while, you know, you get stuck with this high-end bike yet $5,000 tied up in this bike, it’s a year and a half old, somebody wants to buy it for 500 bucks under cost. But now you could take that money and reinvest it in a product that you’re going to turn four or five, six times over, move on, get rid of it move on. And that type of thinking is very foreign in the bike industry. It’s very foreign. So those are all lessons that I’ve learned over the years. So I think that that leads us to the next biggest expense is payroll and how for most shops, it’s 20% seems to be the kind of the Golden number. It’s easy to go higher if you have long-standing employees who have continually seen raises and are deserving of those. How do you keep that in check is that obviously your single largest expense? And how do you work with your inventory, airier your payroll and your employees to keep that expense within reason?

Joe DuBois  25:14

So first we start with the payroll budget, we take our data from over the years. And  I know in this day and age, most bike shops have a point of sale system, but I still constantly hear from sales reps that from they’re going to bike shops that use a pen and paper. None of this stuff that we’re talking about is really achievable. By pen and paper, like you need a point of sale system and you need to use it. It’s not just a glorified cash register. So we take our data from yours and we break it down every single store has its own goal. And basically it’s a percentage of gross revenue. Now that depends. Most bite shops are you know, they have some level of seasonality to them. Even we do we’re in Florida, but there are still seasons and we figure out like oh Let’s know simple math $100,000 month. That’s our goal we’re going to shoot for, let’s just say 12% for this particular month, so Okay, we got $12,000 of payroll that we can spend for this particular month. So we break it down per month per day and we manage that I get weekly reports. Every Monday, I get a record of Recaps of previous sales, and probably about 40 different KPIs that I look at on a weekly basis. One of them focuses on payroll and lets us know, okay, this is this. These are the sales that we generated last week for this particular store. This was our payroll budget, were they older, or were they under and let’s just say they were over payroll, they had a lousy week, and they’re $500 over the payroll. That store manager will get a phone call. Basically, it’s up to them now that they need to trim payroll. And when I say trim payroll, basically just discussed them hours now. This is achieved primarily. And in order to do this effectively, you have to have a mixture of full time and part-time employees in your store. Because if you’re guaranteeing or a full-time employee 40 hours, and now you start cutting them, it’s not fair to them, you know, you know, as an employer you make and you make a commitment, you know, to that employee, that you’re going to give them X amount of hours so that they can actually, you know, have a life and be able to do things. So that is not at all where we look to initially cut hours. So we’re always going to look at affecting part-time employees first, we’re also going to look at, hey, did anybody get a little lazy, and they start running employees into overtime? Because that’s an easy one where it’s like, Hey, you got 10 hours of time and a half on your payroll last week, you know, let’s cut that. Another thing that we’re going to look at is whether or not they have a bunch of sales that way made last week, but they didn’t necessarily go home yet. So they might be going out in a few days. So those sales, they were made, but they didn’t actually count. So we, you know, I want to know, like, Hey, what do you have in the hopper that’s going to be closing out this marker this week. Because that also takes you got to take that into account when managing your payroll. So, if you don’t weekly, it’s difficult in the early years, I would keep people throughout the entire year more. So everyone knows, like recruiting in the bike industry, the pain of ash, finding good help is, is not easy. So you don’t want to necessarily let go of people, you know when the season starts to taper down, but it took me a few years, in the beginning, to realize like, okay, we’re in the offseason, my payroll is way too high, but I’m going to carry these teammates through the summer, and then they’re going to be ready to go next season. Without fail every single year. I would carry one or two employees throughout the summer for them to leave when I needed the most. And I was just like, why am I doing this, it’s not helping me at all, I would have been better off cutting my payroll back in the at the end of last season and save myself, you know, a significant amount of money. So that was a bit of a lesson learned, we stick to our payroll budget, you know, that is like, none of it is manageable. If you don’t understand your numbers. If you don’t have budget and goals to strive for the thing that I’ve learned over the years, as well as when I first started doing this, we used to, you know, we had we, you know, we had the payroll budget, but I would manage them on a monthly basis. And what ended up happening was we close out the month. Now I have to wait 10 or 14 days for my accountant to send me the profit loss statement, balance sheet cash flow, and then at that point to be able to analyze the numbers, but by that point, it’s the middle of the next month. We’re so far behind the swing, that it couldn’t really affect stuff. By the time, I could actually make some decisions and make some moves. Or the last three, four weeks, if not more of older payroll, there was just costing us 10s of thousands. So when we change the frequency of when and how we measured it to weekly instead of monthly, complete transformation, because now we were looking at it so much more frequently, and we can actually affect the sales or the expenses in a specific month. 

David DeKeyser  30:34

I think that’s a really critical takeaway across the board is that you are looking at these KPIs on a weekly or a monthly basis versus a lot of stores. It’s once a year, they send their stuff into the accountant, they get their p&l and a balance sheet for a 12 month period, and it’s way too late then obviously, but your point that it’s too late two or three weeks Or you know if it’s one every week now if you were doing it once a month, and you were already two or three weeks, that’s five, six weeks of a swing and having that knowledge in hand. And I’m assuming that that information is coming from your point of sale. Is that correct?

Joe DuBois  31:16

Yeah, everything starts with that point of sale. So yep. Just like with your accountant, your accountants, and hopefully, people have accountants or bookkeeper that is able to actually generate your statements, because there are so many businesses out there that still just, they run their business by looking at their bank, their bank account, and they’ve got money in there. They say, Okay, I’m doing good. I learned a long time ago that I didn’t want to be a bike shop owner, I wanted to be a businessman. And there’s a very big difference from getting into bicycles because it’s your hobby, versus running an actual business and treating it like a business and all of the data, all the stuff that we’re talking about today, none of it would be palatable. If you didn’t have good data. You got to maintain a point of sale system to a very high level of accuracy, cycle counts, that category helps everything like if you’re not maintaining that, then you’re making decisions based on false data or sloppy data. And you’re never going to run a great business by making decisions off of crappy data. So everything like that was that was a huge thing for us. Also, probably all your 14 2014 our accountant was too lackadaisical with the numbers and what I mean by that is he had this mind this is like this little saying, like, it’s all gonna work out at the end of the year, everything over the last there wasn’t a lot of granular get nitty-gritty with a specific, you know, a specific category on your p&l as well as all that workout. Again, I go back to, we were making decisions with not the most accurate or the most accurate, but the data could have been at a much higher quality. So we ended up changing accountants and I was a practice and a half. And that also helped me start this, this, this road of understanding accounting because we ended up going with an accountant at first that didn’t really understand bicycle retail. So I caution everybody to make sure that you have an accountant but the accountant actually understands price for retail. Because if they don’t, they’re going to say your numbers are really not where they probably are. And that could be good or bad. So you know, we’re able to get an accountant that really gives us awesome optics today. Like the data that we get is so accurate and allows us to make really good decisions. And that was a huge game-changer for us because again, it’s the quality of your data is everyone

Chad Pickard  33:45

NBDA is the newest program is called RIDES. It will increase your store revenue and customer loyalty. It’s exclusive to NBDA members, go to nbda.com and join today.

David DeKeyser  34:00

So I think we’ve kind of got the operations under our belt here, if somebody is listening to this, the secrets of the world have been revealed, I think it has as to how to become more profitable and run a better business. There’s so much that we’ve covered and it is very obviously at a very high level. But I think that we’ve covered the important things about the business. The last thing that I want to talk to you about is the idea of what happens when somebody comes into the store, and how your employee ends up selling them a bike and this is a part of the business that I think gets overlooked a lot. And you have some of the most interesting information in that regard. And when we’ve spoken before you referred to your business as it’s not necessarily a bicycle shop, or just even it’s just said it’s a business but you also say that it’s a sales organization. And that’s a correct Well, I was gonna say just to count Have ease out of this conversation on that. And I think that this is probably the most critical part of the whole deal is that when a customer comes in that they get sold, and that they’re not just walking around, or somebody just chatting to them about bikes, your employees know that they need to close those sales and that sales are everything

Joe DuBois  35:21

100%. And that ties directly into your last question when it comes to managing payroll, because as I said before everything, and we base it off of gross revenue. So one way to make your payroll percentage go down, or your rent percentages go down is to increase your sales. And I always think of it as like you’re flying an airplane, and you’ve got all these different levers to pull. So you got to make sure you pull the right lever, push the right button, otherwise, you crash or you can you know, take off, you know, fly, managing, you know, payroll budgets and rent expenses. That’s one But as far as getting that culture, that mindset into our teammates that, yes, it’s awesome. We get to work in a bicycle store, we get to get people on bicycles. It’s exciting. It’s our passion. It’s fun. That’s great. Absolutely great. However, we’re a business first and foremost, we’re here for profit. We’re not a nonprofit, we’re not a charity, we are here to make money. With that being said, everybody in the company is in sales. Like literally if you say hi to a customer, you’re in sales, you know, you can affect positively or negatively that customers experience and whether or not they decide to do business with us. So getting that mindset in that was probably something we did years ago. That’s very important. And that’s not really normal, common. Alicia wasn’t that common back when we started doing it? I think it’s becoming more prevalent than people are realizing sales, how important sales are in places where retail, but it wasn’t always like that. So, you know, we’ve invested Heavily different sales training programs over the year over the years. And really just, it’s our objective to make sure that customers coming in our store for a reason, they’re not just coming there to kick tires or to waste time, you know, they’re there with an objective, you know, we don’t want to just sell them, the one thing they came in for, we want to understand exactly how they’re using the product today, tomorrow, maybe six months or a year from now and make sure that we sell them the complete package. That is where we strive for. And I go back to before how I said that we, you know, I have weekly KPIs, you know, or 40 of them, that I get a report every Monday morning. A lot of those have to do with the different products, the different add on dollars, the add on units, the labor, like all these different things that we have, we’re measuring that weekly, and not only am I seeing those numbers, all of my store managers also see these reports and it’s broken down per store. So they know exactly where they are in regards to either their historical numbers from a previous time period or their other colleagues in their stores, but sales, that was another one of those aha type moments because I always understood it. I always understood the importance of sales. And I was always kind of mesmerized when I would see certain salespeople in bicycle retail that would just seem so fluid and so natural at it. And they’d be able to take a customer and use certain words in their presentation and their pitch, their sale, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And they’d be able to move that customer from one point to the next and then ultimately to purchase.  The sales process has always been fascinating. I always kind of viewed as, it’s like science, you know, you bring in psychology and how you position yourself. There’s a whole nother conversation that we can get into, but instilling that in all my teammates, that’s where the magic really starts to happen. Because that’s where you really Start to elevate gross salespeople start feeling better people start earning more. You know with us also, the majority of our salespeople are on a compensation model that offers nice base pay plus commission on top of that, and that has been something that we’ve worked on and tweaked over the years to find the right model for us jet the big game-changer for us because I want hungry salespeople. I want people that live in a better world, they are driven for earning more money. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that means they don’t care about the customer. We have clearly established values that we have to operate by. So having integrity is paramount to everything. So when you apply the values, the right compensation model, the right teammates with a culture that really focuses on being a sales organization, and truly understanding that yes, I am in sales and sales is not a four-letter word. When you can get to that point you can really start to see some incredible things happen. And by no means were we like that in the beginning by no means it took us many years to get to that point. But if yet anybody listening to this could take any nugget, getting your team to believe and understand that the core level that everybody is in sales as a sales organization, you can, you can dominate your market, you can screw up with your payroll, you can have to hire rent, but sales, sales can make up for a lot of mistakes. 

David DeKeyser  40:30

And to be clear that you’ve gone outside to bring in sales training, and we can leave this as a little bit of a tease I think because we could go into this for days we there’s an article on the NBS outspoken newsletter that you can find online. That kind of covers a little bit more of this but as a teaser, to maybe get somebody to go read that what percentage of a sales increase you feel you’ve seen from instituting an outside sales program. You and implementing that in your business.

Joe DuBois  41:02

When we first implemented it, it was noticeable 20%. You know, like literally within a month, maybe six weeks after implementing the training, after getting the staff to go through the training, it was noticeable. And the reason why I went outside the bike industry was, at that point in time, I just didn’t feel that any of the sales training was at the level that I wanted it to be. And I was not knocking any of the systems that were there. There was a good foundation, but I didn’t want an okay sales training program. I wanted a kick out sales training program. And there were some hurdles with that. There were definitely some hurdles adapt because a lot of my team had a hard time possibly connecting the message because they weren’t necessarily talking about a bicycle every time. Actually, none of the time they were they weren’t talking about a bicycle. It was more of a general sales platform. But when they could get past that when they learn to get past And looking at the technique being applied, and the words being chosen. Once we started to do that, it was awesome.

David DeKeyser  42:08

Well, I hope that people’s eyes popped out of their heads when they heard 20% that that’s a big number. And I know that I’ve when we’ve spoken in the past that the sales training was a very important part of this whole equation. I think we’re pretty much out of time. And I really hope that anybody listening to this has their mind whirling around right now of things that they could apply that you’ve heard here today. So anything that you kind of want to go out with here, Joe, as far as the people that are listening, if there’s just one last kind of a quick bit of advice for them to make their own business more successful and to emulate your success.

Joe DuBois  42:49

I need for one we do a lot right. But by no means are we doing everything perfectly. Like I mentioned that before. And there’s so many things that we need to do better jobs at becoming me really curious about your business and fostering a hunger to have a greater understanding of why certain things happen in your business. That’s where so much of this started for me, the shit hit the fan in 2008. I had no idea why I couldn’t pay my vendors, why I couldn’t pay myself why I had to cut my staff, I had no idea like, on one hand, everything was looking great. On the other hand, it looked like the date my days were numbered, just because I didn’t understand business. And when I really started understanding the business, and accounting, specifically accounting, and I was very intimidated by numbers, I was never I never consider myself a math person when I said, screw it, and let me really, you know, jump into understanding business and how to run a good business. Everything changed from there. So yeah, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff on the call. You know, I’d be more than happy to hop on a call with anybody if they had a question about anything or email talking business. I love it. I can talk business all day long. Yeah, just get curious about your business. That’s the foundation, get curious about your business and just know, it’s that belief system that you have on yourself. You believe that you’re gonna run a kick-ass business, you’ll figure a way to run a kick-ass business. And you know, if you don’t know. So I think I would wrap it up with that.

David DeKeyser  44:16

Perfect. Thank you, Joe. I think that that’s a really key thing. And most people are in bicycle retail because they love retail. They love bicycle retail especially. And if they can fine-tune their business practices, they’ll be able to stay in a business that they love. So learning about the business isn’t something that you should just kind of let go by the sidelines. It’s important if you want to stay doing what you love doing and you should be compensated well for it. So thank you very much, Joe. And hopefully, we can do this again sometime. And for everybody else who’s listening. We’re glad you tuned in. Thank you. 

Joe DuBois  44:52

Thank you. 

Rod Judd  44:52

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @nbda.com

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David DeKeyser and his wife Rebecca Cleveland owned and operated The Bike Hub in De Pere, Wisconsin, for nearly 18 years. In 2018, they sold the business and real estate to another retailer based in a nearby community. David now writes the Positive Spin series on Bicycle Retailer and Industry News and he writes articles for the NBDA’s blog, Outspokin’. David also provides business consulting through the NBDA’s P2 Consult Program.

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

Now is the time to become a member as we join together to make one another stronger. Whether you’re a retailer or an industry partner, your membership in the NBDA is one of the best investments you’ll make this year. 

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The post Strength Through Adversity – One Retailers Post Recession Success appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

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Episode 18 – Bicycle Retail Radio

Tue, 8/18 10:41AM • 45:05

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

BMX, sport, USA BMX, BMX track, bike, racing, happening, years, bicycle, track, build, industry, worked, nbl, kids, opportunity, cycling, people, aba, local

SPEAKERS

Chad Pickard, Rod Judd, Pat Hus, John David

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Pat Hus  00:16

Howdy, everybody. This is Pat Hus, and I’d like to welcome you all to the Bicycle Retail Radio, which is presented by the National Bicycle Dealer Association. I’m here today as your host for today’s podcast. And I’m really excited because today our guest is a gentleman by the name of John David. And John is the current chief operating officer of USA BMX, out of Gilbert, Arizona. So welcome, John. 

John David  00:42

Hey, thank you, Pat. So glad to be here today. 

Pat Hus  00:44

appreciate you taking the time and I think there’s gonna be actually a very interesting discussion. So I’m looking forward to it. But before we jump into the meat of this, I thought might be a good idea to kind of introduce ourselves and tell a little bit about our backgrounds and I’ll kick off just by kind of shedding some light on who I am and why I’m on this call. People might know me from my days as the show director and VP over at Emerald expositions. And I oversaw the Interbike trade show for seven years, but I’ve held a number of positions within the bike industries at companies like Cannondale and Titus, my wisdom with American bicycle group. I was an independent rep for many years. But what’s interesting that I thought I’d share with you john, because I’d shed some light on sort of my background and why I was anxious to jump on this opportunity. My background goes back to Southern California. I grew up in the 60s, and I was part of what started us started BMX. I had the Schwinn sting rays I had on the weekends, my brother and all of our friends would take our bikes apart and rebuild them build the Bendix hubs, rebuild those every weekend, we paint our frames, we’d go down to the Schwinn shop and buy handlebars and it’s just I was part of that whole era and my dad saw how into it that we were my brother and I that he thought of you Great idea to buy a bike shop. So he did. And at 14 I was a mechanic and a bike shop in Newbury Park, California. So I learned retail and I learned how to you know, ranch, and sell bikes. And that led to a job down by San Diego State where I went to college. And the bike shop that I worked at and eventually ran the store was a shop called wheels and things. And this was back in 1982 83. And that shop was basically the home base for the Diamondback national racing team. So I worked in the store that was the host to Harry, Larry, and Eddie and Mikey King and kind of in the heyday of BMX, and the owner of the store, Sandy Finkelman was the manager of the Diamondback national racing team and he and Mike Bobrick. Back in the day, were really one of the pioneers in BMX racing if I’m not mistaken and left the legacy of BMX, so it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart. So I’m excited to hear what’s happening in the world of BMX. And who better than you, john to tell us all about what’s happening with USA BMX. Share your background with me I’d love to hear.

John David  03:06

I started out as a racer, BMX racer, and actually it’s funny you mentioned some of the brands he did. Our local BMX track and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana growing up was ran by capital Schwinn cycles. It was a great Schwinn dealership back in the day a classic vintage Schwinn dealership and started out racing, my sister and I, and did that for quite a few years got into motorcycle racing. It was really competitive in motocross racing, when in the garden, the college when it was going to LSU stop the motocross stuff and jump back on the BMX bike and ended up working for the parks and recreation department which was now you know, operating the local BMX track and just fell right back in love with BMX racing again and just really, really enjoyed it. And I mean as a kid, I was a bike shopper Adam and I was the kid that was in there. I must have looked at my Hutch Junior Pro that my dad finally bought me about 4000 times before. You know my dad actually took the bait and bought it and got me into this But running the club in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Shortly thereafter, I got hired on by the governing body to come in and started off as being one of their field directors and just kind of managing, you know, the network of BMX tracks. This was in the late 90s. And so my career’s about as boring as it gets because literally BMX is all I’ve ever done. In 2000, I got brought on board with ABA, the American Bicycle Association, this is my 20th year with the company. So I feel like I am truly one of the lucky ones because out of college and for my entire career, all I’ve been able to do is help kids get on BMX bikes and enjoy the great sport of BMX racing and I just honestly I just feel blessed.

Pat Hus  04:39

Man, that is great. I had no idea you’ve been in it that long. That’s fantastic. And that brought you to USA BMX, which I don’t know that everybody knows sort of the history of BMX and how it came to be, what it is today and how we have USA BMX, but it wasn’t always that way. And I remember back in the day it was the man. It was a dogfight between the ABA and the NBL. Can you talk a little bit about that history and just sort of what’s led us to where we are today?

John David  05:06

Sure. It’s so fascinating. I mean, I tell you, I tell everybody one of these days I’m gonna write a book and, you know, so I was a track operator, I actually was a track operator of an NBL club and national Bicycle Club. And my first job as a college was with the National bicycle League, and in 2000, made that shift to come and work for ABA. Historically, ABA was founded in 1977. The NBA was founded a few years before that, and they were really kind of your two majors. There were definitely some other brands and other associations usba National pedal sports, but really, you know, in in the mid 80s, it really evolved into just these two associations. You know, ABA was with tended to be more of a West Coast brand and more of a West Coast Association NBL more of an East Coast Association. And quite frankly, for the, you know, half of my career really it was this just fierce battling Among these two conferences, I mean, even at Interbike Pattabhi, we’ve entered bikecad awkward moments between these organizations, and unfortunately, to be honest with you, the sad byproduct was is that you had both entities that love their sport, love BMX racing. And we all did. We were all guilty of spending too much time worrying about each other and not the growth of the sport. And we were working really, really hard in 2000 2005, six and seven, and the sport became an Olympic sport in away. And quite frankly, the NBL really just came on some tough times. There was a great opportunity for us to unify the sports American bicycle Association came in and bought the assets of the national bicycle Li and unified the sport in a process of that unification. our leadership team sat down here and said, You know what, we need a whole new brand. We can’t continue to go on with this legacy of either ABA or NBL. The sport is finally unified for the first time in almost 40 years. When You need a brand new brand that is representative of what we are and who we are. And that’s what American Bicycle Association created that brand of USA BMX. And that’s what we’ve been operating under since 2011. And it has been such a joy because all that energy of that competition among the associations is now just shifted the growth of the sport. In a day in and day out every day in these offices. We’re sitting here talking about how do we get more kids on bicycles? How do we get more kids racing BMX? How do we help our local clubs be more successful? And that’s where all that energy and focus is, and it’s just been a blast. It’s a crazy history. I think we’ve been a part of it.

Pat Hus  07:37

That’s great. That sheds a lot of light on what’s going on and part of the reason we’re here today and talking is that I’m also I’ve been a board member of people for bikes. I’ve been on the BPSA board for a number of years, and there’s been a lot of discussions about the future of our sport of cycling in general, not just BMX, but we’re how do we get more kids on bikes You know, being next to me was a gateway. It’s always been a gateway to getting into creating our future customers. And so people will be on this listening to this podcast going well, why are these guys on this? What does this have to do with my retail business? Well, to me, it has a lot to do with the retail business. And we’ll bring that all back into focus over this next 30 minutes, 40 minutes. But that’s to me, the crux of what we’re here to talk about is how does what’s going on in the USA BMX? And in the BMX world, how does that benefit and how can retailers play a bigger role in that? So we’ll get to that in a minute in a minute. But before we do, I want to ask that you mentioned it a little bit in the last statement, but talk to us a little bit more about USA BMX is the primary mission. What are your objectives as an organization, what’s your mission statement? 

John David  08:48

Truly, truly for us, it’s all about expanding the sport of BMX racing, and offering just great BMX Family Fun entertainment at our 320 and grow BMX clubs across the United States every day, again, as I mentioned, I mean, our mission is, is to provide the best, you know, membership association that we can and in doing so providing the best service that we can to our local clubs and their volunteers in our track operators, and just exposing as many families and children to what is just, I mean, honestly, in our opinion, the best-kept secret that’s out there. That’s really what it’s all about for us. 

Pat Hus  09:25

Yeah, it’s awesome. You say that because that’s really you go out to a BMX track on the weekends. It’s a family. It’s all about family. It’s mom and dad and brothers and sisters, and it’s a day of being outdoors and doing something good for your kids and but it brings the family together and people are going off to their own rooms to go get on computers and get distracted. I love it. It’s if you haven’t been to a BMX race lately, pack up your stuff and get to one because it is really a fun fun day. Go ahead if you want to add anything to that, please.

John David  09:55

Oh, yeah, you know, I mean, it’s a story that we love to tell. I mean, it we’re so passionate about it because our staff I mean, we’re not we literally we were born and raised at the BMX track, I’m going to take our entire staff, it’s here I mean that’s really in our DNA. And I’m so I love so much this opportunity to bring families to bring new people to our sport and share what it is. And it’s so rare. It’s so rare in today’s society, that what you see at the BMX track in this culture that’s there in this family activity that it’s there because Nine times out it’s not just little Johnny that’s out there racing BMX participating, you know, he’s out there, he’s been out there two or three months, statistically, we see mom or dad go in and buy a membership next, and now they’re participating in that and that’s really what you know, we talked about cycling as a sport. You know, what we want to advocate for them and BMX is the gateway to the gateway to getting families involved in the sport. And right now one of our major initiatives is on our balance bike classes. You know, we just were We were in Virginia, for our Blue Ridge nationals, the second race of the season, we had almost 30 Kids signed up in the age groups of 234, and five-year-olds. balanced bikes? I mean, how phenomenal is that? I mean it from cycling as a sport and as a business, what a competitive advantage that we have over other sports that we can get these children actively participating with membership is young as two years old. What are the sports that can say that they have the ability to do that? Not many. And we’re taking advantage of that. Now,

Pat Hus  11:20

I’m telling you when those kids get out there on those bounds, like, it’s the highlight of the day for a lot of people because they’re freaking adorable. And it’s just they’re so competitive. It’s It’s awesome. And just watching the parents out there cheering on their little Johnny or Susie, it’s just amazing. So get out to the tracks, folks, it’s all I want to tell you. One thing I wanted to ask is I don’t think I know and I’m not sure our audience knows very well. But where does your funding come from? What pays for you guys to exist and be this you know, governing body and sanctioning body? Are their corporate sponsorships? Are you getting much from the industry? Where’s the support coming from?

John David  11:57

It’s a great question and it’s kind of an interesting one of the great news is with BMX is if, if right now today, if we didn’t have corporate sponsor, number one, our business would be completely self-sustainable. We’re not like, it’s just kind of a, it’s not something we’re happy about. We certainly would love to have, you know, more corporate support, which we do and that’s growing every day. That segment is getting bigger and better. But really, for us, I mean, it’s our primary sources of revenue courser membership at $60 to purchase an annual membership for BMX racing. There is some revenue that comes in from terms of different various fees that the clubs pay, but that’s really nominal. But one of the things that’s very unique about the founders of the American Bicycle Association is when they created the national series. So the program really started off with just local racing. Then there became district level racing, then state series and state-level racing, then regional racing, then the national series Well, the National series over the last 40 years has developed into a very, very strong operational aspect of our business. So we About 25 National races across North America. And on average these events are at least about 1000 riders in participation. Some of our grand nationals have over 3000 riders, you know, but really that average is about 1000. So, riders Of course, like any major event, pay entry fees that it should be revenue is retained by USA BMX, and we own and operate the event. But the beauty of the system is that for us, while that’s such a major driver of revenue, the way that we look at the business is that the only way that we can succeed on this national level is if we’re supporting the local level. So while we have major operations in 218 wheelers on the road and 20 of our staff members that are constantly going to all these events all across the country, really for us the primary focus has always been in retains to be what’s happening at Chandler BMX. On Tuesday night during their practice, how many new members are they signing up? How can we help them with their marketing efforts? What can we do to support them? Prosocial media aspect, you know, in what’s happening on, you know, their Saturday night race. That’s really the focus of who and what we are. Because if we’re successful on the local grassroots part of the track, every other layer within that Stairway to success, as we call it will be successful. From a sponsorship standpoint, you know, we’ve got a lot of great partnerships, you know, that are out there and developing more and more every day, things that we’re really proud of, but But honestly, it’s nowhere where we would like it to be in the more corporate partnerships that we can bring to the table, just the more opportunity that we have to go and grow the sport.

Pat Hus  14:32

Well, I’m glad you said that because I looked at this almost more so from where there’s such an opportunity at the local level. And I was running the 661 protection and helmet gear company out of San Diego and we went over and met with the guys running the Kearny Mesa track down in San Diego and came out there and it’s this great looking track and you know, the guy who runs it, he’s kind of a kook, but he’s awesome. And he loves that. He loves the kids and he’s just out there everywhere. And he Buses but there’s no sponsorship, there’s no signage on the tracks. There’s nothing from local retail and I’m scratching my head going, why is this happening? Why aren’t local shops recognizing that this is happening during the week and on the weekends, it’s packed with potential customers get out there? And those track guys are looking for support and they’ll give you so much love and promote you, your store. If you get involved. And it’s a new customer and it’s a family.

Chad Pickard  15:31

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John David  15:43

And again in for us in the way that we look at it from a BMX perspective. Look, that’s the lifeline. I mean, that’s the lifeline of the future customer that’s going to come out and buy the carbon fiber mountain bike when he’s 30. You know, that’s a guy when he’s 35. That’s going to buy the unbelievably expensive road bike, and we really do feel like that’s our task within BMX is to get these kids on the track at a young age, get them involved in this in a great family sport, and create love and a passion for cycling. And it’s interesting because, you know, we had really we’ve had this phenomenal growth really ever since 2008. And steadily year over year adding more members adding more new programs adding more new BMX clubs, growing BMX. I mean, if you look at it from a segment perspective, it is a shining star among the cycling community. But you know, the one thing we really realized we hadn’t done is we hadn’t been our own best advocate within the cycling industry, we kind of got used to the cycling industry, kind of ignoring what was going on in BMX and just kind of not paying attention to it. It doesn’t have a high-profit margin. It’s a small item, you know, on the list of what’s in the store. We really hadn’t done that. And that was an initiative of ours. We really started about two years ago, I reached out to NBDA to talk to them about hey, how do we tell our story a little bit more because we’re doing In great things, and truly to do even better things, we need industry support. We need the retailers to come back home to BMX, to come back to what their roots in their foundation are so we can build lifelong cycles. So, I mean, what you saw the current attorney mesa is such a great example of what BMX is, have people out there when you’ve got 320 BMX tracks across the United States that are actively going out marketing, promoting and creating brand new cycling customers. Who else is doing that?

Pat Hus  17:29

No, not many. And I’ve talked to retailers. I have a number of big retailers that are friends of mine, and I say what do you guys do with BMX? And their typical responses we gave up on BMX years ago, and I kind of just shake my head like, do you not get what’s going on? And that’s part of what I was hoping you could share with us a little bit today is talking to us. You mentioned some growth and can you do you have some hard numbers you can talk about the number of riders and the and the growth over the last, say five to 10 and what’s happening in BMX because I think it might shift some people’s minds dime’s to hear what’s happening with BMX because they’ve dismissed it. And I keep hearing from companies in the BMX market. They’re like, Pat, we’re kicking ass. Don’t tell everybody.

John David  18:11

You know, we’re so excited. Because really, last year in our at the beginning of this year, we’re starting to see those seeds that we’ve planted years ago really kind of start taking off, we’re seeing some great growth. And we made some really strong strategic alliances, and some really approach that we’re just really happy in what the results have been. And so from a membership perspective, literally, for the last almost eight years, BMX has experienced anywhere from a three to an 8% growth rate, every single year, year over year. I mean, so we keep growing and growing and growing and adding more new members. I mean, we’re on an annual basis. Right now we’re bringing in almost 30,000 brand new athletes into the sport with a membership base. It’s right now it’s right at about 70,000 total members, for us to be honest with you, Pat We’re scratching the surface. I mean, we were really just now with some of these new programming initiatives that we’ve created, starting to really figure out within the new day of social media and advertising on how to get families to show up at the BMX track. We’ve done some really neat things recently that have shown that but one of the great studies that came out in the 80s a couple of years ago and it was the same again in 19. But you know, the sports fitness industry association, which does a lot of reporting on tracking sports, you know, found that BMX was the fastest growing sport in 2018. In 2019, we were the third fastest growing sport. So we’ve got great data they can show it to you we see it our membership database every single day and the growth that we’re experiencing year over year. BMX is a healthy be in really great hands. I see you got an enthusiastic group over here at USA BMX is fired up, to take this sport to the next level, in some of the things that we didn’t have Before BMX, you know appeared to be this niche for well now it’s an Olympic sport. It appeared to be to have the heyday back in the 80s. Well, I’ll tell you that right now we’ve got more people actively racing BMX than in the history of the sport. When you tell the story, and you tell it through some of the avenues in which we’re doing now we’ve got educational programming, that’s absolutely phenomenal. We’re hiring highly active in sports tourism. were one of the premier brands when you go to some of these sports tourism trade shows people love BMX racing. I love walking around all these different booths from all these different Conventions and visitors bureaus, and 50% of them show a picture of a kid on a BMX bike because they’re so proud of hosting one of our events. So we’re doing some great things and the numbers show it from a retailer perspective. That’s the new message that we’re trying to broadcast to say, listen, everybody understands what’s happening in retail. Let’s not be our own worst enemy. We’re ignoring a segment because there’s not much profit margin, there’s not much traction. Listen, gauge that segment. let’s engage that segment and recognize Okay, look, this really Is the breeding ground of future cyclists, and let’s be a part of something that’s special and something that’s great might not have the biggest profit margin today. But watch what happens in 10 and 15 and 20 years.

Pat Hus  21:10

Absolutely, I applaud you for what you’re doing. It’s not unlike what’s happened with travel on it became traveling became a tough category, and a lot of shops gave up on it because the investment on the bikes was on the high side of things, you had to buy wetsuits you gotta get, you gotta make the commitment to the category and so a lot of people gave up on it and what happened the customer ended up going to an online retailer to find their needs. And that’s what’s kind of happening a little it happened with BMX to a large degree or became an online business. I’m hoping people get from this podcast that there is an opportunity to come back in the investment is not like getting into the tribe bike market. It’s a reasonable investment and you’re building a customer base for the life of that customer. You’re getting it on the front end, you know what I mean?

John David  21:54

One of the great stores again, I love anytime I have a chance to talk with Brandee from NBDA In hearing our stories, and she’s such a savvy retailer as well, but one of the statements she said that just stuck with me, she goes, Hey, I love the BMX or the former BMX or because they get the concept of the upgrade, these guys understand what it means to go and upgrade a derailleur and upgrade some of the high-end parts in that’s unique within our customer base. And we’ve got so many great examples, the two of retailers that have partnered with their local bike shop and are with a local BMX track, I should say. And they’ve created that partnership, they’re helping with the fleet of loaner bikes that every new kid who comes in tries, you know, their first lap on a bike is from a loaner bike from this particular bike shop and different programs like that, that they can honestly engage with a BMX track, in a very low point of entry, show that support and take a local BMX track that’s bringing in 100 brand new real racers into the sport and getting 100 brand new customers right to their doorstep. I mean, it’s not a hard conversion. It’s a very, very easy country. version in the ROI is extremely strong ordering with that local club that local BMX track.

Pat Hus  23:05

So John, do you guys have pretty good demographic numbers? I’m curious to see, you know, in the bike industry, one of the struggles we have is we don’t have enough women we don’t we don’t have enough ethnicity in our sport. It’s, it’s a white male-dominated sport. And it’s not ideal if we’re hoping to see the pie grow. We need to get beyond what we are today. And we need to embrace more women and young girls getting on bikes and we need to see different ethnicities getting involved in sport, and this to me seems like BMX can open that up and get all of that going at an early age. What are you guys seeing and what do you have any specific recruitment efforts in that world in that realm? 

John David  23:48

We recognize the same thing and I would say that historically, the demographics of BMX has really tracked that other traditional other disciplines of cycling, one of the challenges certainly that we face with bringing girls into our Sport is again, you’ve got this helmet, you’ve got this gear, you’ve got race pants. And notoriously, this stuff is just not made for girls not made for women. What we’ve tried to do internally within the BMX industry is we’ve tried to challenge our partners and said, Listen, Hey, guys, you know, I’ve got two daughters myself. I’m like, Grace. David has no interest in wearing that BMX helmet. None whatsoever. So what can we do to make something it’s going to appeal more towards the female athlete? What can we do to make it to where it’s more fun for them? Well, we’ve had some great responses, fly racing, who’s a big sponsor of ours and is just terrific to work with. Those guys have really done some great stuff with some of their apparel and their gear, to make it more female-friendly, just from a look and feel standpoint and just make something that’s cool for the girls to wear. That’s been a great initiative for us. And we really recognize the importance of growing that category. We’ve got one of the best representatives of our sport that you could ever have in our national champion. In Olympian, the least post you’ve never seen her is just one of the most unbelievable bike riders that you could ever see in your life and World Champion, that she’s going to be going into Tokyo as the favorite. We are so excited for her, you know, in what our efforts are, we’ve really tried to take that opportunity of just such an iconic BMX racer, that’s a female and really honestly, she’s the most popular racer in our sport right now. And we’ve done everything we can to really expose her, you know, to the masses to we’re really using her primarily right now is kind of the poster child for BMX racing. So she was recently on NBC on the Today Show, on the preparation for the Olympics and coming out. Our PR directors, they’re working with her daily on more and more exposure. That was done intentionally. We particularly wanted to have an amazing female athlete to take the lead for us and we couldn’t be proud of with that. So we definitely have some initiatives to break up that diversity, a lot of different ways. In we’re starting To incrementally see some growth there, which we’re really excited about, traditionally, we’ve been about, you know, 13% female participation. And we’re starting to see that grow our goals in the next three years is to get that to about 20%.

Pat Hus  26:12

Fantastic. That’s great. And do you have any ethnicity numbers at all? I mean, that shed some light because I would think we’re starting to open that up. I mean, but I don’t know. That’s good. It’s just a question. I’m just curious to know if we’re seeing diversity come in,

John David  26:26

You know, we’re historical. We haven’t I mean, historically, it’s been exactly as you described earlier, some of the initiatives, though, that we are doing, especially within some of the educational programs in the schools, we’re starting to see that open up some more. And we see great hope in that opportunity. And it really, I mean, the great part, you know, when it comes to that is just the more that we can expose the sport to get more athletes on it from all backgrounds. I mean, the better we were going to be in it again, to your point, this is an industry-wide problem, and then we all have to work to solve together.

Pat Hus  26:55

Yep, you’re absolutely right.

Chad Pickard  26:59

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Pat Hus  27:14

So I want to come back to Tokyo a little bit because it’s exciting. And I, unfortunately, you’re gonna have a little competition this year because now skateboarding is an official Olympic event. And I had the benefit of working with a company out of San Diego that we had pro-tech. And we had sector nine on the skate side of things. And man I was they were pretty pumped in my office because they were seeing this spike in demand for skate, which had kind of been flatlining for a number of years now. We’re seeing a resurgence in skateboarding and kids getting back out on the streets and doing it. So it’s awesome. But talk to me a little bit about BMX and Tokyo and beyond the galleys that you just mentioned is what else can we do with this Olympic opportunity for us

John David  27:56

capitalizing on that opportunity has been Paramount, and we’re putting some have the strongest efforts that we ever have in making major major investments in capitalizing off of the exposure opportunity in so much of that. I mean, if you’ve been around a long time, it’s early positioning. You know, I mean, literally with it with the guys from NBC. I mean, you’ve got to be in their ear in their, in their ear often. And one of the best things that we did is we hired a PR director by the name of Katie Moses Swope, who was the PR director for the X Games and just knows the industry in and out. And she’s been on our team for about four years gearing into Tokyo. And we just we couldn’t be more thrilled at the kind of exposure that she’s gotten Elise and our athletes in New York City. Going through the media gauntlet, you know, I think three or four different times and the exposure that we’re starting to see is phenomenal. Lisa was featured on the cover of Southwest magazine. Turner has been I mean, she got a lease on today’s show. So we’re seeing the fruits of that labor really come out and it’s a really kind of a delicate situation, though, to be quite candid with you because the Olympic side of our sport You watch that it was designed in purposefully to be unbelievably thrilling and unbelievably exciting. You got riders coming off of this 27 foot tall starting Hill. It’s just enormous. The jumps are the biggest things that you’d ever see the conundrum with that. While it’s great, and it’s thrilling, and it’s exciting on TV, is there’s not a lot of moms that are going to look at that and say, I want my eight-year-old kid to go. Right. So it’s been this bizarre learning lesson for us here in where honestly, we touted Olympics and Olympics and Olympics, really, really strong in that side of of what our sport is on that elite level. And I’ll tell you what we really found, we found that, again, the counter to that is pretty strong. When you see the sport on that level, it looks so extreme. It’s not necessarily the best life for the sport to be under. So we’re taking all of those opportunities, but again, really making sure the messaging comes back to Hey, Come out to Chandler BMX, come see what it’s like at the local level, come and join a sport with your family where no one sits on the bench, where there’s not a team. But the team, there is a team, the fact that the team is the family unit. So that that crafting that message. And getting, you know, taking that opportunity and really molding it into that message is not easy. But we’ve got some really talented people making that happen.

Pat Hus  30:25

Well, I think it’s great. I think you guys are doing fantastic. I think you got to also look at the tail end of the Olympics because it’s always you know, there’s a lot of excitement generated in the lead-up. But a week after the Olympics are over, everybody’s forgotten. So there’s a lot of opportunities, I think to follow that up and keep it on people’s minds and try to get another 30 days at least out of it. So just out of I mean because we’re all pro-American. How’s the rest of our team look at Do we look like we got a shot at some other metals? How do we look at the least

John David  30:53

we look really good so so are in the female category. We look really strong with Elise and the other riders that you Coming in, in the women’s group from the elite men category, we’ve got Connor fields who’s just man, he is just an unbelievable professional athlete that we’re so proud of Corbin surahs looking really good at Tucson Ryder out of Arizona here. We were so proud because, in the last Olympics in Rio, we nailed both gold and got a silver Connor got the gold medal at least got the silver and we’re, we’re feeling pretty confident going into it. I mean, it looks at the end of the day, though, I’ll be what I always remind everybody is you got to think about this, you know, the Olympics goes down, you get to that main event, you’ve got eight riders in that starting gate, and you’ve got 1000 feet of track in front of them we’re averaging at say clap and so who is hopeful as we are, you just never know what’s gonna happen in that lab. You know, that’s gonna last the grand total of probably 20 seconds so but we feel really good. We feel as good as we ever have. Going into the Olympics in the best part about it truthfully is the athletes that we have going into the Olympics. We’ve really worked with these athletes year over year to tell them hey guys, any opportunity can tell them how to get started in BMX or tell them what it was like for you as a kid. Tell them what it meant for you and you’re a candidate you and your dad are best friends tell that story. tell that story from Henderson, Nevada from Boulder BMX over there and what that meant to you, because that’s how we can grow our sport. And I’m so proud to say that these guys on that level, they are so cognitive of that and they really will do anything we ask them to help kind of grow the sport, but we’re very very intentional in those efforts.

Pat Hus  32:35

Fantastic. Well, I’m gonna shift gears on you just a little bit here because I know you guys have you’ve got a new facility in Tulsa Oklahoma that you kind of proud of and I think it’d be great for you to share with this audience what’s going on in Tulsa and they come out what might they see

John David  32:50

Well, you know, look for anybody who’s thinking that this BMX thing it’s a fad it’s not you know it’s nothing is what is not you know, it’s not much of a segment it Tulsa such a great example for the last time Yours USA BMX is hosted our season finale in Tulsa, Oklahoma grand nationals. It happens over the week of Thanksgiving. Believe it or not, I mean in BMX, that weekend, you don’t spend that at home. If you’re a BMX racer, you’re in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we bring in almost 15,000 people to this event. The building that houses the grand nationals is a quarter-mile long building. This got 200,000 square feet of Expo space in the lower level where we build the BMX track. And this city has just been such a phenomenal partner of ours, and so supportive over our sport. They’ve really watched this grow over these last 20 years in simultaneously we have watched them grow, you know, and become, you know, a really a very entrepreneurial, strong city that shifted, you know, out of just being nothing but an all based economy to a really strong economy with a lot of small businesses and growing every day. And we were looking for a new home. We’ve been based in Phoenix, Arizona is one of the suburbs for several years, actually, since the beginning, I should say We really we just outgrew our office space, if you had a chance to come to see our offices, you would laugh. I mean, we basically turned every clause that we could into an office depleted most of our warehouse space and in turn that into various offices, as our grant, our office staff has almost tripled in size. We’re now you know, almost 40 staff members working for us full time. Well, the guys in Tulsa said, why not here? And we’re like, wait, we can’t we’re not moving to Tulsa, like, No, no, we love this. And we want to submit an Olympic sport in our community. We need this as a community. We want to be able to tell the story to any sport that wants to bring their event, potentially to Tulsa, Oklahoma. They look at what we do. We build partnerships and look at USA BMX. We worked with them for 20 years. And we just moved them here permanently, because we want them to have their business here that’s, you know how strong tolls are and what we do. And believe it or not, we worked with their city leadership and their city leadership committed $26 million to build a new headquarters and an array Nina is going to house USA BMX. Basically, there’ll be several components to the facility of Olympic level BMX track that’s covered with seating for more than 2500. So that we can host some of our biggest and best events are permanent Hall of Fame is being constructed that the design is just coming out. Absolutely. phenomenally got a great firm out of Kansas City that actually the Hall of Fame for Evel Knievel and they kind of get our space in our sport. So the designs in the Hall of Famer grade, we’ve got great training facilities that are built into this so that the elite athletes can come and train and spend time here and a whole educational programming center, then it’s going to be out of there. Honestly, it was just us creating a partnership with a community growing with them and taking it to that next level. And I mean, those guys in the city leadership just said, hey, you’re here every Thanksgiving, just come make this place your home and we’re excited to do it.

Pat Hus  35:54

That’s awesome. I mean, I got to tell you, I was out on the east coast. We were doing an event you know Carolina outside of Charlotte that was at this amazing US National whitewater center. And I got to see the facility that was built out there just outside of Charlotte. And it’s amazing. They’ve got a velodrome. They’ve got a BMX track, they’re doing night criteriums on this protected road. It’s I mean, it’s an amazing facility.

John David  36:20

That’s what’s unique and what’s happening with USA BMX every single day. So the facility you’re talking about is Rock Hill. And it’s a great example. We ran into these guys Rock Hill, I’m extremely active in the realm of sports tourism. I’m one of two sanctioning bodies or what they call rightsholders that sits on the national board for sports tourism for the sport CTA and I’m a board member there. And in this realm of sports tourism, we’ve really in the last, you know, eight years have done a yeoman’s job of selling the passion that we have for BMX racing and really building it ran. It’s very recognizable, but we did it with the angle of new track, develop a newbie BMX tracks development so it’s comical because we’ll go in and we’ll sit down with a city or a convention visit bureau Sports Commission, and they just want to talk about one of these national events that are gonna bring $5 million in economic impact. And I flipped the script on and I’m talking to them about, hey, okay, your local BMX track is good. But look, if you made this capital improvement investment, you would make it better. And I’m doing two things. One, I’m helping to get that local BMX club some extra funding, because that’s going to really take them to the next level up and grow the sport in their community. And then also as a byproduct, yeah, we’re making a little bit more attractive to host the national event. And oftentimes, we’re having the same meetings with people that did have, you know, they don’t even have a facility and the first question is, okay, well, look, you don’t have a facility you don’t have an array that we can use to do a temporary race, man, let’s build a permanent one. Rock Hill’s an example of that. We just partnered with some unbelievable groups in Houston. And in Houston, they built a $28 million Bike Park. The $20 million bike part pad if you install this thing, you would be so blown away. It’s right off George Bush International Airport. Unbelievable facility. It’s got an Olympic caliber BMX race track there. It’s hosting the World Championships in 2020. And literally it started as a conversation in a speed dating ceremony at the annual conference. Wow, that’s just the mission of what we’re trying to do. And for us, it’s let’s build the BMX tracks. We have to strengthen our relationships with the IBDs and become a partner and we have to have a louder voice in the industry. We’ve got to share the success of what we’re doing because we’re making things happen.

Pat Hus  38:37

Now you sure are. And I’m super excited to have had you on this podcast. I got a couple of last questions, and then we’ll, we’ll wind it down. And I’ll thank you again. But you’ve already kind of said it all through the conversation and just in terms of your outlook on kids and cycling in the future, and obviously you’re very bullish on it and God bless you because we need more of that in this industry. But here’s where I come from. I’m an in The street guy been at it for 40 plus years. And there’s a lot of investment going into making it safer for people to ride bikes on the streets and creating green lanes and doing a lot of really good important work. But I think we’re losing sight of getting more kids out there. And that’s one that I’m frustrated with. And I guess my point my question to you is, what can we as an industry, how can we do more to get more kids on the bikes? Yes, BMX, but what else can we be doing to get just get kids on bikes and offer computers?

John David  39:31

Well, look, you hit the nail on the head with the very last statement that you said, We in society are facing the toughest times that we’ve ever faced when it comes to volunteerism, and when it comes to our own children and getting them outside to do something active, just like I did, you know, I talk about my local bike shop and being you know, literally a bike shop rat. I mean, I rode my bike. You know, my Schwinn Sting-Ray. I rode my Schwinn Sting-Ray, five miles to my local bike shop when I was 10. years old sat there and stared at 100 Junior Pro for every day for an entire summer to my dad bought me one. That wouldn’t even happen today I would even be allowed to ride a bicycle five miles to go out. So, so we’re challenged, we’re challenged as a society because of helicopter parenting. In this protectionism that we have in this isolation was literally that freedom. In that thing that we experienced that made us love cycling so much because we got on our bike and we were free. We have to find ways to challenge that we have to find ways to break that mold. You know, and I think that there are a lot of different avenues. We’ve got some major school initiatives. And then we’ve got the executive director of our foundation, Mike Duvarney going to talk to you on a school level about what we’re doing there, which I think is major, we’ve got to go to where the kids are. Find a way to get them excited about riding their bicycles and get them out. For us with BMX racing. I think it’s really simple. That target audience that we talked about earlier these 234 and five-year-olds. We have to make A major initiative around there, we have got to do everything we can to take that competitive advantage that we have as an industry and get people on bikes at a very early age in Blitz some of those first family photos of a kid being on a balanced bike. That’s to me is step number one. As an industry, what we would challenge any retailer, manufacturer or distributor is to find your local BMX track, give me a call personally Call me at you know, at the office, look me up on LinkedIn, look me up on on our website at USA BMX calm and if you need help to get information about where your local bike shop is or how we can partner together, were you, local trackers, I should say, let me know and we’ll guide you in the right direction there. There’s so much opportunity to create partnership within the world of BMX racing alone, that again, this is not major investment stuff. This is just making a commitment to your cycling and making a commitment to have some presence in some relevancy, but what you’re ultimately doing is you are 100% Building the demand for your supply. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not a huge profit margin that’s going to be there. But it’s a long term play. If right now, if all we do as a retail side of the industry, if all we just keep doing is chasing the next fad also, hey, we’re in e-bikes. Everything’s e-bikes. That was a huge profit margin. And that’s what saved our business. That’s great for the short term. What are we doing in the long run?

Pat Hus  42:24

That’s a great, great way to end this conversation because that is this is the long run. And I think our industry because we’re so competitive in nature, we are looking to you know, as road bike sales drop, you know, e-bikes are the Savior and it’s a quick fix to plug in that hole. And it doesn’t solve the long term. We’ve got to get more kids, we’ve got to get safe places for them to ride. We got to get parents comfortable letting those kids go out and enjoy that freedom because the end of the day that’s why we all love cycling right

John David  42:56

without a doubt and what we love about the BMX facility MX track is this culture that we create where everybody fits in. You know, when you go to your local BMX track, I like to tell everybody, it’s a funny thing because it’s almost this Island of Misfit Toys. It’s the one unique place where you go to and you’ve got the kid that could be the starting quarterback at the high school. It’s no more popular than the kid that has no athletic ability, but at the BMX track, they’re there, they’re racing, they’re having fun, and they’re participating together in a great family sport. And I think getting back to that level of where the IBDs are intimately involved in BMX track, maybe even running a BMX track and doing 100 200 brand new customers. You know, we’ve got great programs and staff are dedicated, nothing to do nothing more than building BMX tracks across the United States with great support there. But this is this place wherein that controlled environment, it really matches the trends in society right, where we’ve got this helicopter parent where we’re not going to let them go out. Well, hey, you want to come to learn how to ride a bike, come to the local BMX track, we’ll show you how we’ll build that love for cycling and us The family environment it really pairs well with what’s happening in society today.

Pat Hus  44:04

Great way to end it. JOHN, I can’t thank you enough for the time you invest in here today. And hopefully, we want some people over. That was the objective. But I think we’ve shed some light on things that maybe they’re not thinking about, and maybe they’ll go back to their stores and think about that today. If you all have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to john. He’s, he’s a great resource. His team is there to answer any questions and help you do whatever it is you have a thought to do. I want to thank you again for your time. This is the bicycle retail radio presented by the NVDA. And thanks for joining us today.

John David  44:38

Thank you so much. Appreciate the time the opportunity 

Pat Hus  44:40

You bet. 

John David  44:41

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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The post USA BMX – The Best-Kept Secret Out There appeared first on National Bicycle Dealers Association.

In 2000, our Director of Advocacy, Gary Sjoquist, realized that the industry needed to unite to fight for resources, access, and safer bike laws so we helped create Bikes Belong, now called People for Bikes, and have been members ever since. We have been long time supporters and allies with the International Mountain Bicycling Association. We support and attend the National Bicycle Summit put on by the League of American Bicyclists. More recently we have fallen in love with the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). Our COO, Jerry Pomije, is even joined the board of directors and is now the Chairman of the Board after he saw firsthand how the MN High School Cycling League positively affected his son. We see how NICA fuels the passion for cycling in high school age kids and converts them and their families into customers for our specialty retailers.

Support the show. (https://nbda.com/articles/donation-form-pg511.htm#!form/Donate)

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Episode 17 – Bicycle Retail Radio

Tue, 8/18 10:41AM • 41:55

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bicycle, bikes, people, advocacy, industry, communities, retailers, funding, congress, organizations, advocates, members, involved, realize, dc, ride, places, work, leading, money

SPEAKERS

Morgan Lommele, Rod Judd, Chad Pickard, Gary Sjoquist

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to the Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Morgan Lommele  00:16

This is a bicycle retail radio. I am Morgan Lommele and the state and local policy director at people for bikes. And today I’m interviewing Gary Sjoquist, who’s the advocacy director at quality bicycle products. Gary, how are you? 

Gary Sjoquist  00:30

Good. 

Morgan Lommele  00:31

I feel a little bizarre interviewing you today. When I was doing some research for this podcast, I realized I was only nine years old when you were well into your career as an advocacy leader, and passing some of the most significant legislation that would provide funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. So it’s an honor to chat with you today. And I hope that a lot of the folks who listened to this podcast we’ll get a few quick tips and a really in-depth history lesson on that. How to be a good advocate and build better places to ride bikes. So with that, well I give you a chance to introduce yourself and just talk about kind of where your career started and what’s been your path to today. And then I’d love to spend some time asking a few kinds of more in-depth questions around some of the ways that we’ve been able to find better places for bike riding and some of our critical partnerships with government agencies that hopefully get more people riding bikes. So do you want to take some time to introduce yourself and talk about how you got to erect today?

Gary Sjoquist  01:30

Yeah, sure. So I was fortunate because I came to bicycling in 1990. I’m guilty of not being a longtime commuter or a cyclist. I was a motorcycle racer, who had to quit because I got hurt a lot. And what I found was mountain biking, that was 1990. And right away, I got involved in access issues, or mountain biking here in Minnesota, and help sort of over a period of a couple of years I became kind of the voice of mountain biking And eventually started road riding as a way to stay in shape for mountain bike racing, which I continued to do since then. And so I learned all about the problems of riding on the road, and the need for facilities and infrastructure and that kind of thing. And this was in the early 90s.  And then conveniently, professionally, I got laid off from my job. I spent almost 15 years doing corporate publications work here in the Twin Cities and I was with a company called Unisys, and they laid me off in June of 1994 gave me a fat severance check. And I like a month later, Randy Neufeld, who’s a longtime bicycle advocate, and works for SRAM these days, came through town and gave a talk about the need for bicycle advocates in states like Minnesota, and he said there is funding available resources but we just need somebody to pick up the ball and run with it. And I thought I can do that. I was kind of tired of the corporate world and I liked bicycling and have done some work here locally. Yeah, I’ll do that. And so in 96, I attended an event, a very pivotal event at the Thunderhead Ranch in the boys Wyoming and met about 10. Other there only about 10 full-time bicycle advocates in those days. And so I met them and sort of learned who was who and what was what. And that’s actually the offshoot of that. The second event, the 97, which is what we now called thunderheads was really where the original bikes belong was launched, which allows people for bikes down the road.  But anyway, I was involved in that. And then conveniently in 1998, quality bicycle products, asked me to come in and create a position as the bicycle industry’s first full-time advocate. The employees a kewpie had gone to the flag and just said, we want to support this, this isn’t something we should just contribute to we should actually create a position for a bicycle advocate. And so I came in and got the job in January 98. And I’ve been a full-time vice Go advocate ever since. And I’m kind of unique in the sense that I don’t have anything to do with product or shipping or logistics or anything like that most of my work takes place outside of the building.  And so for 21 years now, I’ve been actually 22. And I’m starting, I guess. I’ve been working with retailers and manufacturers and suppliers and doing some political work on behalf of the bicycle industry. And it’s been wonderful because Huey P has continued to grow over those years and become an influential player. And so I’ve had lots of resources to work with, and manage to find some other similarly minded people in the bike industry. And it just continues as the political landscape changes. And as new programs are introduced, I was kind of unique, in a sense, because most advocates I’ve met over the years, they’re either mountain bikers, or they’re, you know, road riders, regular commuters, and road riders. And I was both in so that allowed me to actually Engage in both arenas. And so I’ve been involved with him ever since the early 90s. And then have been fortunate to have quality, basically subsidized kind of work that I wanted to do and have continued to do for, I guess, 22 years now. So,

Morgan Lommele  05:17

well and I guess, stepping back a little bit, one of the reasons, you know, bikes belong now people for bikes was created was because if you think about it, all of the infrastructures that we use to ride our bikes, whether it’s on single track trails, or bike paths, or bike lanes, it’s all managed by government agencies. And so people for bikes or bikes full-on was created to, you know, really leverage and elevate the voice of the industry in these decisions that can be about how much money gets put towards bicycling infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure. And we take that for granted I think now, but, you know, I’d love for you to kind of go back to 1991 I think it was it was the intermodal Surface Transportation efficiency. Yeah. was passed. And one thing we always take for granted also is the amount of work it took to just shift that mindset around moving a lot of funding, you know, from highways and roads to carving out a little bit for bicycles and, you know, a non-car built environment. So what we’re like if you could recall, like in 1990, in early 1991, before the billion dollars was authorized, essentially, what was a lot of the feedback you got from legislators and from agencies around? Why bicycling had a place and needed to be funded?

Gary Sjoquist 06:31

Yeah, you’re right. It really changed everything in 1991. And that’s thanks to really some visionary members of Congress. Jim Oberstar from Minnesota. Patrick Moynihan was a senator from New York, and others, of course, but they were the two really visionary people and they both had been in Congress for many years and they had seen the complete build-out of basically the Eisenhower vision of creating a massive highway Infrastructure all through the United States. And in doing so, building many of those freeways, we ripped apart communities. And we made it really challenging for people to move through the communities except in a car. And so Oberstar and Moynihan saw the chance. With the federal surface transportation. Legislation gets reauthorized every five or six years. And so, in 1991, with ice T, the word intermodal was introduced for the first time in Congress. And it was important because Congress would recognize that travel doesn’t just happen by cars and trucks or buses. It can also happen in transit, in light rail, in bicycles, pedestrians in rail trails and things like that. It also was pivotal because it brought planning into the equation that gave states more flexibility with the money that they had. They could devote money to things like air quality mitigation. To put federal highway funds toward things like refurbishing old train depots that were on abandoned rail trails, or even building rail-trails, those kinds of things.  So ICET, really was pivotal and opened up a lot of eyes to possibilities in the idea that through planning, we could have citizens and advocacy organizations, community organizations could have a say in what was going to happen in their communities. And, of course, what we wanted were things like more mountain bike trails, more bike lanes, more sort of integrated, dedicated facilities for bicycling, so we didn’t have to always be in a car. And so it really changed things a great deal. And it also presented the need to use in the bicycle industry that now that we have this funding, we have to fight to protect it, because the road and highway lobby, in a sense Moynahan Oberstar that kind of sleight of hand with iced tea, the thought of those days in the vise look up national vice lattice communities was the federal government needed to put a billion dollars into, basically into creating places for people to ride bicycles robbed us. And Oberstar. And Moynihan knew that if they lead with that, that billion for bikes was going to be broadcast and headlines and people are going to be talking about it, that the road truck lobby would just kill them. I mean, the road and highway lobby would spend like $20 million lobbyings every four or five years to get their share of this federal highway money. And so after it was passed, the road and highway lobby, put out a smear campaign basically, that said, we need to redirect that money back to the necessities of building roads and highways, we can’t be spending federal money on luxuries like bike trails. And so those of us in the industry realized it’s great. We have this but now we have to continue it. We have to in the future iterations of the surface transportation bill. We have to make sure that Legacy of funding for non-motorized transportation and things like air quality mitigation and environmental concern that stay within that those parameters and that there are policy decisions and funding policy or funding decisions made.  And so those of us in the bike industry got together. And really, that’s sort of the I hesitate to call it the birth of the modern bicycle movement. Because I’m pretty sure before my time, guys in Schwinn were doing a lot of work politically, Schwinn was such a big deal leading up to the 90s. But in this transition, bikes belong was launched. And it really to your point, it really was focused on building an industry presence in DC on Capitol Hill. And then also leveraging the people like Oberstar and wine a hand who had built this legacy of funding and how can we continue it. And sort of parallel to that was the need to build advocacy organizations in all 50 states. To figure out how do we harness these so that they can work in conjunction with a national organization like real strength, certainty, and the bicycle Federation of American adventure cycling and Amba. And national bicycle Dealers Association, the original steering committee, for the very first issue of bikes belong in 1997. Included Fred Clements from NVDA was on the steering committee. So NVDA has been involved at the very earliest levels of building this political support within the bike industry. So

Morgan Lommele  11:33

do you have any I mean, these are all characters, Randy and Fred, who retailers might or might not know. But any funny stories around, you know, the Thunderhead ranch meeting or, I mean, you get them gals probably weren’t all on the same page. I mean, and we all can acknowledge the role that retailers and industry play and speaking with that voice, but what was the vibe in the room there? No, yeah, I was thinking differently. Some It’s Yeah.

Gary Sjoquist 12:01

First of all, in 1996, it was the very first Thunderhead meeting. I have a picture of everybody who was there. And like I said, unfortunately, some of them are passed away. But first of all, I was very weird because we were in the boys, Wyoming. And we’re actually at a trial lawyers college, there was a guy, a national guy in Jerry spees, who taught trial lawyers out of this remote location in two boys, Wyoming. And I don’t know how we ended up there, but we ended up there. And it was, I mean, this is like the cream of the crop of the national average jurors was sponsored by lamb and Amba, and bicycle Federation America. And then there were seven or eight of us who were leading organizations, full-time bicycle advocacy organizations, small somewhere sophisticated. But I remember the premise of this gathering was what can the national ag organizations do to make the state organizations more effective, and the more we talked about it, the more we realize none of that really matters. We need To continue what I see started, that’s the real need because if there’s no funding or no policy decisions for us, we’re not doing anything. So that’s really when the first bikes belong, was formed. And guys like Andy Clark and lovely Boehm and Chris Cagle and others, began to make the case that the bicycle industry needed to fund these sort of political efforts and needed to have a regular presence in DC, like daily or monthly not just once a year or occasionally. And so that led to we lost the national bike summit to try and at least have an annual gathering there. And then work with members like Oberstar and some of the other people assisting because the current chair of the House Transportation Committee, Peter Defazio, actually goes back to those days. He came in the Congress in 86. And has been on the house Tni committee since 87. And so he’s very much in the Oberstar mold. He wants to make sure that the funding continues in That, that remarkably that, that climate change factors into our surface transportation, policy and funding decisions going forward, which is the battle we’re fighting right now on Capitol Hill, leading into 2020. So, it was a time when you felt that you were helping start something, that there was a tremendous collaborative sense.  Guys like Leslie Bohem, Mike Korean, and John Burke were huge, like senior industry, Titans really stepping up to provide funding and leadership. And then when the second Bikes Belong launched in 1998, we decided was going to become an industry-funded and industry-led organization. And then that eventually turned into people for bikes. And a lot of the great work that’s being done now can be traced back to those early origins. So it’s been tremendously fulfilling for me, because number one, QBP just turns me loose. I’ve never had anybody at QBP tell me, we think you should work on this or You should do this. I get to work on whatever I want every single day and it’s been that way for 22 years. And so it’s been great and I know like I like Randy Neufeld, Noah Schramm, and I have a presentation I give called the surprising future promise of bicycling. In 1996, there were basically 10 full-time bicycle advocates. Now there are probably 4040 500 tucked away in different organizations. So it’s been great to see this sort of blossom. And to see the growing presence of women the growing presence in the changing faces retailers, who sort of understand you’re leading businessmen in your community, and you have skills to offer and you’re a successful business person and that counts on Capitol Hill.  That’s why we need to build more of a presence in like retailers and manufacturers suppliers. need to understand is not just about a product or the larger technology, lightweight price points. We have friends in Congress who can help us With long term funding long term policy decisions that are going to benefit all of our products. So I think one of the main focuses in those days was let’s not focus on selling bikes so much as using bikes. And if we create more places for people to ride, and that was the original bikes belong tagline more places for people to ride bikes, will also more products. And so it’s in our best interest to work together through organizations like NBDA and people for bikes.

Chad Pickard  16:29

Your NBDA membership helps support Bicycle Retail Radio, go to nba.com to join or renew your membership today.

Morgan Lommele  16:42

That’s a really interesting messaging point because I think a lot about messaging in terms of how to paint the picture that bike infrastructure isn’t a luxury when we’re asking for funding at the federal level. Yeah. How to get you to know, messaging in terms of getting retailers involved, getting them excited about advocacy and showing up to meetings, and a completely different set of messaging and people for bikes. We’ve done a lot of market research around, like, how can we really get drivers to accept bicycle facilities as needed cause needed source of funding. And really, in that respect, it’s painting the picture that more space on the road, it makes everyone safer. And I think a lot about how to motivate all the different stakeholders that need to come to the table and make that argument. What is your kind of life lessons around removing bikes from this category of luxury and motivating different advocates to tell that story?

Gary Sjoquist 17:34

Well, I think a very early lesson that I learned and I and again, I, by the time I came to QBP, and basically started my bicycle advocacy career, I was already 40 some years old, and had been around the block had a lot of corporate experience that has life experiences, so and stuff and so I had a, I guess, a long term perspective. And I quickly realized that advocacy moves glacially slow. You’re working with big bureaucracies, like departments, transportation, and Natural Resources, and Congress and stuff just moves slow. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of involvement. And you have to be in it for the long haul. I meet advocates all the time who just burn with passion. And unfortunately, in many cases, they’re anti-car and my personal experiences you’re not going to get very far in dealing with barbers, transportations, and bureaucracies. If you’re anti-car, cars are one part of the solution, but elevating bicycling to a mode that will probably never have equal footing, but at least is part of the discussion.  Always. That’s really what it all started mind a hand required that the State Department of Transportation had a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator as a full-time position within their departments. And so it starts at the planning process. And then we need just to get some more citizen involvement in going to meetings to say I’m a taxpayer Why don’t we have places to ride bicycles here, I literally I can see where I need to go in my suburb, but I can’t get there, except in a car is really life-threatening. So this is where the advocacy organizations can help. And then the retailers can help because they can play a leadership role in their communities to help harness this. The citizens many of these people are in their databases or customers are buying a lot of products. If they can just see those people as a way you can reach out to them and get them involved in whatever kind of an advocacy effort that’s going on in their community, whether it’s building along with bike trailer, or building a rail trail or connecting trails or bike lanes or whatever. I think it’s taken a long time, but I think communities are realizing, especially with the younger voters, millennials and Gen Xers, those kinds of things.  They want to live in urban centers and communities where they’re not sentenced to a car. You don’t have to have a car to get around. You can walk to bars or concerts or you can use transit or, or bike shares. You know, that’s A wonderful situation there. And so I always tell communities, you may not realize it, but you’re on the competition with other communities. Because increasingly, these days, people can live wherever they want. You don’t have to necessarily live next to where you get your paycheck or where the driving distance you can choose to where you live. And increasingly, people are choosing, especially millennials, are choosing to live in places where they don’t have to have a car, they can access public transit, and more bicycling. And this plays well into, you know like bicycle-friendly communities have been a very influential force, because it sort of verifies this competitive process, where communities realize, if we’re going to keep the best and brightest, we need to cater to what they want. And what they want are ways to get through the city without having to drive two hours out to a starter castle somewhere. And so I think it’s this ongoing process, and then carrying that message to Congress and being involved in thanking members, keeping them elected. So they can in the office to help us get what we want. And that’s all part of a long process. And it’s a complicated story, it’s not easily told to people who are just starting to sell. And at the retail level, I tell people, you know, I work for QBP. And so my main focus is that you stay in business and profitable, I want you to buy products from us, as well as the other suppliers’ manufacturers.  But if you are not profitable, you’re not gonna be in business and you’re not really going to be able to help anything. So number one, you have to stay in business. Number two, if you want to get involved in advocacy, myself, and many others can help with figuring out some kind of a plan or figuring out do you have time? Do you have money? What level Do you want to help a national effort like imba or people for bikes? Or do you want to work more at a local level with a community initiative to get a bike trail or to get a bike lane or to help with an open streets event or a mountain bike trail or whatever? But a lot of this just goes back to education people have to understand sort of the playing field That you’re going to be engaged in. And then I think having that perspective that it’s different in business, you make your own decisions, you can turn. In many cases, if you’re a small business person, you can turn on a dime. That doesn’t happen at the bureaucratic level, big deal keys. And with Congress, it takes a long time. And you have to develop working relationships with members of Congress. And that means you have to be there on a regular basis. And that’s the beauty of what people for bikes can do or has done is provide that liaison. So the industry has some kind of presence in DC. You have about a funny story, I want to do something else. But I want to tell you so the very first time we launched, the National bike summit was in particular 1999, maybe 2000. And we had basically 18 members of the bicycle industry, who came to DC for this inaugural effort to be on the hill and talk to members of Congress. And I remember I think it was Bob. I think his last name was down who lost planted bikes, which is a company that has always dedicated the percentage of their revenue toward advocacy. That is wonderful. Anyway, Bob decided to ride his bike to DC from Wisconsin to sort of making a statement, a passionate statement about this is important enough to me that I’m actually going to ride my bicycle the hallway. So he did that. And so here we are in DC, it’s time to go up to Capitol Hill and you have to dress the dress, you know, you have to have a suit and tie and you have to dress as you belong there because that’s what everybody else wears. And so, unfortunately, Bob’s luggage didn’t make it in time. And so Bob didn’t have any clothes to change into. So he wore his bike shorts to Capitol Hill, as we’re walking around, they’re going to different members of Congress. And it was funny because many of the staffers tried to hand in packages because they thought he was a bike messenger because there are always bike messengers running around filming Max’s back. And so he just wasn’t dressed approach. Really for the activity that was going on there. So yeah. And then another thing I just want to quickly is, you mentioned something funny. So, Congress and Oberstar who was a gifted orator pretty soon at Interbike, and national bike summit and people for bikes events back in the day, those a small group of us would take a bet when Oberstar started to talk the first that was how long would he talk? go on forever, like a lot of politicians. But number two, the second bed was how long before he breaks into French, because he spoke several languages.  And he was a big fan of the Tour de France had been there when Armstrong was winning all those titles and stuff. And so he would always break into French at some point in his speech. And then finally, his gift of languages came into play. And I think it was 2002. You could pay for congressional travel in those days, so I could fly overseas around the country and so I brought him to Interbike a couple of different times in Vegas. We go for long bike rides and talk. And then we come back and he gives a very impassioned speech to members, the industry of us supporting advocacy and lifelong was called those days. So anyway I have at Interbike. We’re going to walk around the halls, he’s just like a, he’s a gearhead, he just loves high-end bike products and stuff. So we’re walking through, he’s like a kid in a candy store. And we get to the camp and all of those. And, you know, capitolo has got these, the railers and shifters and things that are in glass cases or it’s like exotic jewelry. And he was just so impressed. And then I introduced him to Vittorio Capitola, who was I think they ate at the time was like the eight-year-old patriarch of the company. And so they broke into Italian and they spoke Italian with each other for about 15 minutes. That was one of the overseer’s languages, and so when he found somebody that he could speak Italian with, he was just thrilled. So that was a remarkable thing to see. And have happened. So I’m sorry I interrupted you. You’re gonna have to Wash into something else, I think.

Morgan Lommele  26:02

No, I love those stories. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall. And I’m sure Victoria was so pleased to find someone who he could just not have to speak English with.

Gary Sjoquist  26:11

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Morgan Lommele  26:13

And I know, this is our retailer podcasts. And so thinking I mean, and we get questions a lot, I mean, feely sometimes from retailers saying, What can I do to build this bike lane? or What can I do in general at the local level, and my hope is that every retailer knows, this is impossible, but every retailer knows how to use a lot of the federal funding that trickles down to state and local communities, and how to work with their city governments and state governments take advantage of that money and be involved up for someone whose expertise is running a business and hopefully doing it well. Advocacy can be really intimidating. And so how do you answer a question when you know, do shop visits or whatnot around the globe? Can you actually do whatever you know, whether you have 10 minutes or 10 hours or whatnot?

Gary Sjoquist  26:59

From the scientists, one of the first things I tell retailers is that just realize it’s not up to you. You don’t have to carry this thing completely. Because you have a shop to run. And so you have to figure out right off the bat. So how much time or money can I put toward this? And if you’re fortunate, I know many retailers over the years, they’ve built their businesses to the point where they really trust the staff. And so they can get out and be involved in their communities to prosper. Like at my seminar, I’m going to have a retailer from Athens, Ohio, Peter Cosas, who’s going to talk about that process, about how, you know the developing business and having staff that you can trust and it’s running and it’s profitable. That gives you the chance to get out into the community and do some things but I think people retailers have to figure out okay, is a time, or is it money, and then realize, probably somewhere in your community.  There’ll be a citizens group or in a book club or a chapter of some organization trips for kids or maybe it’s unlikely High School, likely whatever you can help with that effort. Maybe they need you as a board member, maybe they need you as a funder. Somebody write a manual check. Maybe you’re somebody who can bring people into your shop, like the high school team to show them how to fix bikes or something. But you have some expertise. It’s a matter of finding where that will fit into the existing structure. And in some cases, it’s just simply writing a check being a part of people for bikes. I always tell retailers, if you want to get involved in advocacy at the national level, the first thing you should do is go to the national bike summit, because that gives you a context for the playing field. You realize how important it is to be in DC because if we’re not there for our bicycle industry, everybody else is there refrigeration, trucking drop, every kind of anything that gets sold or marketed or transported in the United States has a presence in DC already.  You know, the National Rifle Association hasn’t One lobbyist for every member of Congress, share a call all these big organizations. And so that’s what we need from the bicycle industry. So go to the national bike summit, learn what’s going on is inspirational, you’ll find a lot about what’s actually going on. And you’ll get a little peek into what it’s actually like to be walking the halls of Congress and meeting with staffers. And you’ll be doing this with a bunch of other people. So it really can be fun. The next thing I’d say is if your company or the company that you work for is a member of people for bikes, and hopefully, they are, then you can take sort of the next step, which is to go to an industry flying people for bikes organizes these, I think their quarterly or whenever they happen. So the idea is they fly in people from the industry in small groups, and then arrange meetings with members of Congress and there’s always dinners involved and I’ve gone to a couple of these, they’re the most recent one was great because I met five or six other people from the industry we traveled together. people for bikes does an excellent job of grifting you know, the issues and what the ask is the kinds of things you’re going to talk about. And then for Part of it is very simple because it’s you talking about your business or your state, and we call it that. I mean, you’ve been doing that your whole life and your passion for bicycling. And again, nobody has to fake that we all get that that’s part of it. So you just have to open that up to the staff or the people that you’re talking to. And so those flyers are a good way to sort of taking it to the next level. If you want to be involved locally in stuff, I would check and see, is there an AMA club? Or is there a Mumbai group in your area? Is there like an open street organization?  Chances are, there’ll be an organization that’s trying to stay engaged and helping planning departments create more areas for people to ride bikes, maybe it’s to connect a rail-trail somewhere, or be involved in some kind of a maybe there’s a local, state-level legislator who could do good things for bicycling. And so it’s a matter of supporting His or her efforts, you really have to do kind of an assessment of what’s out there and how you can have an impact, I think. And in some cases, I think, so matter of how deep Do you want to jump into this, with the realization that you know, you do have a business to run, and if that goes down, and you’re going to be in problem. So that’s your first priority. But I often talk to retailers and say, you know, this is the great thing about QBP. I’m paid to do this. So I’ll come and visit you. I’ll help you lay this out. I’ll find out what you’re interested in. And then we can plug you into, do you want to work with kids? Do you want to work with an established organization? Do you want to help with mom biking? Do you want to be involved in the high school migration aspect of it? Is there a trick for kids after you get involved with it can sort of tailor given the playing field with a retailer’s involvement might be great because if you’re buying from QBP, you’re going to get that’s just part of the deal. So

Morgan Lommele  31:55

I’m always inspired by the amount of well not just the leeway, you have to kind of create your own adventure around advocacy and empowering local shops and communities. But just the way that QBPempowers its own employees to become advocates, I don’t think there’s a day or maybe a week that goes by that I don’t talk to someone new or, you know, it QBP around our sustainability efforts, e-bikes or local advocacy in a place building. So how can we take that and inspire other executives not to discount the countless other suppliers, manufacturers that do have dedicated staff and budget for this? How do we want that corporate culture to live on and all of our panelists and members and retailers are listening to this, but how can they kind of inspire the companies that they buy from to do the same with their team?

Gary Sjoquist  32:41

Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate to be a QBP. But, but I mean, I worked with wonderful people at Trek, that specialized planet by different organizations to have sort of realized many of us feel, you know, bicycling can change the world. Gombrich used to say bicycling is the fix for everything. And in many ways, it is But you have to be able to carry that message and figure out ways to keep it going and to make it effective. And in many cases, that means separating a portion of the funds that companies make or operate on to some kind of an advocacy effort. And if it means only a part-time, person who, you know, we have it at our Lancaster Sileo, a guy named Nick Loftus, who spends eight hours every week focused on advocacy, he runs the DC, the distribution center at our facility. So he’s a really, really busy guy. But we just carve out eight hours for him. And he’s been tremendously effective in the area with like parks and mountain bike trails, and we’re going to be doing a gravel summit out there in October.  And so, carving out a little niche of time for an employee who is inclined to do this kind of a thing is really important. In fact, that’s when QBP did this in 1998. Part of it was to show other companies that you can do this You know, the bicycle industry has and will always be the product is king. The bike industry is always focused on the newer, better, lighter product. And that’s what drives many of us were like junkies. I mean, like many people come to work at QBP, because they know they’re going to spend seven or eight grand on bike stuff every year. And you might as well work in the industry. And, you know, but if you all are involved in advocacy, you want to be involved in advocacy. It’s really great if a company can carve out some time and let you get involved. If we have more companies that could do that. It’d be great to take some visionary thinking. But I think there are a lot of people who never get it that if you model the right kind of practices, other companies will do that.  Certainly, TREK has done that and Specialized in QBP and many others. So WTB Patrick Seidler like you could just go on and on and on. And I think this is something that’s lost on a lot of new sorts of startup companies. You know, we’ve had a tremendous amount of, especially with the E-bike side, a new startup who don’t really understand the kind of struggle that it takes to change paradigms to get involved in and reconfigure our communities to make bicycling not just okay, but a preferred mode or a way to, you know, one of the things that people for bikes did that was really wonderful as I was part of this, fortunately, is you’re talking to people in bureaucracies or city council people or mayors, whatever, about the value of bicycling their community and they don’t quite get it. And so we would just take them to Amsterdam for a couple of days and a couple of days in Munster Germany.  And I remember one year we took the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, and a whole group of people to 2010. And I think after the second day on riding our bikes, on the wonderfully integrated systems in Amsterdam that night to the mayor said, Now I get it now I see what you guys are talking about riding all over the place and it works. wonderfully said. I think we should devote another couple of million dollars a year. Bicycle facilities in Madison, Wisconsin. That kind of paradigm change is hard to get. But taking people to places where bicycling works really well, I do the same thing here. in Minneapolis, I brought a group of 10 people from Central Pennsylvania here last August. And we spent three days on our bike-sharing bikes, looking at bike trails, talking to people figuring out how do we make this work, we have this wonderfully integrated system of pedaling our bikes here. And our streets are safer because there are more bicycles on the streets. And so you can show that to people and then the spark. They sort of get it. And then a challenge is, well, how can I do that in my own community, but there are organizations to help with that, too, like myself and others who can provide resources.

Morgan Lommele  36:45

Wonderful. Yeah, you can talk a lot about I’ve heard you speak about market-based advocacy of using funds to build more places for people to ride and you know, key areas. And then that kind of industry power in terms of funding invoice and so just using the industry funds Then leveraging that for public fun vehicles that are places to ride bikes are really important

Gary Sjoquist 37:05

when bikes belong, essentially the original, not the very first iteration of bikes belong. But the second one in 1998. What a bunch of us just came to the realization that we just have to tax ourselves basically figure out a way to tax how the number of bicycles that we sell, and then create a pool of funding, sustainable annual funding to support these kinds of efforts. And was a hard lesson but it’s something I think is really proven to be beneficial people places very influential organization, doing great, great things. But it is sometimes incumbent upon the industry themselves just to realize we need to do this. And so I think it’s just pretty cool that it did happen. And then transferring that to other people. You know, everything I’ve said here today is not on paper anywhere. And that’s one of the things I’m trying to do is get it down on paper so I can then get it verified for those of us We’re still living, who were involved in those days. That’s just a way to show people like yourself, for example, who probably hope to do this for a long time. And if you can learn and see how we got to where we are, then it’s better for you down the road to get what you will continue to want for the industry and for organizations like people for bikes. So before I forget, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to do this. Because my knowledge No one’s ever done this before, sort of layout the origins of this and try and put it together. So thank you for doing this. And thank you to NVDA really appreciate the opportunity.

Morgan Lommele  38:35

Certainly, my pleasure, and I don’t mean to sound trite or anything, but I always just learned something new and get new inspiration when I talk to you. So I guess that’s my final question. In moments when you felt down or felt like your advocacy efforts were fruitless. What did you tell yourself or who did you talk to? What did you read to kind of keep going and know that you know, every little bit counts and you just have to keep ongoing

Gary Sjoquist 39:00

Yeah, it’s hard. I think I mentioned earlier about, you know how I got into this, I was a little older, and I had a lot more experience. And that idea of the long view, you know, understanding that just takes time. And in many cases, and I think many advocates around us have learned this when you’re working with DOTS, or Department of Transportation, or Department of Natural Resources, those kinds of things. In some cases, you’re talking with people that you just can’t change, and you just have to just wait until they retire. And the good news is, when we retire, you’re going to get somebody new and younger, who probably rode bikes to college or whatever. And they’ll have a different perspective. I’ve lived many, many instances where that happens. So I think the first lesson is just to be patient because things can turn in a way that suddenly doors will open up in 2010.  When Oberstar lost after 34 years of Congress, it was just devastating, I mean, to lose his 34 years of institutional knowledge. But thankfully, there were other members of Congress who worked with him who learned those lessons guys like Peter Defazio, who’s now leading the How to unite committee. And so you just sort of recalibrate and keep going. And I’m so fortunate because  has been picking up my tab all these years, they just keep sending me checks. It’s wonderful. maybe it’d be a little harder lesson for me if an organization that I was leading, lost their funding and had to retrench completely. But fortunately for me, I haven’t had to deal with that. But you do have to have the long view and you do have to understand it was glacially slow. But it’s such a great cause. We’re so fortunate to be working. I think about this every time I’m in Congress, walking the halls, I’m so happy to be for something instead of against something, you know, if I was there fighting these pipelines or fighting against whatever, everybody’s eyes always light up. When you start talking about basically, they always have some kind of connection to basically, they may not support it at the federal level or using funding for it. But at least you can talk to them about bicycling, and I think that’s really energizing. I’ve always found that

Morgan Lommele  41:02

Good. Well, I so appreciate your time. And I know you’ve been trying to write all this down and just institutionalize your life lessons and how you got the industry to where we are today. And I know it was a team effort, but we wouldn’t be here today without you. So thank you for your lifelong commitment to the industry and for speaking with me today.

Gary Sjoquist  41:20

Well, thank you, I’m gonna get a lot of this stuff checked out by some people who are there, and so I just want to get it right. And so again, thank you for the opportunity.

Morgan Lommele  41:28

Take care, Gary. Right. Thank you. 

Rod Judd  41:31

This has been bicycle retail radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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Andree Sanders

Tue, 8/18 10:45AM • 37:28

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, ride, teaching, kids, pedals, bike shops, trail, people, trips, mountain biking, talk, cycling, new york city, adults, riders, bicycle, brain, obstacles, year, glide

SPEAKERS

Kat Andrus, Rod Judd, Kent Cranford, Andree Sanders

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Kat Andrus  00:17

Hello and welcome to bicycle retail radio hosted by the National bike Dealers Association. I am Kat Andrus, and I’m this week’s guest host. I’m a youth program manager at people for bikes and I’m leading the charge for the youth cycling coalition. The YCC brings together 10 bicycling nonprofits taking collective action to provide all kids with the tools they need to develop a lifelong love of bicycling, ultimately integrating bicycling into the fabric of local communities. For this episode, I’ll be speaking with Andre Sanders and Andre, would you introduce yourself, please?

Andree Sanders  00:56

Hi, my name is Andree Sanders and I am excited Director of trips for kids, Metro New York, and also aka the bike was broke because I teach a lot of people how to ride bikes. I live in New York City. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I love it.

Kat Andrus  01:12

Thanks for being willing to talk with me today. I did a little background research on you and Google, talk to you a little bit. And I am so excited to talk to you because of all of your experience and all of your accomplishments kind of across the wide spectrum of improving the cycling community in general. So the first thing I really want to know and I think I know why you’re called the bike whisperer, but can you tell me the story of how you got this nickname as the bike whisperer because it’s such a cool nickname.

Andree Sanders  01:39

So I had been working with a client, she was a night nurse and was having a really difficult time and she was engaged and her wedding gift to her husband to be was. They wanted to go riding on their honeymoon. And so we were working together to teach her how to ride a bike. And it took me a long time for us working together to sort of feeling You’re out what I needed to say to her and where are we needed to work and what sort of analogies were needed to help her figure out how to ride a bike. And after a couple of lessons, it all came together and she learned how to glide and then she learned how to ride and then she was so excited. She called her fiance to say that I finally learned how to ride. My teacher. She’s amazing. She’s a bike whisperer. I heard that night said, Oh my god, I adopted it. I loved it. And they have dog whispers and horse whispers. And at that time that showed the dog whisperer was really popular. So I had a friend of mine design some business cards for me with the bike, whisper NYC on it, and I just loved it, and it really captures my essence of what I teach. Mm-hmm. That’s another question

Kat Andrus  02:46

I have about your method because it sounds to me to my uneducated perspective on this. It sounds really similar to what’s happening now with teaching kids to ride with the balanced bikes. Because I know you have this balanced method, can you talk more about that and is that similar to the balanced mind concept

Andree Sanders  03:05

is because everything on cycling, it’s all about balance and vision. And the balanced bike will eventually put me out of work if they could take off. So yeah, the balanced method is an amazing method, because Cycling is all about vision and balance. And to find your balance, it’s like a switch in your brain that you turn on. And they say, once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget, it’s really true. But finding that button in your brain takes exponential experience. And so you put them on a balance bike, you make the regular bike into a balance by taking the pedals off, and then you work with them first with teaching them how to walk the bike. Mm-hmm. And then how to glide the bike. And once they can glide the 20 to 30 yards, then we can proceed. But it’s finding that area in your brain where you’re comfortable, and you can go forward and it’s quite a process. finding that balance button is the hardest process of the whole experience. Teaching,

Kat Andrus  04:01

and what are people’s reactions? When you say, Okay, yeah, here’s the bike. Now I’m just going to take the pedals off. I mean, are they like, what you need the pedals to read? Or people

Andree Sanders  04:10

do? They’re like, yes, they find it very funny. And kids particularly are like, where do I get my pedals on? When do I get my pedals on, I can’t ride a bike without pedals. And I keep breaking it down into less and less simple tasks of let’s first glide this amount of space. And then once we can glide, and then I put them on like a little hill, and then they can glide down that hill and then they can go in a straight line, and then they learn how to counterbalance and then I will put on one pedal to teach them how to start and stop. Okay, there’s nothing scarier than getting on a bike with both pedals and sending them off and they don’t know how to stop. They’re gonna run right into a gate or fall over. And one of my goals is that no one gets hurt. Wait, who is teaching them how to ride a bike?

Kat Andrus  04:59

Well, yeah, because there are already so many psychological barriers, at least. Okay, so I have a fair amount of experience teaching kids how to ride. I don’t have experience teaching adults how to ride as you do. But there are so many psychological barriers from my experience, like, for example, people will focus on something they don’t want to hit. And what do they do? They ride straight in. 

Andree Sanders  05:19

Yeah, because the bike follows your eyes. Yeah. So let’s, wherever you’re looking. 

Kat Andrus  05:24

So I guess I was just wondering how you feel about that? I mean, would you say that getting your balance is the biggest barrier for adults learning to ride, or is it more psychological or are those tied together? 

Andree Sanders  05:35

They’re tied together. But biking is a head game. It’s really about trusting this foreign vehicle that’s now in between your legs, right? So it’s not natural for us to be propelled through space when it’s not on our own two feet. Our brain says there’s something wrong here. There is danger, and I have to protect myself. I talk a lot about the brain when I work with my clients, both adults, and children. Because it has a lot to do with your involuntary reactions, we all have something in our brain called the amygdala. Now, I’m not trained in neurology or studied it professionally. But this is sort of my layman’s interpretation of how the brain works. And your MC delays your fight or flight part of the brain. Right, right. So when you’re being propelled through space, or the concept of being propelled through space, when it’s not in the power of your own two feet, your megillah says, hey, there’s something wrong here. I don’t like this. I’m going to protect you. And all of a sudden your shoulders and your haunches go up and your arms tighten up and you go into like, protect yourself into a ball. Right? This happens involuntarily. It’s just your body’s primitive way of protecting itself. But luckily, we have a friend part of our brain, which is our frontal cortex, and that releases a chemical called endorphins. And we know what we’re doing and we know where we are, and we’re perfectly present and grounded. We’re in control. So we’re able to override and sort to persuade the amygdala to sort of like Calm down, we got this covered. And when we talk it out and we talk out loud and verbally, we override that inner voice enough, always that nagging little voice that tells us, no, you can’t do this. This isn’t safer, right? But if we talk out loud that overpowers it. And so by clients that have a really strong amygdala, and have a very nervous nature, I’ll have them talk out loud, and literally speak through every step that we’re taking, to help them work through the process. And it allows them to be 100% present because when we think inside of our head, you’re not present, you’re not well-grounded and ride a bike, you have to be well-grounded. The bikes cool. It’s very magical when you sit on a bike, right if you sit just right on that bike with your head over your shoulders over your hips, and your weight goes down the bike stem to the bottom bracket. Wherever your head turns, that bike is going to follow it because you’re communicating with that bike. The bike wants to be your legs. Mm-hmm. And the bike wants you to be its eyes. So it’s this symbiotic relationship that you now have with this inanimate object.

Kat Andrus  08:10

Yeah. So do you explain it that way to people like this bike is no longer a separate thing? This is an extension of your body at this point 

Andree Sanders  08:17

I do they put you want to become one you were working in a partnership, your team, and I do talk to it like that. And I want them to like the bike. I want them to be familiar with the bike when they first get on the bike. They’re rigid and do they’re afraid of the bike. They’re like, I don’t know what this thing’s gonna do. I don’t trust it. And so you build the trust. And that’s why you start with the pedals off with the gliding so that they can feel comfortable and they’re in control. They don’t like it. They put their hands on their brakes, they put the feet down. They’re in control. They’re going as we walk at about two to three miles an hour. When we are riding our bikes, just sliding it we do about three to five miles an hour. And then when we start to pedal it could be six to eight miles an hour and then faster, of course. talk all about you have your fingers on your brakes at all times, you always pull softly and equally on the brakes. If you want to slow down, you can put your feet on the ground. And so I talk them through all of their unknown areas and that they’re not sure about,

Kat Andrus  09:13

right. And I want to go back a little bit because I think it’s so unique. And like I said, My experience with teaching kids to ride and I think that for a lot of people who are probably listening to this show, it’s a common thing to learn how to ride when you’re a kid. I know that’s not the case for a lot of people. But how did you get started teaching adults to ride or was there a story behind that? What inspired you to do that? Like, did you have a difficult journey yourself learning to ride? Tell us more about that. 

Andree Sanders  09:42

So like I mentioned the beginning. I’m the executive director of trips for kids Metro New York, which is a nonprofit organization that gives transformative cycling experience to youth. And I run a lot of open rides, I’ll do these open events, and then I’ll do closed events where I’ll have 10 to 12 kids come in On the rides, and inevitably, people would show up that didn’t know how to ride. So I started teaching children how to ride, get them acclimated to potentially ride on the trail. But when you ride the mountain, a brand new novice rider, it’s pretty challenging for them to do. But I got the knack of teaching how to ride. And then I had a counselor show up and she didn’t know how to ride either. And I started working with her to get started at this event, I was producing an open event with bicycle habitat to take a kid mountain biking day, back a couple of years ago. And I was teaching this person this adult how to ride and the marketing person at habitat saw me and that and said, Oh, do you want to run my bike program and habitat and teach people how to ride and I was like, sure. That’s really, really fun. And so I started teaching adults, I was just sort of doing it. Someone saw me and then expanded to adults. And I started teaching adults which is really fun teaching anybody’s really They find that adults, particularly a lot of fun because they seem to have a bigger psychological barrier than children do. And they have a lot more to risk. If you’re a professional, you’re 30 years old, and you’re a professional, you don’t want to go to work with a skinned knee, you don’t want to hurt your elbow, you know. So you’re a little bit more cautious. And they understand analogies better because I do a lot of talking, I get to know my clients, you know, what do they like to do? Are they athletic? Are they not athletic? Do they enjoy the outdoors? What is their purpose in learning to ride a bike? Is it to commute? Is it for exercise for community? Is it for socialization? And all of that information really helps me teach them and make the analogies that help them understand the vision and the process.

Kat Andrus  11:44

Yeah, I want to talk more about the differences and similarities between teaching adults versus teaching kids do you find that kids are less fearful than adults, I would suspect that kids would be less fearful than adults. But maybe that’s actually not an advantage. Maybe that means that you get more hurt, I don’t know,

Andree Sanders  12:01

you know, I find teaching such an individual action because since we’re working one on one, everybody is so different. No two clients have ever been the same. And I’ve tried to like, generalize my teaching. I haven’t been as successful. It’s really about who that person is in the core. You know, are they a fearful person? Are they adventurous people? Are they know it all person? Are they a trusting person, all of these different aspects of personality really come out. And each one has its benefits and its challenges.

Kat Andrus  12:38

And so how do you get to know someone well enough to hone in on their personality to the degree you need in order to be able to individualize your teaching, and that’s fascinating to me. That makes sense because I’ve been a teacher, as a classroom teacher. And so I know all about identifying who’s the leader in the room and breaking down the different little personalities so you can make the group work together as well as possible, but I would imagine for your work, you kind of have to do that really quickly. Right? Like you don’t have an entire year with them necessarily.

Andree Sanders  13:07

No, I usually have one or two lessons. I really yeah. We have a five-minute walk from where I meet them down to where I teach. If it’s children, I talked to the parents about them first. Tell me what type of child they are, what kind of learner they are. Are they aesthetic learners? Are they verbal learners of an audio learner? What are their challenges? Are they excited about learning? Are they know it all about learning? I mean, a lot of kids don’t know everything. We’re going to teach them already. So they say, even though they don’t, ya know, I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard it, too. I already know that. I knew that. I was that. Everybody knows that. No, that’s okay. A lot of the kids are that way. And then you work with them with kids. I make a lot of visual analogies. I talk about being the king of the kingdom being a pilot of a plane, being the driver of the car of the vehicle. They get to be the leader here. That’s all up to them by talking about control and never in their life, they don’t get to control when they get to eat, they don’t get to control when they go to bed, go to school. But when they’re on a bicycle, they’re in total control, because they get to control when they start, where they start, where they go, how fast they go there, when they want to stop how long they want to go, they have the power of that. And so I talk a lot to them about that. And I empower them to be the leaders, and they’ll show me how to teach what I just taught them back to me. And so it’s a game that I play with them. And with adults, it’s sort of very similar, where I empower the adult to be able to do it. But with kids, I find kids more challenging. You know, when I make analogies when I talk about the brain when I talk about the body, I do a little bit of the Alexander Technique when I talk about when we sit on a bike, the lower back the small of our back, it’s like we have a communication center back there because when you sit on that bike, just write it can read your mind. But if your energy’s up high on your shoulders, the bike can’t hear you. anymore. So it has to below. It has to be in that communication center. Wow. And it’s funny, I used to put my hand over my mouth when I was teaching. It’s like the bike can’t hear you and I would put my hand over my mouth. But when I started again, I’ll be teaching with the mask on. It’s kind of funny. 

Kat Andrus  15:15

Yeah, right, right. Plans to start that up again soon, or 

Andree Sanders  15:21

I do because I think COVID-19 I live in New York City where public transportation, I won’t get on public transportation right now. It’s unsafe. There are too many unknown variables. And so I think Cycling is the answer to that. And I want to teach as many people as I can to ride responsibly, to ride smartly and to ride confidently, Child and Adult so that they can commute they can go to school by bike, and they can get to work by bike in New York City, we have over 1100 miles of bike paths, and the Blasio is going to be adding more and more protected and the more infrastructure is built, the better the education is out there, the safer it’s going to be for the cyclist, and it’s better for everyone. It’s going to be less exposure around people you don’t know it’s good for the heart, it’s good for the environment. It’s good for the dealers in I mean, potentially, it’s going to change the face of the world, what the world would look like after COVID-19 it’s gonna look very different across the world. 

Kat Andrus  16:25

And I hope and I would expect that your business is going to be booming because I know in Colorado, I’ve seen people getting on bikes for the first time in 10 years or the first time ever and that is really happening. So I would guess that you’re going to be well-positioned to help people transition in whatever this is

Andree Sanders  16:43

I started scheduling clients that want to start back to ride I’m not doing fresh learn to ride because I have to get to close them at the moment. People who want to relearn how to ride if they already have that balanced foundation. I can teach it six feet apart and still be Say, I also have them fill out a pretty thorough questionnaire about their exposure, they’ll have to wear masks and gloves. I’ll sterilize the bike. And it’s one on one. It’s not a big group, and I work in a pretty secluded area down in Riverside Park. 

Kat Andrus  17:14

Okay.

Kent Cranford  17:16

This podcast is brought to you by NBDA, membership, and industry donors to continue providing education and content like the podcast you’re listening to now. We need your support. Go to NBDA.com and join or donate today.

Kat Andrus  17:36

I want to transition into talking about your work with trips for kids because of all the accomplishments I was reading about when I was Google stalking you. So is it accurate that you came to lead trips for kids in New York City back in 2006? Is that right? 

Andree Sanders  17:52

That is correct. That is correct. In 2001, my husband and I discovered chips for kids and started volunteering for it. We loved it. We had a two-year old that we like to go riding with. And he would pull them on a chariot behind us. And we were looking for other families to go mountain biking with their kids. And we sold trips for kids. How cool is that? And it turned out to be this nonprofit, volunteer organization that gave transformative cycling experiences to youth that wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity. And we’re like, cool, then I fell in love with it. And in 2006, the executive director at the time, Denise Tromba, realized that it was just a bit more than she wanted to take on. And so she asked me if I would be willing to take it on. And at the time, I had just had my second child, and it was the perfect transition to focus on. You know, I could stay at home, raise my kids and run this nonprofit go cycling every weekend, what could be better, and at the time, I didn’t realize that it would grow into what it is today, which is I have five programs cycling as my life and I’m an LCI through the League of American cyclists, bicyclists. And so I’m going to be teaching to sort of add to the safety of riders through a bike shop. I’m going to be offering savvy cyclist count classes and commuter classes and how to bike safer in the city, and work with bike shops and offer my lessons through them. I never knew that biking would be such a big thing in my life and trips for kids are amazing. Because Have you ever been mountain biking cat?

Kat Andrus  19:32

Yeah, so I lived in Memphis, Tennessee, before I moved to Colorado four years ago. And so I thought that I was mountain biking, and I guess I kind of was because it was riding on trails, you know, and it was in the trees and everything. And then I moved to Colorado, and I tried to mountain bike and I was terrified. So I haven’t mountain bike that much in Colorado because the rails here are just so real, and I have maybe some of those cycles. logical barriers to riding on trails like that, and we were talking about, but a little bit here and there, I’d like to do a lot more of it.

Andree Sanders  20:06

So you understand that when you’re a mountain biking, you have to be mind and body 100% present. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it’s 100% present. Yeah, when you do road riding or pleasure riding or trail riding on a straight trail, like a Rails to trail your present, but not in the same way that you’re present on a mountain bike when you’re mountain biking, you have to be 100% present, because things are constantly changing. Mm-hmm. Every pedal stroke every turn that you take, you don’t know what’s going to be next isn’t going to be route. And you can take the same trail every day, 365 days a year, and every day, that exact same trail will be different. There’ll be a different rock in a place. It’ll be a wet route, depending on what the weather is what the wind is. You can write the same trail and it’s always different and you never know what’s going to be in front of you. So you have to be 100% present. And that’s what I absolutely love most about mountain biking. Because when you get off that bike, You’re exhausted, you’re happy, you’re challenged. You’re amazed that you accomplished what you accomplished. You do things that you would never think you would do. You want, you know, all of a sudden, I’ll present to my kids. I work in a park and New York City. There are three trails in New York City, but the largest one, it’s 10 miles, and Cunningham Park in Queens. And it’s a very technical trail. So there’s a lot of turns, a lot of routes, a lot of rock, and manmade obstacles that you have to go over. Like if a tree falls down. Instead of cutting the hole in a tree for the trail. We’ll build it up to make it a rollover. Oh, wow, cool. So that the kids you look at it, you walk up to it, and there’s this up to your knees. So it’s like two feet high. The kids are like, Oh my god, I can’t do that. And then they do. We sit down, we get off the bike. We take a look at it. We talk about lines, we talk about vision. We talk about equal pressure level pedals, we talk about you know, momentum, and then we spot them as they go over it and so on. They look at these things that they would never think they could do. And yet, they get it done and you literally overcome obstacles. And that’s a really transferable lesson. Mm-hmm. That is brilliant. Because you can take that same chutzpah, that same vision, take that situation apart, rebuild, how best to handle it can go from the bike trail to your classroom, to your difficult home situation, to a fight with your best friend, to anything to a job interview. You can really transfer those obstacles and how you approach them, and how you can see your future because you’re always looking forward. So what I love about trips for kids and my parts in it, and I got addicted to it

Kat Andrus  22:44

sounds like you definitely did. I mean, you’ve been there for over a decade now. Right? It also is making me think when you were talking about lines and trajectory and equal pressure on pedals. I mean, you’re teaching science to do you feel like

Andree Sanders  22:59

yeah, I teach science, physics math. Yeah, environmental studies. When we get a group of kids, we start off we go over the bike, we talk about the gearing the ratios. When we evaluate the obstacles, we’ve talked about the lines, we talk about the momentum. So it is science. And we tried to bring some stem and I’m not a trained teacher, and I don’t work on a specific curriculum. But in these three to four-hour adventures when we work with the kids, we talk about how Long Island was formed from a glacier, and it had glacial moraines. We talked about it being a secondary forest in the Queens we work in the soup no Cunningham Park is the fifth largest Park in New York City. And the area that we work in some of its really scrappy, all invasive plants and vines everywhere. So we talk about invasives. We talk about Poison Ivy, we identify plants. If I’m lucky enough that the kids get to ride more than once with us. We can have them Teach the newer riders some of the things that they learned on the ride prior. So they get to be leaders. And so we teach them to be mentors. And then with my most advanced program, the New York cranks, those are my most advanced riders and we actually have a race team through Nika, New York. And as that team has developed, those writers now run and are mentors to newer writers who are used to these beautiful public events. I have a fleet of 50 bikes, and I bring the bikes out to the park. And I’d invite families to come and I would teach them how to ride. I had partnered with Cliff who had donated a manual pump track a wooden pump truck that I would put out in the field. And so we would teach new riders how to stand on their pedals to keep the equal pressure level pedals when they went over obstacles and how to glide. We would teach them how to shift we teach them how to have equal pressure on the brakes, and we will teach them about the vision of always looking forward when you are about to go to an obstacle. You never want to look at the obstacle, like you talked about earlier. You said, if you don’t want to hit that person, what do you do? right into that person, right?

Kat Andrus  25:10

I once had a kid. So I used to teach kids how to ride a lot of times in tennis courts because it’s a contained environment, the urban environment has some tennis courts. It’s just it made sense, right. And I had a kid once drive straight into the pole that held up the net three times in a row to the point she broke the shifter. And I eventually was just like, you don’t learn in the tennis court anymore, because there’s no way you’re going to not focus on that pole, and run straight into it over and over again, so I could have used your expertise back then.

Andree Sanders  25:41

I had one of my very first trips for kids rides. I had a kid like that and he hit every tree every time. It took us an hour to go two miles because he literally we hit a go-round. I’m gonna hit the tree. And he literally said, every single tree, but it’s all about that vision, and it’s a teachable thing. So one way you do it is as you have an obstacle that they’re going to go over, you stand on the opposite end, you talk about that line, you have them physically put the bike down and walk over the line that they’re going to ride over, and to get where they want to get to. And then you stand on the other side to help them keep their focus. And so we would do all of that. And I would have my New York crank kids, my most advanced riders, teach all of these new kids and adults at these open events that I would do these take a kid mountain biking days, I would do two a year. And it’s amazing because to be able to empower you with teaching, give some true empowerment because there’s nothing harder than teaching rather than teaching.

Kat Andrus  26:41

And it must feel so cool for them to be able to teach something to an adult to someone older than them. I mean, when you’re a kid age is so significant. And I think they must just feel so incredibly proud of themselves to be able to watch the progress that an older person has made because of their teaching.

Andree Sanders  26:59

Yes. 100% agree with that. One of our open programs is a family fun day and they have a family ride club, where within two rides, the kids are better than the parents and then coaching the parents of what to do. It’s amazing. And it’s so much fun because the kids are going up much faster.

Kat Andrus  27:16

Since you mentioned Nika, I wanted to ask you I read that you started the first middle and high school mountain biking group in New York City. Is that correct?

Andree Sanders  27:25

That is correct. Well, trips for kids that I have to say it was actually my husband. It was also my board. My son at the time was 13. My oldest and my husband went to bat tire festival out on Blue Mountain. And they met the New York league director, Jason Cairo. Right when we think Jason was in his second season. And in 2008, Eugene and I had attended an Ember summit when the guys in California Norco was going to bring it nationally. And we’re like, oh, who’s gonna bring it to New York City? No way, no way. New York State There’s gonna have to start the team in New York City. No one would do it. And so when Alison we had this opportunity, and my son were still avid mountain bikers, so my son’s like, Dad, we got to do this. And so Eugene recruited four other riders. And we had our first season. And as it developed, we realized we had a kid who didn’t have a bike. And here I was with trips for kids with a fleet of bikes, and it seemed the perfect fit to make a program under the trips for kids umbrella. And so we would do lessons and we would have practices. So then we started running our season year-round for the more advanced riders. And then there was a great article, there was a reporter, I think was the second season that followed us around like alien sport in New York City or something, but my husband’s actually the one who brought it into the trips for kids family. Okay.

Kat Andrus  28:53

Yeah, I mean, these are huge accomplishments. I don’t understand how you do all of those things at once and raise children but it’s incredible. You’re awesome. I am so impressed by everything that you continue to do there. It’s really exciting. Thank you. We started talking about this a little bit more, but I wanted to talk about the relationship between bike shops and retailers and what you do, whether it’s trips for kids, or teaching adults to ride, what kind of relationship do you have to retailers or bike shops? And then also, how would you recommend retailers themselves can get involved with if they want to get involved with trips for kids or Nika? And or how can they get their customers involved?

Andree Sanders  29:33

It’s a really great opportunity. I have three amazing bike shops that support me, and trips for kids, which is bicycle habitat. And peak Pro Shops helped to build the trail out and Cunningham Park in Queens and they’re a huge supporter, and then a local shop a little bit closer to me called innovation. And they help in different ways. I mean, they all give great discounts to all the kids who need bikes and they help me Co-produced events with them. The take a kid mountain biking day when we made it a big public event. The first time I did it that it got really large. I co-partnered with bicycle habitat and Gary Fisher came and he drew a huge crowd for it. And then the exposure allowed me to really sort of ride that wave and keep the big momentum going. And then I would mix it up with different bike shops and next season I did a lot with peak because the peak is out in Queens, and then I would work with other bike shops as well have mechanics there because it would give them exposure, they would come in, they would set up a mechanic shop or they would set up a swag table, or they would just co-sponsor with supporting with marketing for the events. And then bicycle habitat helped me I approached them my fleet of bikes was getting old and Charlie McCorkle wrote to specialize in 2016. They got my whole fleet replaced by specialized which was brilliant and so fabulous. So huge sponsor there. he donates stuff for raffles. They can always donate for raffles. And then you get marketing. So he’s on my website, he’s on all my jerseys and my T-shirts. And so it says partnership. And the way that clients can get involved is they can volunteer for all of these organizations, trips for kids are always looking for passionate writers to help with the events. I try to do it. And historically, I don’t know what the future will look like, historically, I could get between three to 500 kids on bikes a year, particularly because of these large open rides that I would do. When you know four hours I get 100 hundred 50 people on bikes and get them on 20 minute 30-minute tours, but the retailers are great because I’m an LCI as well then that league of national bicyclists. And if they want to promote education, then hire LCIs to teach for them. It’s a partnership of how different rates for different people in the business aspect you just would negotiate but it’s a great opportunity, this partnership To educate because if we have a vacation, then we can create the infrastructure to create the safe roads to ride in. And then safe environments for people to ride in, up in Colorado and Durango. I have a friend who goes to Fort Lewis, and he lives in an apartment and he writes trail to college and back home. So I mean, we built the infrastructure and look at what The Waltons are doing in Arkansas. It’s amazing. You know, Arkansas is now this mountain bike state. I think it’s a 1500 mile trail that’s gonna connect around the state of Arkansas. Right. And the trails I haven’t Bennington are just incredible. So the opportunities are really there. And now is a time that marketing would really be amazing in that partnership to bring education and cycling together to get more people on bikes because it’s the future

Kat Andrus  32:52

right? And bikes are having such a moment right now even in the midst of everything that’s going on. Who knows like you said, what the future looks like for us. And how long this will last. But bikes are having a huge moment right now, which is why I’m really hoping people will do what they can to get involved with programs like Nika and trips for kids and all the other programs in the youth cycling coalition, of course. And I hope that retailers will see the benefit because it seems pretty clear that if we can keep these programs going and keep people like you working, then it’ll be an obvious benefit to the retailer’s because more people will be buying bikes, and then it’ll be this beautiful feedback loop where and then it’ll be better for the environment. It’ll be better for infrastructure and

Andree Sanders  33:32

better for insurance and better for your health, then it is a win-win and the dominoes would fall in the right place. Absolutely. I love the partnership and biking society. I’ve never met anybody who gets off a bike and be angry, always happy when you get off a bike. I mean, how many times was the last time you got off a bike and you weren’t smiling?

Kat Andrus  33:50

I mean, it hardly ever happens. And I would have to say the only time it really does happen is because of traffic with cars, car incidents. I’d have to say that you know There is the right will angry driver. But then there is the occasional angry driver. Yes. But in general, it makes you feel physically mentally better. I find it very contagious. Absolutely. I mean, that’s why I’ve gotten addicted to working with bikes and I absolutely agree with you. Well, thank you for the time to talk to us. Is there anything else you want to make sure and talk about before we get off the phone because I feel like I could talk to you forever but it’s been almost an hour. 

Andree Sanders  34:30

It’s been almost an hour like I said, I wasn’t going to be hard to fill up the time talking to me about bikes.

Kat Andrus  34:36

There’s any websites or anything like that, that you want to plug or anything that we’ve missed? I mean, feel free to throw that in. 

Andree Sanders  34:44

Well, my main website is www trips for kids dot NYC and that has all my programs on it. And I’m always looking for volunteers. I hope to go back to doing socially distant rides. I don’t know what that will look like. Like I said New York City will be the last to open up. But the virus is if we’re outside. It’s possible that we could keep a social distance. I don’t know. But I’m hoping to go back probably in the fall. I don’t really think the summer is realistic. But I’m hoping to be able to start producing rides in the fall. The Nikah season hopefully will be taking off in the fall as well. But if you have questions or want to know how to get involved with the League of American Bicyclists or get involved with trips for kids, I’m happy to answer any questions. Being involved with trips for kids has been life-altering for me, and it’s all for the better.

Kat Andrus  35:33

Well, I’m hopeful that people will be chomping at the bit to get out on bikes would say free to be outside and have a feeling that your ridership and your volunteers will just be through the roof and I hope the best for you with all of these amazing projects that you’re working on. 

Andree Sanders  35:51

Well, thank you so much for taking the time and researching me and giving me this opportunity Kat I’m really tickled pink and really honored.

Kat Andrus  35:58

Oh yeah. Is your minute Hear I want to be just like you when I grow up.

Andree Sanders  36:04

It’s easy to stay on a bike, babe. Yeah, one last thing I want to do is I want to increase women ridership because we don’t have enough girls riding particularly mountain bikes.

Kat Andrus  36:12

Yeah. Are you familiar with little bellows? That’s another use like I am familiar with little Bella’s. Yes, I talked to say bruh. Last week actually, for the same podcast,

Andree Sanders  36:22

Leah came last year too we run a summer camp for Nika and Leah Davis came and she brought her bronze medal and it was very cool. We got to hang out with her. We went riding with her. We did an all-girls ride. She’s very cool. The programming I’ve always taught has been for girls and boys. But that’s always kind of been a special goal of mine as well as to increase female ridership because just because of all the benefits that we see to getting a girl on a bike, it’s really incredible. It is particularly during preadolescence to get them through adolescence. It makes a big difference.

Kat Andrus  36:54

Thanks, everyone for listening. This has been a bicycle retail radio hosted by the National Bike Dealers Association. I am Kat Andrus and thank you for listening.

Rod Judd  37:04

This has been Bicycle Retail Radio by the National Bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDAcom

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