Expanding Your Business and Navigating Your Changing Role
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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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