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Customer Centricity at Its Finest – Steve the Bike Guy

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This episode’s guests are Steve and Kristin Brandt, owners of Massachusetts-based bicycle store Steve the Bike Guy. Steve the Bike Guy is a customer-focused, family-owned bike shop offering expert service, new bikes, parts & accessories, and lots of advice and help. A 2021 Bicycle Retailer of Excellence Award winning shop, listen in as Steve and Kristin share about the uniqueness of the shop, drop in Saturdays, marketing and community engagement, the shop blog, and a bit about bringing your authentic self into every interaction.

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Customer Centricity at Its Finest – Steve the Bike Guy

Tue, 12/14

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, bicycle, ride, steve, people, shop, bike shop, riders, pandemic, started, years, working, buy, saturday, industry, customer, retailers, mobile, service, blog

SPEAKERS

Heather Mason, NBDA , Kristin Brandt, Steve Brandt

NBDA   00:10

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

Heather Mason  00:16

Welcome to another episode of bicycle retail radio brought to you by the National bicycle Dealers Association. This is President Heather Mason. If you’re a first time listener, be sure to check out the previous episodes please do us a favor and leave a review. Today’s guests are Steve and Kristen brand owners of Massachusetts based bicycle store Steve the bike guy. Steve the bike guy is a customer focused family owned bike shop offering expert service, new bikes, parts and accessories. With lots of advice and help a 2021 bicycle retailer of excellence award winning shop. We asked Stephen Christian to come on the podcast today to share about the uniqueness of the shop, marketing and community engagement, their blog and a bit about their personal journey into our industry. regular guests to the MBTA Monday mingles they share their tips and ask retailers for a bit of theirs. I’m so eager to jump in. But before we begin, I want to take a moment let you know that NVDA is celebrating 75 years this year. Since 1946, the NVDA has existed to strengthen, educate and provide leadership and community to specialty bicycle retailers nationwide. If you listen to our podcast, enjoy the content and find value in what we do. Please consider joining if you’re not already a member, or do us a favor and help us educate others on our resources by talking about and sharing what you have learned from us and why you love the MBA. So without further ado, I’m going to welcome Kristen and Steve to bicycle retail radio. How are you are great. Hello. Oh my god. So it’s just after Thanksgiving. It’s a Monday morning. We’re meeting up fresh into the week. I feel like I know you both so well. So I just I am like your biggest fan. And we’re pretty close. Because we’re both up here in the Northeast. It’s like 30 degrees out. What are you guys this morning?

Kristin Brandt  02:07

Yeah, yeah, it’s cold. I’m wearing our one of our wool sweaters because it’s also cold in our house. Because it’s Monday, so everything’s turned down. Yeah, I figured that out.

Heather Mason  02:19

is cool. It is cool. I did do a trainer ride this morning, I met I met I

Kristin Brandt  02:24

know I was supposed to go he went to a number event yesterday that I was supposed to go to and it was really cold. So I was like, no, sorry, I’m gonna, our son’s home. We need to I need to make pancakes.

Heather Mason  02:39

And I know I want to get into that cuz I know you do so much with your community. And Steve, I think you’re like always at events. You’re always out. I did some snooping to get ready for the podcast today. And Steve, I had no idea that pre bike life you are a professional geologist and specializes in groundwater contamination and cleanup. Yeah, that’s,

Steve Brandt  02:57

that’s, that’s right. So I did that for 1718 years or so. Yeah, as a professional geologist. And I mean, it was something I was really good at. But it was also something where you’re out in the field for a couple days. And then you just basically benched in front of a computer writing 1000 Page reports. And at some point, I just had enough of that.

Heather Mason  03:19

I am so I think that’s amazing that you just were like I’m gonna follow my passion and start a new after so many years and a career. So kudos to you for that. So many people want to take that leap, and I think never do. And it’s obviously paid off because I keep reading all these amazing things about your shop, and you are an excellent winner. And as a husband and wife team, Kristen, I know you’re the marketing coordinator at see the bike guy, a mother Girl Scout leader, amateur athlete fundraiser, volunteer friends, sister, social coordinator, chocolate chip cookie,

Kristin Brandt  03:49

somebody went to my LinkedIn profile.

Heather Mason  03:55

How do you time and I know, I mean, it’s a lot, right?

Kristin Brandt  03:58

I know. It’s a lot. I mean, I will, you know, right off the bat, I am not full time with Steve, the bike guy, which is when you get when we talk about our marriage is probably why it’s working. And then the other thing I always say is like, I may do all of those things. I’m not doing them at all at once. Right? So like, I can be really good at one thing at one time, but like, I can tell you the Girl Scout troops a little quiet these days. So, you know, it’s all about it’s all about, I don’t say balance, it’s more of a you know, there’s compromise, right? She

Steve Brandt  04:29

can say that, but you know, she doesn’t stop. So, from from morning to night, you know, when in the evenings even when that you know, the TV’s on or whatever her laptop is on and she is I don’t working away. It might be my stuff. It might be her business. It might be you know, always a little scrolling. She she needs that. Yeah, he’s that constant.

Kristin Brandt  04:53

I need to be to I’m ADHD to the core. So I need to like constantly. If I’m not doing something I’m doing something thing like, I’ll just be like Mindlessly scrolling. And I hate that I hate Yeah. Exactly. So yeah, so rather just direct my

Steve Brandt  05:08

internet. You’re working? Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Mason  05:10

I hear you. And I appreciate it because you even helped organize the NBDA T shirt swap for Monday mingle, so I love it. Keep a comment. Alright, so I need to get that going. Yeah, we know we got the names. Now we got to do the swap. And we will. Alright, so I have to know, Steve, you why the bicycle industry? What? What happened? Like it was a hobby of yours. When did you decide that you were going to make the career switch? And

Steve Brandt  05:34

oh, yeah, I mean, certain things happen in terms of this was I guess, 2008 or so during the financial crisis. And a lot of the and then the company, the engineering company I was working for at the time was also heavily involved with property development. And that just tanked and so that that company was just going downhill fast. And so I mean, that was sort of a leaving the company in it dissolving almost, and that and that sort of facilitated. Okay, what do I do next? Do I just look for another job in this industry. And in this case, I decided to go out on my own with private consulting in geology, and then also started just sort of thinking about what I could do with my lifelong passion of bicycles.

Kristin Brandt  06:25

Yeah, I mean, he’s a, he’s the, like, his mother likes to tell a story about how he slept with one of his brand new bicycles, like in his bedroom. And, you know, his, his friend, his right. But his friend, his high school friend, they were reminiscing the other day about how they couldn’t afford tools. So they would use a chisel to like, cut cable against the garage floor like so he’s always been, like, bikes have been the threadlike

Steve Brandt  06:52

in everything. Yeah. High School. For me, it was all my all time consuming was girls and bicycles. Right. I mean, and you know, and this was pre internet,

Kristin Brandt  07:03

so bikes got him to the girls. So it was kind of a, you know, blended patent. Yeah.

Steve Brandt  07:08

Yeah. So I was though one of those stuffs few kids few, maybe the only one, maybe one, maybe two of us, you know, who had the like raw and rode our rode bikes like

Kristin Brandt  07:18

that kid from away who’s like, except he didn’t speak Italian. So no, I mean, it’s like bikes with its redline. And so at one point, he said to me, he was working, he was doing private consulting on geology. And he’s like, you know, I really want to I want to be a mobile bike mechanic. So so for a while he was doing bolts, you know, so and it was kind of like, that was great. You know, if he got a job with geology did it if he got a mobile bike job, he did it. And you know, that helped him transition rather than, like, hard do bikes now.

Heather Mason  07:49

I love this. All of our listeners are probably like, huh, bikes and girls and bikes. I mean,

Kristin Brandt  07:54

yeah, editing going.

Heather Mason  07:58

Okay, so you’ve got the mobile business going, and then that was working out well, and then you decided to actually open your physical store. But talk to me about the naming. Steve, the bike guy? Were you just throwing names out there? Because I love it? Because it’s so

Steve Brandt  08:11

yeah. Well, we were just throwing names out there. And at the time, with the mobile business, I mean, they’re, you know, there are actually a lot of blank the bike guys out there now. And at the time, it was sort of the thought process was it was very direct and talent sort of saying who I am, you and it’s almost by adding my name in there. It’s almost a introduction to me before we even met the customers, and I’m coming to their houses, and they, and that sort of

Kristin Brandt  08:42

Yeah, we had talked about stuff like bike shop at home, and we’ve been registered some of those domains. But when we came up the name, I was like, you know, you’re the bike guy, like, everybody be like, Oh, I’m buying a bike, who should I talk to you and nobody calls, you know, call Steve. He’s the bike guy. And so and then just like, it was available, the domain was available, Instagram, Twitter, I like everything to match. So everything was available. And so and then when we went to the shop, which, you know, he’s like, I want to open a shop. And I was like, I thought that was not a thing anymore. We actually had a guy so that his logo is an illustration. It’s a caricature that a friend of mine did. And we had a guy who came in one day and he’s like, you know, I knew I was gonna buy a bike, and I decided I was gonna go to that guy, because the logo just seems so friendly. And it was a guy and I was like, well, now we can never get rid of it. You know? And that was a whole conversation when we went to the shop like do we keep it? Do we go to something more corporate bike shoppi and but at that point, I put my foot down and I was like, Look, we’ve already invested in this like, this is all there’s a card on a wall somewhere like from a mom. He actually got one my one of my favorite stories from when he was mobile as he was in a local town. He drives in his little Prius, which is what we had at the time. are in a magnet sign. And he gets a call from this woman and he she’s like my kid just got he drove into the wrong driveway. So he drives into the wrong driveways like up this, isn’t it, he drives away. And he gets a call from this woman. He’s like, she’s like, my son was in the house, and you drove into our driveway and, and he was like, oh, sorry, I’m so sorry. And then she’s like, What do you do? He told her she goes, When can you come back? Like I’m putting a sign on everything.

Heather Mason  10:28

I you know, this is this is great. Because Kristen, I think I met you first when you came to one of our Monday mingles and Steve, I don’t think you were in that meeting. And Chris, can you introduce yourself for Steve, the bike guy, and, and you were just like, Well, Steve is just the bike guy. Everyone in the community just knows him and the way that you really, you know, related and referred to what Steve does, and it just clicked with me before I even met Steve. I was like, oh, and is so your personality is like, amazing. It’s it sets the bar really, really high for anyone. But what about like, what was the mission vision? What did you want to do when you were actually going to open the store? The physical brick and mortar? What was going to set your store apart? Wasn’t you Steve, is it based on that concept, because I feel like I feel like you do.

Steve Brandt  11:14

It is, you know, the the store came about from driving by a particular where we are now that it was empty for a long time. And I kept driving by it. Most of my had to go by it almost every day for a lot of my clients in one particular town, nearby. And, and so I just kept seeing this open this open storefront is open storefront, this open storefront. And finally, I mean, I mean, there’s a whole thing we could go into about the mobile but but the bone mobile is definitely a difficult business model. And I know other people in the industry who have done the the corporate mobile franchise thing, and it’s it’s not easy than they’ve left. Yes. So So I was like this, things have to change, maybe the store is the way to go. And it was in a way about about me to say that bluntly. I mean, it was sort of just the way I had the repertoire I had with my my customers. And it was just built on being built on that. Yeah, sort of just but having up but having a physical location that I could really base everything out of what helped

Kristin Brandt  12:28

also, if you couldn’t necessarily sign some contracts with some vendors if he didn’t have a well as a shop and that may have passed, but that was, you know, seven years ago, and at

Steve Brandt  12:37

the time, all of the distributors would not work with with mobile, I had one who ran it, and it made it and that actually you’re right. I forgot about that. That was a week. That was a big piece of oh, he can

Kristin Brandt  12:48

sell Yeah, you can sell bikes, he couldn’t say, you know, that’s obviously changed. But I will say so we joined the MBDA fairly recently. One of my roles is is community involvement community outreach. I have so if I can give you guys a shout I have so appreciated the resource that you guys provide. I don’t think we really understood like what it was and what we got out of it and I find it very inspirational and it but it’s got me thinking about that mission vision thing because I it’s been very organic. Right? I do think you’re absolutely right. We weren’t getting we weren’t getting out of this that the dog going once Okay, so I think his it’s been very organic like so it’s definitely born of his passion for bikes like like and we we use the feet we say yea bikes a lot like gay bikes, gay friends, and it’s a little simplistic but it’s also just sums up so much of what we think bikes make possible about the welcoming environment that we create, but everything ultimately is driven I would say by us by your passion by by our kids by making sure it’s as welcoming as possible. Bye bye my still nervousness where you know, I’ll say well how come you get that and I don’t get that well how what’s that? What are we doing there? And I don’t understand this and you know, that’s it. That’s that’s at its core. I think we actually had a customer so inside our kits in the in the collar it says yay, bikes. And one of my customers told me it was printed wrong it was supposed to be on the back and I said no, no, yeah, bikes is for you. When you’re putting on your kids. You see yay, bikes. Yeah, you put it on, and and it doesn’t Yeah, that’s it’s just for you. Like we don’t put it on the outside world inside. I was convinced they were printed wrong.

Heather Mason  14:34

I’m just, I’m just completely blown away and Steven it I mean, it’s I find it difficult sometimes to take compliments or to even say compliments about myself, you know, but you I mean, I’m reading your reviews. five star reviews. Steve is the best. He went the extra mile. nicest folks I have met in a long time. Steve replaced my brake pads on a drop in Saturday right away. Great local shop. Steve is a super nice And you’re always thinking of the customer first, like, this is amazing reviews. So kudos to you. And I think that when you know that and you always look for the customer and you’re honest, and approachable, that gets us a really far away in life. All right, let’s go back to the building. So you’ve been driving by it, like every day, and you saw this spot. And so tell us a little bit about where you’re located and what the building is like.

Steve Brandt  15:25

So the we’re located, it’s in Sherburn mass, which is a very, very small town, Massachusetts is very fragmented into into towns, and which I guess in other instances might be considered villages, but basically sort of town centers and interpret is very, very small. So in the main strip, there’s just I mean, you have your your fire station and auto mechanic, a few ice cream shop and ice cream shop and, and, like takeout place, you know, when you’re the post office and a liquor stores, but

Kristin Brandt  15:58

it’s a it’s, it’s a little it’s a blink and you’ll miss it.

Steve Brandt  16:02

So but it’s also the where to one, I want to say highways, but they’re they’re numbered state routes, but they’re just single lane roads. But But it’s, um, it’s where two of these come together and then re split up. So a massive amount of people who are commuting from location to location, get bottlenecked right past this location. And in fact, it you know, I looked at traffic numbers, and it had, it had basically half of the traffic of one of the largest four lane, not not a through fare highway, you know, through a highway, but Boulevard, if you will, commercial Boulevard. So you don’t want

Kristin Brandt  16:47

to drive through this area at rush hour because it’s about we’re about 40 minutes west of Boston. And so there’s a lot of commuter traffic in the morning in the afternoon, plus a TON TON of bicycle traffic, like people riding for pleasure. Yeah, I

Steve Brandt  16:59

also would wear down where I think the minimum lot size allowed for a house is an acre and a half, something like that. And and there’s horse farm after horse farm after horse farm, and in a huge town, forest association. So a lot of protected open space. So we can just rot you can ride right out of the shop right into the trails immediately. Or on some of the best road riding in the area.

Kristin Brandt  17:24

The best part about the shop is the location. And the worst part about the shop is is the building. Yeah, so

Steve Brandt  17:30

the building is is small. I only have 800 square feet. And when I started, and it was just me, right, it was it was actually yeah, it worked out when

Kristin Brandt  17:39

we first moved in when he first moved in, people would come in and they would tell us all the businesses that had failed there. Oh, well, this was a photo studio. It was a gift shop. It was a yoga studio, and you can reminisce of it right? Like oh, these mirrors must have been from when it was a yoga studio. And this bathroom must have been from when it was a spa and like so it’s it’s it’s a funny little building. It’s

Steve Brandt  18:01

a standalone building. And it has so we have direct parking right in front of the building off the street. And we also have a backyard, backyard and a side yard. So it gives us really easy opportunity to set up outside on nice days to have things we’ve had we did not change in the backyard.

Kristin Brandt  18:20

Yeah, and we did not take advantage of that. So that outdoor space I’m going to say saved us during the pandemic. Yeah, right. And and because because the shop was closed, you know, we shut down the doors, we could put a tent outside we had seating we had parking we had we introduced the Saturday drop in day which which people could come in and do quick fixes because of course everybody had a six to eight week tune up, you know, including him, he had a huge you know, but you had people who just needed a tire change, your brakes changed or something fast and they didn’t have to wait six, eight weeks, right?

Heather Mason  18:54

So so so go into that a little bit more because this is like a nugget that I think retailers if you don’t mind, share your secret here. Now let’s about the Saturday drop in.

Steve Brandt  19:03

So that was really that really started with the pandemic and doing things a little bit more outside and we you know, you’d have outside, pick up, drop off all that type of stuff. And then the explosion of people riding and everybody want to get outside and the just the massive backlog for for normal premium tuneup appointments or just appoint service appointments and and that happened at every shop in the in the region. And there was just this need for the quick stuff the break adjust the shifting adjust. So we Yeah, I can’t even really think of maybe how the Saturday you can but but we basically just had a drop in system. It was first come first serve. You had to wait there with the bike. So we knew we would have and early on maybe you had a little bit of issues where people would just leave their bike and then you know they get busy and they don’t come back and all of a sudden you have this bike that you know ever really logged in? Perhaps? And

Kristin Brandt  20:02

yeah, it was. So it was definitely his idea. And it was definitely because he just kept getting these calls. You know, like, I just need this little adjustment. I just need this little adjustment. So he’s like, what if we do Saturday, and this is where I really started working in the shop. So I, before the pandemic, I did, I did marketing communications, I didn’t work there, right, like I have, I got stuff to do. But Saturdays, he he thought of this idea where people would be able to sign in. And so my daughter and I, who were also trapped at home, because the pandemic started to work there on Saturdays too. So she became our tire changer, right? Somebody came in, she would she’s 16. She would change the tires he would take care of. He’s very much a MacGyver is very much that guy at a party. If somebody at the party goes, Oh, the disposals broken. He’s the one under the sink, or like, where’s Steve? You know, so he, he’s very good at fixing things. And I was the greeter. Welcome to see why you can sit here, there’s ice cream here. Yeah, we did make miss some mistakes. Like I had one woman show up and she’s like, I’m just gonna run a quick errand and I was okay. I was like, okay, she went to the Cape. I was like, Okay, you can go to the dump. You can go get your book. You can go get food. So pretty

Steve Brandt  21:15

much you have to stay there now. And we have all we have tables and chairs set out and everything and people are sitting around you like go anywhere

Heather Mason  21:22

you want, but go to the Cape. No, right?

Kristin Brandt  21:25

Well, that’s, I mean, that was the thing and like that one didn’t come back. And then most people were just so happy. We were taking her the bikes, but there were times people waited two three hours. No, no, we don’t I along. Yes, we absolutely do. Did you think at the peak? Absolutely. Wow. But they were fine. My favorite was when we reopened the Saturday service this year, these two moms showed up with five bicycles. And it was supposed to be limited to per person, right? They’re having a mom date on the on the car at having coffee on the grass. There for kids. Five kids are running around like, like crazy. Like they’re just all over the grass. He’s like to it was limited to I’m like, No, you tell her you’re not taking that third bike. Like you’re just you’re doing God’s work right now like those moms. And I mean, sure enough, like one of the he fixes when he puts it outside. The little girl runs up to it. She’s like, See, I said it was fine. And like, knocks her brother over when I’m like to do here. These moms are like, thank you. But I mean, at the peak, we open at 10 People were rolling in at nine Yeah, sign in there an hour early. So they could be first. Yeah, they are an hour early. And all the hours was

Steve Brandt  22:42

limited to about it was I mean, it’s planned for 15 minutes. Sometimes I give people 20. You know, sometimes it’s more and he’s like, you know, and there are cases where if I could come in, and it would have a whole bunch of stuff wrong. But it’s amazing what I could get done in that time. In fact, sometimes you’re almost giving you’re like, after I’m done with it, this bike doesn’t need anything else doesn’t even need to come back for folks, we started to kind of our times things have like one wrong problem. But it is it took the entire time to fix that one problem. Or there were a few instances where it’s like, no, this, this cannot be done in 1520 minutes,

Kristin Brandt  23:19

but then he’d scheduled an appointment for them. And we introduced what we call them wellness checks. So there were a lot of bicycles that hadn’t been written in years. Right. They had been hung up though they were they were well cared for from the standpoint they weren’t like stored in a puddle. And so what they really needed was like, can you just check that the brakes are working? The tires are inflated. So we started calling those wellness checks, right? And and yeah, a lot of the times he’d be like, this is fine, it does not need to come back. It doesn’t need a tune up, right? It just needed to make sure the brakes were working. So we did a lot of those with the older bikes, like just Yes, you won’t kill yourself riding this bicycle.

Heather Mason  23:57

It’s a nice thing because people I mean, being without your bike is like being without your cell phone, right for some people, and especially when you have a family who wants to get riding and you know, there might be like one flat holding them up or whatnot.

Steve Brandt  24:10

I aligned a lot of derailleur hangers. And those Saturday services.

Kristin Brandt  24:15

Yeah. A lot of flat tire fixes, which we even started showing people how to do them while we did them. Because I do feel like it’s something that I mean, we’re always happy to do but I also feel like people should can do that. Right. Like that’s something that’s totally doable. So we would actually walk people through them as we were doing them.

Heather Mason  24:35

Steve, do you think that’s something that you’ll continue doing

Steve Brandt  24:37

like this? Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don’t think that’s going away. We do stop it at the end of the summer. I mean, we’re not really doing Saturday service. Now. If you know, it’s what like, flat tires. Flat tire is pre pandemic. It’s been something that always did just drop in any time so people would just come in at any time I was open and I would change flat tires for them. It got so bad with the backup of the service during the pandemic with but I had to stop that I had to defer everybody to Saturday, because it was too much of an interruption for just the work load that I had.

Kristin Brandt  25:13

And then do you remember at one point because of the shortage of tires, I he had to give me a list of tubes here to give me a list. And so like when someone brought in a tube, I would have to like check there to first tell them if we even had had I

Steve Brandt  25:26

had a grid with red and green about the size and then valves we had, because yeah, because the tubes were just couldn’t get,

Kristin Brandt  25:33

I will say for anyone who wants to do the Saturday service, which I totally recommend, it’s you know, it takes a unique, like set of skills. I think the other thing I learned was I as the catcher you know, and and people are like, Oh, are you gonna learn how to work on bikes, I was like, honestly, that’s not where my skill set is. My skill set is as the greeter entertainer, take the equipment, I have to sometimes interrupt him and be like, I need you to look at this bike and tell me if it’s worth waiting. Right? Like that was the biggest challenge. I always felt really badly if someone ended up waiting two hours, and or an hour or whatever. And then he’d be like, I can’t fix this. Right? Like that was that was always so trying to manage him. She was

Steve Brandt  26:15

she was a triage nurse. Yeah. And and it couldn’t have been done without her.

Heather Mason  26:21

You’re working out these kinks. Right. And you’re so do you have staff you mentioned your daughter? And I know it just No,

Steve Brandt  26:28

we I mean, I do have a teenager who was working there for a while. And we’re going to be getting back in next year. And I had an intern before that she was there for a while. So but not, but otherwise not really. No,

Kristin Brandt  26:43

1. And I think it was a really good lesson for our daughter. So we have two kids, we have a teenage son who’s a freshman in college and our daughter who is now a junior, he worked through the pandemic and another retail place. So a valuable lesson for us is that you can’t make your kids like bicycles. That shouldn’t always work with family. So he but he worked very hard to the through the pandemic, actually at a pet pet food store. And then Sophie worked every weekend. And I think that was really good for her to see both what we were doing but also to support family, right. Like I think a lot of family businesses that I know of the kids had to step up and help. We were short staffed. We were underwater, whether that was food service, or so I think that was really good. A really good experience for her. I got her out of the house.

Heather Mason  27:34

Yeah, I think it’s amazing. I mean, I used to own a shop and my daughter used to work in the store with me. And it was one of the closest times we’ve ever had together. I mean, not all not every day was rosy, believe me, but it was a great experience. And I love how Kristen, I mean you have you have a company a marketing firm outside, right. That’s a whole nother

Kristin Brandt  27:52

company. Yeah. So I actually work I own marketing and advertising agency that was started by my father. I always say that if you working for family either goes real well or real badly. like nobody’s like it was fine. You know, it’s either it’s either great or not. So, you know, it’s been ever since he started Steve, the bike guy. It’s been really fun for me to take the things that I’ve been doing for the past 25 years and apply it to a different industry because I was in I primarily done bank marketing. And it is very much DIY I try not to you know, have the agency do the work because I often joke he can’t afford me right. I get paid and bicycle.

Heather Mason  28:34

Steve, when did the actual retail store open? How many years has it been now?

Steve Brandt  28:40

It’s just about eight years. Yeah. Coming up. Coming up on eight years.

Heather Mason  28:44

Yeah. Are you still like every morning you drive to the shop? Are you loving it? Are you eager to go in? Are you just filled with

Steve Brandt  28:50

ice? I do. Yeah. I really I do love it. It is because it has been bicycles or just been something my entire life. So I do I really, really enjoy working on bicycles. I enjoy being around all that

Kristin Brandt  29:05

stuff. I am my agency just moved into a new office. And it’s actually right next door to the bike shop. It’s on the second floor of a building right next to the bike shop and every now and then I look out there and he’s in the parking lot tootling around and I was like he has such a hard job

Heather Mason  29:22

I mean, you got to test the bikes when you’re repairing.

Steve Brandt  29:25

Exactly you know you do and that’s I think one of the the biggest Yeah, they having a place where you can actually test ride the bicycles is huge because things that seem okay on the stand are not okay. under, under under pressure out on the ride.

NBDA   29:44

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Heather Mason  30:07

so I want to know about your community I know you have these really cool cycling kits Steve you make time to ride right are you out there doing group rides and taking part in leading and organizing rides are

Steve Brandt  30:19

Yeah, I absolutely and I always say I don’t have enough time to ride but in reality I think I do ride quite a bit I mean just yesterday I lead ride at the the New England Mountain Bike Association the southeast region had their Turkey afterburner event so that was about half an hour away to a big hail inhale which is a camp in a in a wooded preservation area and so forth. So So I let her ride yesterday there. The day before I went on a gravel ride and I I ride everything. Road gravel mountain. I don’t ride I don’t ride unit that fat. I don’t ride unicycles

Kristin Brandt  30:59

riding on a tandem, right? Yes, forget it. So

Steve Brandt  31:02

because I like to I need to be like, I feel like I need to be in touch with all of these bikes styles. And I also purposely also have different component groups on all of my different personal bicycles so that I have that better working knowledge of all everything. That sounds good. He just loves bikes. I just love it.

Kristin Brandt  31:23

And I just love bicycles. I just saw a comedy routine where I think was Eliza, what’s her name? And she was like, you know, you meet a boy and you say, I like to hike. And I was like, Nope, never. I never said that. I don’t like to hike. I don’t like to walk I like to ride my bike will always be like, Why are we walking? I could ride a bicycle.

Heather Mason  31:43

You talked about the mothers who came to have their bikes fixed. I want to know like who the community is. We’ve been there for eight years now a little bit longer with the mobile business. Have you really developed the community of cyclists? Do you have road mountain? I mean, Steven sounds like you have a little bit of everything from what you were just saying. But who is the customer who’s coming? Me? Oh,

Steve Brandt  32:04

well, I mean, I do have a very, very diverse customer base and maybe spread myself a little thin in regards to the that variety of bicycles because I have I started out and I would say a lot I started out probably a lot of high end road.

Kristin Brandt  32:22

Yes. When he started he was caught. Can I tell? Okay, tell the story. What story of what you call the shop. Oh, right. Okay. Right. So when he started the shop, and the signs still says it, it’s Steve, the bike guy, Velo studio. And I went Why Why are why are we doing that? And he was like, well, because he was into high end road bikes. Right. And that was a way he felt like to make sure

Steve Brandt  32:44

in a lot of the clubs a lot of the local fellow fellow in their name somehow.

Kristin Brandt  32:49

But that has definitely evolved. You know, over the years we’ve we’ve gotten dirtier. We keep saying we’re Yeah, the shop is getting more mature now mountain bike and that’s has his interest has evolved, right? Like he was doing road now he’s back to his roots of mountain biking from college, and then gravel, and fat, and like so it’s just getting been busy, like dirtier and dirtier. And then with the Saturday service, it’s a lot more of the kind of the families and the casual riders the hybrid. So we’re dropping we have effectively dropped below studio except haven’t replaced the sign. Yeah,

Steve Brandt  33:23

but the assignments get replaced. We’ve dropped it.

Kristin Brandt  33:25

So it’s it’s kind of, you know, there are things I would say he definitely doesn’t do not dead. Like he takes care of try bikes, but he’s not a try. shop shop, there is a local tree shop, we actually recommend you who’s fantastic, right, like so. We do rode bikes, but it’s definitely and we ride. I mean, I ride the PMC and I ride it to go back on to the events thing, the ride you asked about, like we don’t organize many rides ourselves, because it’s just two of us. And at some point, I need to like not give any more time to the shop. I would say one thing I’d love to do more of next year is to get some trusted ambassadors to do it right to run rides. But we are always game to jump on and support someone else’s efforts. Yeah, so I mean, we’ve had our PMS had

Steve Brandt  34:12

1. I had it last year was last year, the year before I had a series of mountain bike rides on Wednesdays, three and a half run and annual Fat Bike winter ride called the ruckus ride. And we just had a few weeks ago, we had a scavenger hunt ride that went really well and we have some plans to expand on that.

Kristin Brandt  34:33

It was a scavenger hunt. He’d been dreaming of it for a while. He called it the hallowed growed and it was a tour scavenger hunt style tour of local cemeteries. So he he said these are where the cemeteries are now you plan these now around

Steve Brandt  34:49

here when you think cemetery it’s it might not be the same as everywhere else. We’re talking about small little plots of land with two to 300 year old gravestones. Yeah, it’s very, very ancient

Kristin Brandt  35:02

little I guess the point is we’re not we’re not if that’s a place where I think there’s room for improvement or for us to just say there are so many great groups around here that are organizing rides do we need to fill that? Like we’re looking for the little places we can fill so like the the winter ruckus ride, which is generally fat bike, we have tried to schedule that I think we’ve canceled three out of six of them, right? Because there’s no snow.

Steve Brandt  35:28

Yeah. So and it’s and it’s muddy and wet, right? I want to go out and destroy that. So

Kristin Brandt  35:32

last year, we decided, we just kind of waited and we found a winter weekend and we did it but but inspired a bit by the hallowed ground, which was very low effort on our part because it was self supported and self, we decided that the winter rock is going to be like the Abominable Snowman, it’s just going to appear out of the mists or out of the snow. Like when it snows he’s gonna say to me this weekend is the ruckus. And I will post it and post it and get it but like, I’m going to take the stress out of like planning it two months in advance only to have it rain. But that’s

Heather Mason  36:06

really cool to have these impromptu things, you know, and gets more fun. Yeah, I think I think it isn’t people like you can be like, keep your eyes you know, coming soon, you know, watch for the announcement. Yeah,

Steve Brandt  36:17

the very first one we had was epic. And it and we have so many people who have that in their minds. And because of that very first one there, they’re always want to keep doing them. Because that one No, like two days before I’ve inches, a fluffy powder. The morning we woke up for that date. And it was not plowed in the sky. It’s about 30 degrees. And it was just the most perfect day on fat bikes.

Kristin Brandt  36:43

I do have to say I think fat bite. So when I look back at the shop at like, what was the turning point where I thought this is gonna work. It was fat bikes, when fat bikes were introduced

Steve Brandt  36:53

in 2016 was a big eye to the fat bike, he

Kristin Brandt  36:55

was working with a manufacturer and I mean, just the whole shop was filled with fat bike parts. And like you would see a group picture I’d be like half of those fat bikes came from Steve, the bike guy. And it was it was so cool.

Heather Mason  37:08

Like, it is true. Like our industry goes like road bike, mountain bike fat, like gravel by road bike like it because you have to ebb and flow with it, you know?

Steve Brandt  37:20

Yeah. And I would say now that the flow is definitely off road of all varieties. I least for us, I do hear more and more of the roadies just saying I can’t deal with the cars anymore. And that’ll come around. But

Heather Mason  37:34

have your brand changed over time as well, then Steve?

Steve Brandt  37:37

Not too much. Yeah. I mean, we’ve learned a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I lost,

Kristin Brandt  37:42

don’t put brands on your kits? Don’t put? Yeah, we did I put a brand on the kid, it’s invariably going to leave the country.

Steve Brandt  37:51

Yeah, so we’ve had brands go, go direct only we’ve had brands just close their US operations. And we’ve usually owned by larger, as many of them are larger, larger corporations that you know, change their strategies. If I

Kristin Brandt  38:05

don’t put it on the can then

Steve Brandt  38:06

and then Scott has been my main brand now for I think, just seven years almost as much as long as that’s, that’s been my main brand, which has been very good with with the success of Kate Courtney and you know, shorter and so forth. It’s been phenomenal for that.

Heather Mason  38:21

Yeah. So okay, let’s talk about because I found this to be really interesting. I’m on your website, Steve, the bike guide.com. And I want to talk about ways that you’re reaching out to engage new riders into the sport and then also get them in your store. I noticed there’s a link even on your website for new writers. How is that working people? Do people tell you that they see that what they do?

Kristin Brandt  38:44

So I am My background is as a content creator, like I’m a storyteller. I like to write and I like to share I think that any business, the differentiator, I mean, the brands help, but we’re all selling bikes, right? We’re all selling bikes, we’re all selling parts, we’re all selling clothing. It’s the stories that we have and the people that we’re servicing and the people at the shop. And so I wrote that welcome new writers trying to channel what it felt like to be a new rider because it’s fear, or just someone who’s coming back to it because it’s very intimidating, right? Like it’s there’s all the lycra and there’s the do I need to clip in, and what should I wear on my head and my bikes, not good enough. And, in fact, I was on a ride a couple of months ago with a guy and he kept saying, Well, I’m not a rider. It was it was weird, cuz you’re on a bike right now. Like, and he was like, Well, I’m wearing a athletic soccer shirt. And I was like, okay, like, you’re still rider. Like, it’s all right. You know, but I think there’s this an intimidation factor. So we use stories a lot like that to break that down. You know, there’s another one I can send you the link to that I really like it was from several years ago, Sophie was racing a cyclocross race, and they had to hold it for her they had to hold the pre ride For a long time because she just squeaked under. And so I wrote I wrote something that basically said thank you for protecting her race like thank you for not pulling her thank you for not not get a lot of really good reviews that was that was the Minuteman cyclocross race because they really respected her race and and I felt like they needed you know, so those are when we write those, I feel like we’re really hitting it out of the park.

Heather Mason  40:24

I mean, your blog, so see the light I got see the bike guy.com, go to the website, check it out. Even the blog is, I feel like I get a sense of who you are, and your community and what you’re doing in the most recent one, the gift guide, totally awesome. And you get people who comment on the blog, which we do, I read a lot of blogs, you don’t always see that. So people are interacting with you to which

Kristin Brandt  40:49

they are. So the site if you are a little behind the tech to the site is a smart detailing site that we went, we went with a e commerce site, right at the a year ago. So it was in response to the pandemic. I’ve told smart detailing this so I’m not saying anything I haven’t said to them directly, doesn’t have great content, posting ability. I’m a huge WordPress nerd. So the blog is separate. And it’s a WordPress site. And yeah, we try to write stuff and I make I give this advice to everyone, we try to write something different, right? Like I think every gift guide is kind of the same every every, like, new, you know, equipment advice is the same. And so why would you read our blog, so you know, whenever we write something, it’s because I feel like we have something to say add something to add something different, something that gives us and that can be a little risky, but I think it’s worth it.

Heather Mason  41:47

I like risky, you know, when we were judging the bicycle retailer of Excellence Award, you know, when we are judging the applications, something that struck us about yours and we looked at your we looked at the social feeds the website, we were looking for a real authentic feel we didn’t we weren’t looking for cookie cutter, we were looking for the shot that people remember that they you know, would tell their friends about that experience. And every thing that we touched of yours, your website, your social feeds, they left an impression that was so super noticeable. So keep up that amazing, amazing work. I will say

Kristin Brandt  42:25

we stay away from stock if there’s anything I can really I can really and there’s there’s power to stock stock images, we we we try to take the pictures ourselves. If we can get pictures from like Scott, we will although I’ve been pushing them for more diversity. I feel like there’s just they have work to do. And so I’ve been asking them to you know, we need more diverse writers, more, more ages, more colors, more genders more, everything right. But that’s my biggest tip is use stock selectively carefully, because that is where you know, our differentiators are. I think it’s because it’s our people.

Heather Mason  43:02

Yeah. And I’ll tell you, we need that as an industry. We need more retailers more more staff members, more mechanics, more mobile telling us what he needs, so we can better position the whole industry. Speaking of that, and Steve, I forgot to ask you earlier he bikes have seen tremendous growth. Have you noticed an uptick in E bike sales or interest in your community?

Steve Brandt  43:24

That’s, I would say I would not really more interest. Yeah, but not really an uptick for me yet. And I think that’s based on my location. And in fact, I can have a hard time selling I have the E bikes I have or get. So I haven’t quite found where E bikes are going. For me. I have a feeling it’s going to be E mountain bikes. And I mean, I started out selling some of the hybrids, and then I have and then I was selling and then I have he rode bikes, which I thought would actually have more of an uptake than they have so far. And I think that’s coming, but I have not seen that sort of interest. But I do see more I probably get more calls for E mountain bikes now.

Heather Mason  44:13

I was on the trails. Elearning I ran into a gentleman friend of mine, someone who I would never think was an E bike, you know, candidate let’s say, and he’s out on an E bike, and immediately he’s like, Oh, I did a big epic ride yesterday. I’m just riding and I’m like, Dude, I think it’s cool for me crazy. No,

Kristin Brandt  44:32

I think there’s still a like, kind of like a sheepish ness to the people that have them that like I am like you do you man like whatever you want to ride and I think there’s still a little bit of a judgmental newness in some of that hardcore riders.

Steve Brandt  44:48

I have seen it judge me I’ve seen the judgment of the of the riders I’m with and these are a lot of guys I might only ride with one or two times a year so it’s they’re not somebody I’m knowing associating with but their feelings they don’t have any issues with the mountain bikes. Only thing I’ve heard is that they don’t want to necessarily ride in a group mountain bike ride with flows, the E bike V mountain bike riders, because the flow is different and it’s sort of like it’s better. It’s better like for like, you know, yeah,

Kristin Brandt  45:20

I will say my parents both have Scott e bikes, they are 75 and 76. My parents they ride every day in the in the summer, every every Saturday, we would see them those shop because they’d be tootling around and then they come on the you know, so I, which is something they would not do without they would not have done. So I think we’re gonna see a lot more of those. I think there’s room for that. Definitely where we are with you know, I have an employee who rides to work every day on her e bike. It’s fantastic. I love it. I

Heather Mason  45:50

think the thing with email and is it’s just, it’s the it’s the everyone wants, it’s gonna be the plus one that we all need. Like as a mountain biker myself. I’m like, the only thing holding people back right now. I think it’s just having the money to go buy one or the inventory because finding one.

Steve Brandt  46:03

Well, you’re the inventory. Yes. And I agree with the money that the money sometimes yeah, sometimes I just cannot believe how much these things cost.

Kristin Brandt  46:13

thing. You know, I saw, I saw a number member recently posted a picture. He’s in his 70s of his new E mountain bike. And he’s like, I kind of thought my days were done. And, and this is fantastic. And that’s what we keep saying is like, if he wants if we want to keep riding because you know, don’t like to hike, I’m going to be I’m sure there’s going to be in a bike in my future. I like

Heather Mason  46:35

to buy one tomorrow to just add it to my I have options, you know, absolutely.

Kristin Brandt  46:39

Yeah, we went to Switzerland a couple of years ago for our honeymoon. And we weren’t anyone or anyone our anniversary, our anniversary of our honeymoon. And we were on the Matterhorn and we still we were coming down hill. And these people were just going up doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. I was like, what is happening here?

Heather Mason  46:56

Well, self shuttling?

Steve Brandt  46:57

Yeah, it was great.

Heather Mason  46:59

I mean, you know, he bikes, there’s a lot of things right now the uptick in cycling supply shortages? How are you guys? I mean, it’s a big question. But how are you keeping on on top? How are you changing with the times anything that’s been? Is there something that’s been single handedly like the best pivot you’ve made? Or is it just everyday just adapting to what the day brings?

Steve Brandt  47:23

In a somewhat it is just adapting as, as things go on, I say that somewhat of the of the service changes have been the most beneficial. I think last year 2020 20, even though we’re in the heart of the pandemic was probably the best year for bike shops ever. Right. And from what I’ve heard and seen, and then this year has been very tough, because of the supply issues. Last year, everything was already basically made by March 2020. So it was just a matter of getting in your hands. Except for tubes, for some reason, and somewhat changed. But this year, yeah, this year has been very difficult for for supply

Kristin Brandt  48:07

we’ve been, I will say we’ve been diverse, we’ve been adding more accessories, we’ve never really been one to sell accessories, a lot, you know, gloves, socks, clothing. And we’re talking about more classes for the for the next year, for using letting him use his time, we’ve done a couple of women’s bike mechanic clinics that have been very well received. And so now we’re talking about how can we kind of take that and, and do more maybe ongoing classes, you know, an hour every Saturday, it’s hard to do a whole day event, like there’s just too much to cover and yet not enough time. You’re there all day. So that I think that’s going to be our biggest pivot is going to be more event based for a while, it’s not going to fill the gap completely on the bike sales, but I think it will get people in and continue to get them and keep them engaged. And it fits with our like our whole model which is, you know, educated customer, educated consumers our best customer, right? What was that Simms who’s to say that right? Like you, they’re gonna take over, they don’t take over their maintenance, they’re just more informed, more empowered. And that’s a good thing. I

Steve Brandt  49:21

agree that a lot of times, no matter how many, how much you might teach somebody how to do their own stuff. There’s always plenty of people who even though they know, they just don’t, they don’t have the time. They don’t have the energy, they don’t want to deal with it. So it’s it. I think there’s that sort of that fear of teaching, you know, your business away is not the case.

Heather Mason  49:42

Yeah, I mean, like he but you know, electronic shifting and all these other things that are really specific and what we can teach and educate but they’re always gonna want it especially come back to the person who taught them right. I mean, right.

Kristin Brandt  49:55

Well, it helps them I think, also our focus generally has been when so Something happens when you’re on the road or on the trail. Right? And, and he’s not there, he can’t help you. The derailleur is bent. How are you going to deal with that right now? Or the thing is stuck? How are you gonna do with that right now that I know myself having taken classes, I feel more empowered even on the trail to try fixing it myself, rather than just sitting down and crying.

Heather Mason  50:23

I’m looking at your social media feeds, and on the blog, all the imagery, it looks like everyone, or a big chunk of your community is in see the bike guy branded clothing, cycling kids, as tell me about this. How are you navigating that and doing so? Well, with those sales?

Steve Brandt  50:41

A lot of that initially started from the cyclocross team. So we did really have, we’re really kind of pushing a more of a team there. This is a few years back. Years back, and yeah, years ago. No, no, I mean, I mean, the height of it was probably four years ago. Yeah. So and then. And that’s where I think a lot of the branded clothing first came into being, and then from there, it’s new kits and new styles, and then just putting it out to our to our customer base. And they were all interested in Yeah,

Kristin Brandt  51:16

so we had, when he first opened the shop, we met with another local shop. And one of the pieces of advice he gave us, which I thought was great was don’t bother carrying non branded clothing. You don’t have enough space, you can’t compete with, you know, Amazon or the or the other retailers. So if you’re going to focus on clothing, put your name on it, I was like, well, that’s a good piece of advice. So we don’t, our challenge is a little bit of size, right? We don’t have a lot of space that I can necessarily buy 1000s of or hundreds of kits. And the other is, we had he has always bootstrapped this business, right, like just never been alone, there’s never been, so he sometimes chokes when I’m like, if we buy 50 jerseys, it’ll cost this much. And he’s like, you know, so we tend to not do that. We just released a new kit design this past year, which is that the black, those are available preorder only. So that’s one way we we manage that. And we tell people, if we don’t get the minimum, I’m not, I’m not buying it, right. Like, if you may want shorts, but if not enough, people want shorts, they’re not gonna buy it. And then on the T shirts, I actually just wrote something about how to do this because I get a lot of questions. And we actually make our T shirts, ourselves with like a heat press. Like you get a if you go to a custom t shirt shop, right you pick your T shirt, you pick your design and the heat press it because we could only one thing that was really important to me was that we have women’s cut shirts, there’s nothing more frustrating to me or less welcoming to me that when I go into a bike shop, and I cannot get a women’s cut shirt, I’m sorry, unisex, not a thing. So you have to buy so many of one cut in one design. And and we don’t have the room for that we didn’t have the budget for that. And I wanted more flexibility. So Steve bought me a heat press at an estate sale. And I make T shirts. And we went to a company and i or i We have like four designs that we imprint ourselves as needed. Our hats are the same way I bought, I bought patches and then I sew them on to beanies

Heather Mason  53:24

that I mean it’s smart because otherwise you could lose your shirt on clothing, it has to be done the right way. So

Steve Brandt  53:30

you know, you’ll always end up with the wrong sizes of

Kristin Brandt  53:33

you focus. Yeah, we do what we can ourselves on other stuff we go. So we work with Garneau for our kits and sombrio we’ve been very happy with their pricing, they have a nice flexible pricing that lets us it counts up the number of total number of things and rewards that so the minimums are very low. And they’re and they’re based in New England and and they support a couple of our favorite rides. And then we get our water bottles because I can’t figure I haven’t figured out how to make my own water bottles.

Heather Mason  54:04

Just wait until she figures it out.

Kristin Brandt  54:06

But I get so frustrated when somebody says to me, Oh, if you have an extra jacket, I’ll totally buy one of those. And I’m like you only pre order no extra jackets. I want to put everybody in blue and orange.

Heather Mason  54:20

They will it looks to me like you’re doing an amazing job. And I also i i Just a couple more questions I wanted to ask you, I noticed that you do the people for bikes ride spot. And a lot of retailers have been asking about this. How can you give some feedback and tell us how that’s working for you? Well, so

Steve Brandt  54:35

yes, so we now have a big bulletin board in the shop and ride spot has these cards, but basically it’s sort of these pre designed cards that we can print out. And they have a small little diagram of the map that were brought the region it is and the length and so forth, and then a QR code so people can go directly to the app or the in the website to find these rides. So we’ll have We’ll have I think we have what now eight on the board 10. We have these cards up on this bulletin board. And so people can look at these rides and then take this card with them to go home and get the ride downloaded from themselves. And it is amazing how many people take longer this take the cards and love this new call. I don’t know why No, I don’t know where to ride. So this is

Kristin Brandt  55:23

great. Yeah, we learned about that at the PvP conference. They had a they had a conference online Expo thing, and they had a presentation. First of all, the price was right, it was free. Second of all, Steve is a mad trail route builder. He’s one of these. He’s Yeah. So funny. Like, if when I lead rides people, like where are we? And then we pop out onto like route 16. And they’re like, how can we get here like he just has, he’s really good at it. And so it was nice, because I could go to his rival GPS site, download the GTX is upload them to ride spot. I will say I don’t think the planner is great. The back end of it is not very sophisticated from a planning route route planning standpoint. But the usability, the cards that I don’t have to design something myself and I don’t print them, I print I resize them onto Avery postcard stock. So I print like eight of each. I don’t sorry, I don’t I don’t buy them from because you need like, you have to buy like 100 cards. And I’m like, I don’t need 100 cards. I need 10

Steve Brandt  56:25

cards, and we rotate the rides and that we have and it’s it’s I will

Kristin Brandt  56:29

say we kind of put it up there on a whim, right? Like i i We had this metal thing already up, I put up some sticker and yeah, the response has been great because it’s tactile, it’s tangible, right? It’s something they can take with them. And and they’ll go a 10 mile ride a 20 mile ride a mountain bike ride and gravel ride. So it’s worked really, I would say for the the ROI on that’s been fantastic.

Heather Mason  56:56

Well, you’re positioning yourself as like the experts. You’re giving people ideas. I mean, you’re lending yourself to their life. Yeah. Awesome. And all

Kristin Brandt  57:04

the rides start and end at Steve’s bike guy. So that’s the other thing I have to park in our parking lot.

Heather Mason  57:11

Alright, so you guys, look, I can see you our listeners can only hear you but I know they can probably hear what I’m seeing which is a couple that’s sitting very close together smiling supporting each other. So how do you juggle the home life and keep this romance and spark alive? It’s a little personal question, but I have to know

Kristin Brandt  57:30

what the real I mean, okay, so I will say a couple of things. We’ve been married 25 years coming up, coming up on 25 years. That doesn’t mean we don’t fight I have quite the temper. I’m Irish. But I do try to like not do too much damage during our fights. I think that’s important because like when you Baron married this long you can you know all the the weak spot I’m gonna say yes, here. You do sometimes sometimes I have to say just say Yes, dear. Just say yes. I think that’s part of it. I think taking so Mondays are our worker on Mondays and I work from home on Mondays kids and our kids are at school. So you do the math from there. On. I would the point is to reserve time, right? Like you have to you have to reserve time it helps so we both love swinging. He’s my favorite person.

Steve Brandt  58:24

Yeah, yeah. And and, and, you know, we can bring this back to bicycles too, because I didn’t ride a bike when I got out. The thing about bicycles is that there is it’s not just something you do every now and then out of your house. You base vacations around bicycles. And you base just Oh, like we’re going to wait for this long weekend. Who can we fit a ride in there when we get there? And when you both ride, you always have this interest together.

Kristin Brandt  58:55

I should give him credit though, too, because I often hear sometimes from people like oh, I can’t lead a beginners ride. Because I can’t ride that slow. Right? I can’t ride like I can’t ride that slow which I am always like if Leah Davidson can can ride with a little Bella’s then you can ride that slow That’s right. But the other thing is he’s been riding slow with me for 25 years for almost 30 years right because I didn’t I didn’t own a bike when we met right he got me into mountain biking got me into riding he you know I mean I often look back and think what would my life look like if I hadn’t met Steve the bike guy you know cuz I wasn’t into bikes at all right Daisy? But I think I do think it has it there’s a great book called mating in captivity by Astaire Parral and and she she says you know we ask a lot of this one person to be our business partner, our lover our best friend, our parenting partner and that’s sometimes you have to recognize that’s a lot to put on one person so I think it works out but it’s also okay to say you can’t be this person for me right now. Like I need to go call my friend Alex so I can connect about you because you are not this person today. You know, so

Heather Mason  1:00:06

I think your energy is just I think you’re I see the way your support each other and it’s really great. And it’s great when we’re on a Monday mingle, and you know, Kristen, you pop up on one screen and, and Steve, you pop up on another screen and you’re in the same house, but you’re on different screens, and it’s awesome. Are you guys headed to cab to east? Are you going down to the show?

Kristin Brandt  1:00:24

Er, yeah, see my first bike conference?

Steve Brandt  1:00:29

It is I know, I really regret that you never was able to go to an inner bike. So

Kristin Brandt  1:00:33

I have to, I have to say I am. I wanted to share this story. So when he started the bike shop, I it was a thing I was supporting. But I did not own it. Right. Like I did it. And then a couple years ago, I was riding with a bunch of my girlfriends, and we made a stop. And this other rider I didn’t know spent 10 minutes explaining to me how to lean my bike up against the wall. And then he asked me if my husband had bought me my bicycle. And I kind of spluttered at him. And my my girlfriend said to me, he she was like your answer should have been, I own a bike shop. And I was like, I don’t own a bike shop. I don’t know, I support a bike shop. And I told him this story. And he said the same thing. He was like your response should be you own a bike shop. Absolutely. And so I have been semi comfortable with that for a couple of years. But with the pandemic, i will say i i totally say it now. Right? Like I am, I am all in. So that’s why I never went to conferences, because I didn’t own the bike shop. Right. Like I didn’t. But now, you know, working on Saturdays, and yeah, you’re just dealing with much more i I’m much more comfortable saying that my husband and I own a vape shop. But it took me a while to get there because I felt like I needed to know more to you know, because I still don’t know half the time. I’m like, I’m gonna give you an answer. And then he’ll come out and tell me why it was wrong. Just so you know.

Heather Mason  1:01:49

We’re gonna hang out. Cathy’s I’m so looking for Steve, I’m with you. This Interbike was something special. Right? Definitely had that. That big. Industry show. It took hours to walk the Interbike floor and lots of education, lots of seminars. You just have an opportunity to meet everyone and say hi, face to face everyone you spoke to on the phone throughout the years. We’re hopeful we can get the big gear show back there that had the feel of Interbike but outside last year, so yeah, cab to east again. It’s the same feeling it’s the education. It’s all the vendors it’s I know SRAMs gonna be there’s a lot of people coming to the east side. Yeah, we can meet you. Alright, so what’s next for Steve? The bike guy? What what any future plans on remodeling any anything?

Steve Brandt  1:02:38

Well, yeah, we are increasing the the space we have by 50%. So this has been an ongoing square feet. Yeah. Which is going to be I mean, having a new 20 by 20 room is going to be huge and and a new double door entrance way. It’s just going to be it’s going to be fantastic. So that is we were hoping that construction was going to start about now but it’s coming shortly. So that’s a little bit up in the air, just waiting for things to happen. The landlord sorting a few things out of town. Really other

Kristin Brandt  1:03:06

thing is is we’re redefining so we mentioned briefly that the team started as the STB G cyclocross team then it was the cyclocross and mountain bike team. Now, we just call it the stbd Cycling Team. And one of the things that we started this year is expanding how you define team because I think it was it was based in racing, but we have so many people that I would say are part of our team that are not racing. And I had written something about this a couple of like a month ago, but basically like anyone who’s if you decide to wear our kit out on your social ride, like you’re part of our team, right, so I’m trying to figure out how to really, yeah, we have a couple of us fine that

Steve Brandt  1:03:47

race under another team, but they’re very much they’re so hard. Yeah. And they’re, they’re very much on our team in that regard. And so yep,

Kristin Brandt  1:03:55

I want to continue. Yeah. So I would say our my goal for next year is to continue that like opening the the circle, how we define what is being part of a shop team, and more education, and more, you know, events because I just love it. That’s a space I think we can fill right? Like there’s a ton of rides going on, but there aren’t a lot of some of this other stuff. So always looking for those spots where we can make a difference.

Heather Mason  1:04:24

Yeah, and I mean, when we’re talking about expanding the word cyclists in the industry, we have all these all these new riders, right finding cycling, we doing to expand what that what that word team, maybe it’s community, I have no idea but what that looks like. So it’s not just racer focused. It’s not just the experienced racer focus, I guess I would say,

Kristin Brandt  1:04:46

somebody and it’s, it’s funny. We’re kind of the bed like, we had one new racer this year. And I was like, congratulations, you know, on racing, and he’s like, Did you see my results? And I was like, Yes, I did. You Like it didn’t finish like I don’t care you were out there you were doing it so yeah it’s I love that like I if anything I’m I like the beginner racers

Heather Mason  1:05:11

i This is this conversation has been excellent and I can only strongly urge our listeners to go to Steve the bike guy.com visit their social feeds, read the reviews read what people are, are saying the people’s choice, we had a People’s Choice part of the bicycle retailer Excellence Awards this year and so many people just wrote the most amazing things. I mean, these reviews are authentic, they’re from the heart and they mentioned you know, Steve by name, they mentioned the the couple that was at the store working at the store and you’re truly changing lives for our listeners that might want to contact you to learn more about the Saturday drop ins learn more about the shop, just follow up to say thank you for everything you’re doing for cycling, could you share your contact?

Kristin Brandt  1:05:58

Yeah, you can actually email info at Steve the bike guy.com That actually goes to both of us that way. And yeah, so he’s Steven Steven bike guy, and I’m Kristin at Steve the bike guy.com. So, we’d love to love to love we love to talk to other bike shop owners. It’s one of the reasons we joined the MBTA because I felt like at some points we were just making up stuff that somebody else must have figured out like that you know, so if we can help somebody figure that out, too. Like how we did gift cards are how we’re printing our own T shirts I am I’m more than happy to share.

Heather Mason  1:06:36

Oh yeah, there’s so much I didn’t even get into I mean just the aspect of what you’re doing the gift cards for our listeners if you want to drop into a Monday mingle one of them are almost always on go figure you’ll probably end up at one that they can’t make it that week or come meet them in person. Thank you both so much for giving up your part of your Monday to share with me podcast I really appreciate it.

Steve Brandt  1:07:03

Thank you. Alright, so

Heather Mason  1:07:05

that is it. I invite you to connect with me and come on bicycle retail radio, share your story with our listeners, online nba.com We have the our outspoken blog, we also have a lot of events you can register for go ahead and take a look. If you’d like to support the show. Don’t forget to subscribe and share your favorite episode with friends on social media. Thank you for listening. See you back here soon. And with this we go.

NBDA   1:07:28

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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