Welcome to our monthly third degree interrogation of six unsuspecting bicycle dealers from around Australia, who will call and ask without notice, ‘How’s business?’ You never know when your turn will come around next…
As always, we ask a follow up question. This month we asked, ‘What has been the most valuable business training you have received?’
We thought the question would be timely, given that we’re putting the finishing touches on the program for the first annual Bicycling Trade Live event coming up in Sydney on 10th August. Bicycling Trade Live is focused around giving bike shops the training and tools you need to become more profitable… If you think that you can more seamlessly embed an editorial ‘plug’ within an article than that, we’d like to hire you!
Rhys Williams of Back Bone BMX in the suburbs of Canberra, ACT said:
Business has been a little bit slower the last few months than normal, based on the previous three years. I can’t really explain why that is. We’re doing everything that we normally do.
We’ve been putting on BMX Freestyle competitions and we’ve been doing the coaching at ACT schools that we do.
April and May were down a little bit on past years but June is starting to head back up in the right direction.
We just do BMX. On the Queen’s Birthday long weekend we ran what I would guess to be the biggest Freestyle BMX competition that’s going to happen in Australia this year. We had 800 riders from all over Australia come to Canberra.
We put on a two day event at different skate parks. We finished the weekend off by premiering a DVD that we’ve been making for over three years that includes all our team riders that we sponsor. So it was a successful weekend and since then it has given us a bit of momentum in the way of sales picking up.
The DVD is simply called The Back Bone Video. It’s 57 minutes long and which is 97% Australian footage from various skate parks and dirt jumps. It’s definitely a quality production. One of my staff members Brendan Boeck filmed the whole thing and edited it.
Rather than working in his normal job of selling and repairing bikes, he’d go out on the weekends and film that and then he was sitting behind the computer and editing it pretty solidly for the past six months.
So it was a bit of an expense, but we’ve got distributors in the USA, UK, France and Spain waiting for us to duplicate the DVD so that they can sell them overseas.
It’s going to be an awesome way to rebrand our store. Although selling the DVD internationally won’t have a big effect on sales here, it increases the name of the brand Back Bone and local Australian kids will see that on all sorts of social media outlets from around the world. That in turn will hopefully drive sales in our shop here.
(regarding business training) I’ve had to learn a lot the hard way. I was a plumber for 10 years and towards the end of my time I was the foreman for a plumbing company that employed over 30 men and I learnt a lot of what not to do from my old boss!
He didn’t keep his finger on the pulse.
This is our 10th year in business. I’m 39 years old and I’ve been riding BMX my whole life, so the BMX knowledge was there. But going into the business, I probably went in a bit green. But I’ve just learned the hard way and tried to correct my mistakes.
We probably have quite an unorthodox business model.
Nathan Fox of Tailwind Cycles, in the southern Adelaide suburb of O’Halloran Hill, SA said:
It’s patchy. We’re having some good days but we’re having some quiet days as well.
We moved about 10 weeks ago to a bigger store, probably three times the size of our old store, five k’s from the old location. The other store was far too small.
The size we’re in now is the size we want to be in. It’s 250 square metres.
We do Giant and Merida. We started the business in 2008 when we moved from the UK. We just fancied the change. A better lifestyle for the kids. We’ve got young kids.
We used to have a bike shop in the UK. We owned a shop there for seven years.
My wife’s got an uncle and two cousins in South Australia, which is why we chose here.
(regarding business training) Just experience really. I would say, ‘Don’t make the same mistake twice.’
It’s very different having a business here to having one in the UK in a country town in Lancashire. That was a steep learning curve. People’s buying habits and everything is really different. You’d think it would be the same, being another English speaking country, but it’s so different.
Consumer loyalty, there’s none here! But in the UK you’d get your more regular customers.
We’ve got it here now, but at the start it was so hard. It was so hard starting the business from scratch. The internet is a massive problem as well. But you probably hear that every day.
People need to wake up and realise that unless they start supporting the local shops, they’re not going to be here in five years’ time.
Our pricing is pretty good now. We do a lot of race BMX stuff and we’d struggle with American companies with the internet but our prices are not that far off now.
Brad Steigenberger at Bike Force, Bendigo, Victoria said:
Business has been ok. It has certainly quietened down a little bit now with the colder weather coming on. But for the first part of this year so far, it has been good.
We’ve had a really good mix. The kids section of the shop has probably been the quietest. But certainly the MTB and the road sides of the shop have been quite good.
We sell Merida, Lapierre, Cannondale and Pinarello, so we’ve got a great spread of bikes. Through the Bike Force chain, we’ve got access to some other brands as well.
We took over the old Hardings store. But we’ve rebranded the shop. New fit-out, new bikes and changed a lot of the store around.
There’s five bike stores in Bendigo now and the bike scene is very big. There’s a very strong cycling community, that’s for sure.
There’s plenty happening with rail trails around town with the opening of a new rail trail from Axedale to Heathcote and it goes from Bendigo to Axedale which has been open for some time.
(regarding business training) Product knowledge training has been the most valuable for myself, that’s for sure because we’re a pretty new store. We’re only 18 months old.
We had a bit of training initially from the franchise (Bike Force), but then ongoing training from suppliers.
Ben Mather at Avanti Plus Launceston, Tasmania said:
Here in Tassie, well for us anyway, I’d say that mountain bikes are booming. Mountain bike sales have been exceptionally good. Probably due to a lot of trail construction. It seems to be a growing industry.
There was a real rush on that sub $1,000 price point, with people wanting to get into it, towards the end of summer and getting on towards winter. Probably in the past three weeks we’ve seen the dual suspension market go really well. I think that’s because there’s a bit of price point stuff around at the moment with wholesalers wanting to clear a little bit of stuff out before they see new stock coming in.
Road bikes, it seems to have run its course. It seems to have died in the arse a little bit.
Derby (Blue Derby trail network) is the main new mountain bike trail region. I think cycle tourism in Tasmania is set to go really well and that will have a flow-on to the shops.
As with everything, there seems to be too many bureaucrats and not enough doers, but I guess it will come eventually. Too many departments want to do studies on everything. That’s how they justify their jobs isn’t it?
We’re part of the Avanti Plus group, so we sell a lot of Avanti and Scott. But to be honest, I don’t think the brands make the store. I think the store makes the brands. I’m a big believer that it wouldn’t matter what brands you put into the store, if they’re a good store, they’ll do well.
Those that rely on their brands, they don’t put enough importance on what their store offers.
(regarding business training) I think in terms of the importance of staff training. A lot of business owners say, ‘What if I spend all this money training staff and they leave?’
We’ll, what if you don’t train them and they stay! That resonates quite highly with me.
Giving them the tools to do better inside your store is very important.
It is good to have a third party trainer. Sometimes it’s hard for a boss to deliver training. But if you’ve got a good rapport with your staff and you can deliver that training and feel confident enough to do it, then it can be done yourself. But if you’re a reasonable sized business, then a third party can be a good thing.
Jed Kampf at Pro Cycles Caloundra on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast said:
It hasn’t been going too bad. It has its ups and downs, I suppose like anyone has had recently.
Retro bikes have been going well for us. We’ve tried a whole lot of different things.
Road bikes are pretty slow for us. We’re more mountain bikes, BMX, retro bikes, more family bikes as well.
We find Caloundra is a more family orientated area. We’ve tried to focus on road bikes, but they don’t really go that well for us.
Mountain bikes have definitely picked up for us because we’ve got a mountain bike track just down Sugar Bag Road that seems to be taking off.
I race BMX so we’re starting to get a few of the racers come in now as well.
We do pretty much Trek. We do some Upland as well. They’re a cheaper, but good quality mountain bike. Some people in our area don’t want a high end mountain bike. They want something a little cheaper but still good quality, so Upland have been good for us as well.
They’re done by Pyramid Imports.
(regarding business training) Trek have got Trek University (online). They’ve got some really good information on there. They’ve got the retail side, they tell you about the bikes. You’ve got videos.
I’ve done all that and it’s been really helpful.
Kevin is the owner of this shop. His son Danny does Rival bikes. He’s very knowledgeable as well so I get good feedback from Danny. He runs Rival Racing. He’s successful with that. He doesn’t come in the shop as much anymore, but I still ring him up and ask questions.
Ian Ewart of Omega Cycleworks in the suburbs of Newcastle NSW said:
In short, I think it’s good. I’m pleased with where we’re at. About September last year we took on Avanti, Scott, Malvern Star, Raleigh etc. For us that’s been a good thing. If you look at our figures from September through to now, we’ve had a very good increase.
We’ve been in this location for 2 ½ years but we were four years in the previous location, so it’s been 6 ½ years since we started the business.
It was a successful move for us to go from the old premises to this one.
I the last couple of years Cheeky and Bike Works came up here, so there were a couple of guys from Sydney / Central Coast thinking the grass is always greener on the other side. In my opinion they may have found that it’s not much greener. It’s not much different from the rest of the country. You’ve still got to work it.
There’s a couple of others that have also opened up apart from them. I think there’s a certain amount of business in this town and it doesn’t just increase because there’s another store. It has to be transferred from another place. I mean, we doubled our turnover when we took on Avanti, so where did that business come from? It had to come from somewhere. It doesn’t just mystically appear. There’s still the same amount of people living in the town.
I think if the Sydney boys want to come here they’ve got their work cut out for them because we’re very parochial up here. If you’re not from Newcastle, people will soon figure that out.
There’s two degrees of separation in Newcastle. That’s how it works. Everybody knows everybody. You make one mistake and it could sink you because everyone will know the next morning, everyone! (laughs)
I think more and more people are riding bikes here. It’s the ‘lifestyler’. It wouldn’t be fair to say that racing cyclists float shops. I think they believe that they do, but they don’t.
It’s the average punter, the average lifestyler. Their doctor said to them at 40, ‘You’ve got to change your lifestyle.’ That’s where your market place is in Newcastle.
It’s still fairly strong. It’s not like everybody wants a $200 bike. There’s still plenty of that, but there’s also plenty who want one in that $1,000 to $2,000 area. I think theirs the golfers who are taking up cycling as well.
It’s an easy place to cycle, Newcastle. It’s quite flat, so it’s easy to get around. Cycle paths are helping. The Council’s putting in new paths, so that’s beneficial. We had a new track put in recently that’s 30 kilometres return on sealed road. You’ve got to share the path with walkers but a lot of people are riding that 30 kilometres. Joe Average on his flat bar, and they’re doing it as fitness.
So this town is changing from that blue collar that it has always been, but it takes time.
(regarding business training) Dr Jim Richards. I don’t know if that one would go over well. He’s a preacher but he’s a psychologist as well. He’s got some great stuff on identifying personality types, which is a good selling technique.
Once you can identify a personality type, you know whether that person wants a lot of information or little information.
