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Developing your retailer experience, leadership, and the importance of data integrity

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This episode’s guest is George Lee, a known retail expert with an unwavering desire to innovate, implement, and take every business and everybody in his environment to the next level. His bicycle industry career is centered on strategic thinking, planning, and profitability. He is leading the retail strategy and operations growth plan of Conte’s Bike shop-the biggest bicycle retail business on the East Coast. So much content in this episode, it’s really like 5 podcasts in one. This is a listen, and then listen again.

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Developing your retailer experience, leadership, and the imp…

Tue, 6/1

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bikes, retailers, business, customers, store, bike shop, george, retail, bicycle, team, people, rider, helps, service, ride, product, staff, listeners, community, great

SPEAKERS

Heather Mason, NBDA , George Lee

NBDA   00:10

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

Heather Mason  00:17

Welcome to another episode of bicycle retail radio brought to you by the MBTA. I am Heather Mason, thank you for listening. If you’re a first time listener, be sure to check out the previous episodes do us a favor and leave a review. As always, the MBTA is thankful for our donors and association members. If you’d like to make a donation to the MBTA, or become an association member, you can do so directly on our webpage, especially things to people for bikes, they are continued to be a strong partner with MBDA. They continue to advocate for the industry at large, and the entire team at peopleforbikes is eager and committed to continuing to improve bikes for everybody. You can learn more at people for bikes.org. All right, today’s guest is George Lee, a well known retail expert with an unwavering desire to innovate, implement, and take every business and everybody in his environment to the next level. A bicycle industry career centered on strategic thinking, planning and profitability. He is leading retail strategy and operations growth plan for counties bike shop, the biggest bicycle retailer business in the East Coast. We’re thrilled to have him on with us today. And so without further ado, welcome, George, how are you?

George Lee  01:27

I’m great, thank you, we’re having a good day, we just finally got issued our permits for a new Atlanta location like 20 minutes ago. So I’m pretty happy. Thanks for having me on. I love these insights every week, I typically get to listen to them while I’m riding my bike along the path for a gentle ride. And I’m very grateful for the way that you’ve helped really lift the communication to retailers resources and the NBDA. Thank you. Oh, my gosh, thank you. So how many locations this contest have now. With the addition of Atlanta, we’re up to 14 locations.

Heather Mason  02:02

Congratulations. So quite a whirlwind. I mean, how things been this past year with COVID. And you know, a new position. And

George Lee  02:10

yeah, it’s been a pretty wild 1518 months for me with I’ve changed jobs during the pandemic, we have our two kids. 10 year old five year old boys, the five year old started kindergarten at home. My wife Kendra sits next to me in the office here. And it’s been it’s been tough. I’m sure everybody can appreciate that. And the increase in the demand for bikes in the market has been phenomenal, too. So it’s just everything from all angles. But thankfully now, things are starting to lift a little and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel kids back at school. And we’re not bombarded with questions or children while we’re trying to work at the same time.

Heather Mason  02:51

I mean, working from home this past year transitioning and you know, a new job I can’t even imagine I feel like the stressors that everyone is feeling bicycle retailers, as well as we’re kind of navigating these times that we’ve never been through before. It’s more important than ever that I’ve been riding I took a ride this morning, every day getting on the bike is still able to get out George and get a ride and

George Lee  03:12

I try if I’m honest, most of my my good rides happen at five 6am midweek is the only time I can get in while the rain is asleep. There’s no work real going on. So I have to just wait see what the weather is doing and try and ride as much as possible. But kids sports on the weekend take up most of the time. And I found that zwift was my friend during the winter. And about 18 to 24 months ago, I discovered that the gym is a really great way to stay conditioned when you don’t have enough time to be on the bike. So we’d like to ride more. And I’m really happy that events are starting back up. I can’t wait to do some endurance events, like Leadville or Shannon doe 100.

Heather Mason  03:56

Yes, right up my alley. I’m with you on that, for sure. So, you know for our listeners, George and I were connected on LinkedIn, someone in my network suggested you have got to talk to George he is definitely just been in the industry for so long. And I got to know George a little bit better on a social feeds and through asking people in my network. Do you know George Lee, and it’s super clear to me that his guidance and insight is something that retailers need to listen to right now. There couldn’t be a better time to have this conversation with him. And we had a quick conversation George remember just last week and some strategy that we wanted to dive into on our call today. And I just thought before we really dive into everything to give listeners a little bit more about your history with specialized in the last 11 months at con tees. Can you share a little bit with our listeners?

George Lee  04:44

Yeah, I’m going to back up another 10 years before specialized as well actually. So 18 years old, finishing the equivalent of high school education in the UK, loved riding bikes and then riding bikes with my brother and decided to take a year off education and work on the bike shop. I flipped open the Yellow Pages, the bike shops, pointed at one quarter got a job, and then really haven’t turned back since I’ve tried to leave the industry to get a real job in biology and audio engineering, but really, you know, it comes back to one thing, which is every single day, you get people come in through the doors of the bike shop, who just want to have fun, and you’re able to provide a experience customer service knowledge, some kind of transformational journey for them, that just improves their lives. And that’s really special. So I’ve never been able to bring myself to leave because of the people that I’ve worked with the people that engage in the activity. So I worked in the UK Evan cycles for 10 years. And I worked with them as store manager, workshop manager, a the head of training and head of retail operations. When I left to go and chase a dream of working in California with specialized, we had 52 locations and over 1000 employees. And they started when they had five franchise stores. The growth experience was something unique and very special. I feel very lucky to have been for that. But when my first kid was not even born yet, I pitched the idea to Kendra, my wife who entertains all of these crazy ideas. I said, hey, let’s move to California. And she said, find a job and we’ll go I found a job. And we went and I have to give complete credit to Kendra because she’s just my rock and engages in every crazy endeavor that I suggest, which is fantastic. In my time in the industry to specialize the work in stcu specialist bicycle components University, helped lead the product education costs helped to develop the retail excellent class focused on operations and retail finance class, and then worked on a consultancy program and then finished up my time working at specialized as global retail operations manager, helping the teams around the world in specialized retail executions to run their stores finding the right people, digital resources and physical resources in the shops. Last year, I decided after not being able to travel for a bit, and the prospect of traveling, coming back up that I really loved that close connection with the riders and with the employees having to travel to Ireland or South Africa or Mexico to work was fun. But it’s difficult. At the same time, I wanted to find somewhere where I could roll out my door on my bike, and within 20 minutes being one of the businesses that I’m helping to run and that’s ended up getting a chance meeting with one of the owners of countries and within a couple of weeks, decided that it was definitely the right move. And it’s been fantastic. The last nearly 12 months now have been awesome. Working with content is such an engaged organization wanting to grow open to ideas. We are putting a pumptrack inside of the store in Atlanta inside. I love David and Wayne, the owners of counties have just been fantastic. saying yes to the most craziest ideas that I’ve pitched to them so far.

Heather Mason  08:23

Oh my god, George, what a dynamic path in the industry. And being a past specialized retailer who has seen SBC you and what SBC you can do for a retail environment, just getting the staff educated, the owners educated, being part of that charge. And now being a part of counties and counties is so well known and bringing these dynamic thoughts to the table. This is a fantastic, fantastic path. Thank you for sharing. I’m just thinking you’ve probably worked with hundreds, possibly 1000s of retailers over the years touching on everything from marketing and strategy. And in this kind of like out of the box onto her newer ship like type of thinking, right? Like how do we become better? How do we engage riders? I think this moment right now you refer to this being a time that retailers could refer to almost a position of luck. I know you use that word, right, George a position of luck. What can you dive into that a little bit? How can I retailer can look at this as like, you know, it’s been trying?

George Lee  09:22

Yeah, I have had the luxury whilst in evidence was lucky with working with hundreds of people in specialized working with probably close to 1000s of retailers all over the world. And the thing that strikes me is that there’s this winning combination, and it’s very prevalent in industry, just because most of the time this is the Passion Play for a lot of businesses, for a lot of owners, is the combination of three things predominantly that drives that luck. It’s the people you have working for you. It’s the passion that they have for the activity, and it’s the community that surrounds The business. And those three things are really what drives a lot of retailers to be successful. And when you have all of those elements, you’re going to really win. But there’s a foundation that helps the biggest and the best or the most successfully in terms of engagement, retailers drive forwards more. And that’s operational excellence. So when you have that foundational, operational excellence, you have good people, you have good passion for the activity, and you have a winning community surrounding your business, then you start to see some retailers really elevate themselves survive all the tumultuous times that we have been recessions, pandemics, changing marketplaces, changing local demographics, because of developments that are happening. And there’s a few retailers that I think have done this incredibly well, in terms of combining all those four elements together, as Eric was might we know those, those two are big and successful, because of the way they scaled their operational side of the business and given a platform for the people who are passionate to engage the community. And then there’s a couple of other smaller ones that I would encourage your listeners to check out online. Strictly cycling in Jersey, Nelson, the owner, there is the perfect example of somebody that is operationally savvy, passionate and engaged with the community. There’s a bike society, which is in New Zealand, the owner of Matt Dunstan is exactly the same. He had combines that business acumen with the community and the people. And then bicycle is critical. The owner mark in Montreal, he has seven locations now. And it’s exactly the same thing. It’s just driven by pure passion. There’s lots of lots and lots. In fact, I would say the prevailing number of bike shorts out there are basically incredibly Luckily, operators. Without opera operational excellence. In the last year, there’s been a lot of strain on business, and the lack of community has really shone through in terms of, if you’re operationally savvy this last year was the increase in business has been difficult to handle the interactions with customers, when you have those operations in place is still smooth, you’re able to pivot and manage. And now you’re not just running on that lucky combination of people passion and community because the passion and the community have basically been taken away from any interactions. So when you have diode operations, that allows you to easily manage your store whilst you’re in a high stress.

Heather Mason  12:44

Yeah, this past year, many retailers have really had to dial in everything. And we’ve been talking a lot about retailer excellence with our rebrand of our America’s best bike shop program. And, and right now we do have that we have this moment, it’s been high stress, and we’ve had to look at every single thing and, and really take this opportunity to say, okay, we can make this better, we can make this better. And now’s the time to shine. I love that you brought up strictly as a New Yorker, I know Nelson and his team. Well, and yeah, you’re right. They’re so engaged with the community. I think everyone stops there on the way out of, you know, for the ride escaping the city. Alright, George. So let’s dive deep in and talk about how we should address the future where retailers our listeners should focus and strategize on and you wrote to me in an email that retailers should develop their specific retailer experience. And I think this means like your personalized branding, and I’m thinking maybe that’s what you’re referring to, that retailers should strengthen what it means to shop at their stores. Is that what you’re saying? When you say specific retailer experience? Yeah,

George Lee  13:45

exactly. It’s, it’s something I think that in a when you first start your business, and I think this phrase comes from Seth Godin, where he’s talking about local businesses, if you’re local customer and connected, you’re always going to be relevant. And when you first start, you’re very engaged. You just want to do everything you can to serve the local community. And that can sometimes when the words things change, and routine crops into your daily habits, you need to lean super hard into your own personalized brand. And it all comes from the people, your people or your strength your people or your business and by your people, I mean, your employees, the employees that you have really helped to drive the community. They help to drive your product selection because of what they use, and they completely drive the vibe in the store. And all of that equates to your specific retailer experience. You need to amplify that. So you need to first of all figure out what it is. Then you need to amplify it in every element of the business, whether it’s the design of the store the artwork, you use the types of events you engage in Your social platform representation, how you recruit people, and the products that you select, when you can keep that crystal clear in your mind and in the business operations, then you can maintain that local, custom connected relevancy.

Heather Mason  15:18

Hi, guys, George, I’m sitting here I’m thinking so often in life, we want to, we see something that we like. And we want to be like that, right? We see a shop that we think is doing well. And we want to emulate that. Or we see someone walking down the street in an outfit, and we want to wear that same outfit. But really, that’s not good. That’s not what makes us unique. That’s not why we opened up our bike shop in the first place. That’s not why we’re in this industry, it’s because you had an idea. And you thought you could do it better. And you thought you could do it uniquely, you when you’re saying your staff to I’m thinking I did an interview with Shauna McCann, from Mojo cycling in Arkansas, just last week, and we chatted about bike shop and the culture of the shop and her staff. But what about for the shop owner who has forgotten either their culture, their uniqueness? Like how do they go ahead and develop that back judge?

George Lee  16:04

I think this is like probably one of my favorite elements of working in, in this industry, because it’s the people, it’s very rare. You get to work in an industry where the people actually love the activity, the social elements, and the other people who are walking in that are your customers, there is no culture without people. And your people will attract like people I call it automatic recruitment, is it’s a way your brand gets amplified, when you’re very clear about what your brand is about. So a culture and a vibe will develop off of your people in the way they interact with the local community. I think I said people a lot, I think you get the point where your customers will went in this environment, customers will grow into friends, because they end up riding with you, you end up sharing stories, then become an incredibly loyal. And that’s when you have a unique culture is when your customers are engaged in the culture of the store and the staff. And that that can be a scary thought to a lot of people. Because it’s like handing over something to your team. But that’s exactly how you do it. When you got that vibe going, when you’ve got those core group rides, and you’ve got people hanging out in the shop, you’re walking down the street, and people are saying hi, because they recognize you are from that bike shop. That’s the point where you need to think to yourself, okay, I need to take this tacit culture, and start to focus on defining it so that I can make it explicit and be more aligned in every area of the business. And that breaks down into basically three main spots, which is your values. And the easiest way to define your values, is actually to ask your customers, what do they value, what are the attributes of your business that they value, and ask friends in the shop what they value, then there’s a vision statement, there’s something that’s very concise, it’s very clear, it’s where you’re heading. It’s how you want to change the local markets, how you want to change the local rivals, and how you want to change the world. It is very clear. And then you as your mission statement, which is very specific in how you’re going to achieve that. After definition. You should use this as a guide, stay on track and refer to it often get it printed and displayed to the staff to see, make it show you’re using it to make any choice in the business, somebody approached you with a service somebody approaches you with a product, somebody approaches you with an opportunity to partner locally. Does it match up with your values, your vision, and your mission? Once you’ve validated that whole piece, you should also use it in the recruitment process. don’t recruit people based on their experience, their knowledge, their qualifications, those are really great nice to have, what you should do this, find people that are passionate about writing and align with your values. When you find people that are passionate about writing and aligned with your values, your culture will start to perpetuate itself. Your culture drives the community, your community drives that local, custom and connected to build that your business has. I can’t stress enough how important I think this element of developing culture is to an organization. But don’t fight. When your culture starts to change. Culture will shift over time. And that’s totally fine. You just have to go with the flow. You have to update your values. You have to update your vision and your mission, to adapt to that change in the marketplace, in the demographic, or in the people that you’ve You’ve bought into the business, we’ve just got to make sure that it doesn’t it’s not detrimental to your profitability or the people that are in your business than in your community as well. I like to think of this as kind of trying to foster a culture of saying yes to the people who are highly engaged and aligned with your values. Because whilst their ideas may be slightly different from your own, they’re going to be completely complimentary to the way that your culture is developing over time. And that organic development of culture is something that keeps it fresh, and keeps interest in and will keep attracting people rather than stagnating. And seeing your team start to normalize in terms of performance, and then dip when there’s nothing new going on that stimulated them.

Heather Mason  20:47

So it’s almost like a puzzle. Like, first you have to sit down and define your mission and vision. And it’s like your why. Right? It’s like you have to define that if you don’t have it written down. If it’s not on your website, if it’s not on your employee handbook, make sure everyone knows your mission and vision. And then when you’re what you’re saying is when you’re looking to hire people and bring them onto your team. Make sure that their personality, their their stance and why they want to work for you aligns with your mission and vision. Georgia, the second person who, you know, said this, we had Jeff Keighley owner of worldwide cyclery on and I actually, I kind of did a bad thing. I stole a picture a screenshot of his mission and vision off his website, because it was that cool. And him and I got connected because of that. But yeah, this is it’s so important. Have you read the book traction? That’s a great book. Right.

George Lee  21:36

I love that book that’s on my list of recommendations. And I think it’s the best one for defining a process for defining your vision, your mission and your values. Yeah, it’s fantastic. Gina Whitman is the author.

Heather Mason  21:53

Yeah, it’s a fantastic book. All right. Okay. So you’re saying engaging with your community and you’re saying if this is all happening, and you know, maybe will naturally engage with the with your community, but I think some shops are genuinely struggling on connecting we’ve I think it’s easy, because I’m an outgoing person. And I think I ran my retail environment, just the way you said, we were very authentic. I, you know, we invited people on rides. But I think some shops are struggling with engaging with their community, but they know it’s important. Is there any, like over the course of your years in the industry? Is there any way that you have witnessed this executed like to perfection, or any tips for retailers who want to be unique and, and really become like the soul of their community?

George Lee  22:34

Good question. I don’t know if there is perfection, I think there’s just different levels of excellence. And it really just goes back to the mission and the vision and the values like as long as you’re using that as your foundation. And you’re being authentic, then really the best tips are is just care about the people in your community, be present, listen to them, and engage with their needs as a local cycling community. It’s just like any relationship, it takes work and the best way that you can help your customers. And I’m going to, I’ll take a leaf out of specialized book here, especially as internally doesn’t call customers customers, they call them riders. And I like that, because I’m a rider, your rider, everybody that comes into the store riders, we’re all riders, there’s not an awesome meme in that language. And I think that really helps to break down that barrier of seeming like a business and it being transactional. It’s just care be present. And remember that their riders right in there with you. I’m going to diverge for a second and you’ll see why I’ll come back to it in a bit. Community Engagement. And doing it right, is really about listening to the individual person. And understanding what their hero’s journey is hero’s journey is a well defined path. And it’s used in a lot of films, but it’s relevant to success stories. And how you build success with somebody has been defined incredibly well by in a book, and I forget the author’s name, but it’s called the transformational consumer. And in that book, they talk about you becoming a platform, your brand becoming a platform for transformation of people’s personal health, wealth and wisdom, health in terms of quality of life improvements, giving people a reason to ride giving them encouragement, seeing them, attain goals with their riding, or lose weight or include increased their cardiovascular health. Wealth is about the riches that you can provide. That’s not financial, that’s social. It’s about connections with like minded people, screw rides with food at the end. It’s introductions of a new person right into a group of people at the same level. It’s building a platform for people to connect on. And then there’s wisdom, as the knowledge contained within a bike shop is phenomenal. From product knowledge to Nutrition Service fit in, where to ride, who to ride with what events are going on. That is an incredible amount of wealth that, yes, it’s available on YouTube. But when it’s delivered personally, in an environment that is fostering that, it’s a very powerful way to do it. So focus in on clinics, events, training, rides, these are all great ways. It’s those three categories health, wealth and wisdom that helped to provide a transformational experience for a customer. So if we look at a rider who’s going through that, and you’re providing the platform to do that, then that’s how you do it. That’s how you execute to perfection, what you do is up to how you framed up your values. When you see that success, you’ve really got a champion that as long as your riders are open to doing it, those individual achievements are pretty special to everybody. And when you can make their individual achievements, the center of your community, others see that and they appreciate those transformational journeys and feel inspired by it to building a platform like that, to develop those social bonds is one of the most powerful ways you can become the heart and soul of a community. It’s about brand loyalty, and that those two things go hand in hand.

George Lee  26:18

Yeah. And so listeners might be thinking, oh my god, there’s so much here. And there is a lot here, but really at the heart and soul of it is you and your passion. And you know, for me when I ran my store I had I invited my customers out to Breckenridge and we raced. we raced Leadville George together, and then we race back up again. There was 30 people from upstate New York out in Colorado. And we made that happen. And it’s something that everyone you know, talked about. And it really just, you know, everyone wanted to do it again the next year. So it’s a lot. But if you start simple, it’s just about sharing your passion and really uniquely listening to each person that you meet and making a difference, a true difference in their life. But it’s not just the person who owns a store, the manager, George, right. It’s the staff too. So how do we get the staff like how do we develop our staff to be just as cool and be part of this,

George Lee  27:10

you have to engage them and understand what they what they need from working with you. We have one of our managers currently in countries, works out of Boynton Beach store in Florida. And regularly, regularly, he takes his RV, and 30 to 40 of his friends who, most customers, and they drive all the way to Bentonville, and they have a weekend in Bentonville on that road. And just knowing that your staff want to do that, encouraging it, and just making it just make it part of your overall culture and experience. That’s a development opportunity. The very much focused around that individual’s unique motivation. And I think it’s very easy to lose sight of providing development opportunities to, to your team, I’ve been there. Recently, I’ve been there in the past many times, there’s lots of things get in the way, just operationally. And team size makes it incredibly hard to you’ve got a small team, there’s not much opportunity for people to develop in the business, there’s there’s a few things they do but then suddenly they hit a ceiling and compensation becomes an issue at some point. And knowing what’s going to motivate them and giving them room to grow can be tricky. And then a large team is the opposite end of the scale. There’s opportunities, but managing that many people through the process. It takes time. Each one of those situations is hard. But every the solution is the same regardless of the size of the business. And we get down to the nuts and bolts, it’s just about providing a clear framework of what needs to be done operationally within the community physically in the store to help people grow. So the first thing I would say is the step approach, define your responsibilities in the store. And the tasks is a great core tool called a versatility chart, where you map out the tasks on the row one is the header of the columns. And then in column one, you write people’s names down, you let them self assess. They say, one, two or three is the gradient one means that they need training. Two means they’re competent, three means they’re the best. And they can train others on that, that process. If you actually sit down and map out all the tasks, there’s roughly 120 to 140 operational tasks to run a retail store on a on a weekly basis.

Heather Mason  29:39

120 George,

George Lee  29:41

I’ve done. I’ve done that exercise a couple of times, and it’s anywhere between 120 and 140 tasks. It’s kind of scary when you actually map it all out and you’re like wow, that actually there is a lot here. So I’d encourage everybody to go through that process. And then you let your staff self validate how They see the skill set within that specific task. And they’re normally pretty honest. And then you’ll get an idea of where the skills gaps are and where to train what people want, and what elements dovetailing onto that you have your tasks defined, you’re going to do those tasks over a regular cadence, typically over a weekly, repeating weekly basis. So you can take those 120 tasks. So I’m going to do every day I’m going to do once a week, and you divide them up over a day. And that ends up being a book with a checklist of tasks day by day, which is effectively a standard operational processes guide. And then that helps anybody else see how to run the business. And you’ll find that people who want to develop and grow will start to use that tool themselves to help you run your business. So having this framework in this structure, explicitly defined, really helps. And then coaching people to do certain tasks really got set expectations of what’s supposed to be done, if it’s their first time doing it, or when it’s supposed to be done deadlines. And one of the things that I’ve learned in the head of training for Evan cycles and looking after the development of 1000 plus people was a, everybody interprets instructions differently. And you need to send yourself a goal of what’s acceptable as a result. 80% was my my goal. If I describe something to somebody, and I could see in my head how they should execute it, I would get to 100% if I did it, but if somebody else got at our call that a win and leave it, I wouldn’t tell them what they did wrong, or what they missed, I would take that as my opportunity to improve how to communicate next time with them specifically. And you have to recognize in that process that was one of the three learning styles verbal, visual, or kinesthetic, those those people will relate to make sure that you’re giving them the opportunity to develop that skill set within the framework of their own learning styles. I appreciate that there’s a lot of information here, but it stopped development takes a lot to do it right. And you’re going to get it wrong. So you have to embrace failure. When your staff messes up, that’s okay, it doesn’t matter, there’s going to be another opportunity to get it right. No one should be punished or diminished is key to just be supportive, and focus on challenging them to grow. And I got another book recommendation for people multipliers is a fantastic read. It’s by Liz Wiseman. And it’s about different styles of leadership, very much embracing failure. And being assertive and challenging your staff are one of the best lines, or best pieces of advice in a book is after you’ve delegated the task and someone says I’ve finished without looking at the work they’ve done, ask them is this your best work? Nine times out of 10 that person will turn around and go and do it better, without even getting feedback on what’s wrong. Really, really fantastic book.

Heather Mason  33:09

What a deep dive into really operational excellence. And for someone who’s really looking to take their team and really elevate their team to the next level. It does it elevates your your business environment to the next level to have this this task chart to build this guide out. And Gosh, Georgia, as you’re talking, I was remembering like my first job at a retail bike shop I was owner told me to merchandise the clothing section and helmets and, and he just let me go and I did it. And I thought I did an amazing job. And he came back and he’s like, Oh, no, this is off. I’ll do it all again. And I was like, a little bit of guidance. Even better. But um, yeah, 80% goal. I love that because you’re I mean, you might be able to do it, I might be able to do it to 100. But you know, the person that we’re developing is might not be there yet. And that’s okay. 80% is a good way. Lots of good book suggestions. I guess, you know, we talked about leadership. And we talked about, you know, talking about Liz’s book and supportive and challenging and expecting great work but as a leader, and as a leader yourself, George, how do like you continue to grow, learn and evolve like, you know, what are you? Is it books, like who’s your role model? Or?

George Lee  34:25

It’s a good question. And it’s a really hard question. It takes work, it takes a lot of hard work to grow and develop as a leader. I mentioned a few books. And actually, I’m terrible at reading. I read very slowly. I have a mild form of dyslexia and it’s loaded words jump around on the page. So actually listen to audiobooks when I’m driving or sometimes when I’m riding my bike, but I think the best thing you can do is figure out what your opportunity for growth is as a leader. I don’t want to say weakness. It’s just an area that you haven’t focused on yet and put effort there for me. Personally, that’s having empathy for my team is having an open mind. After I’ve decided on a path and being open to complete change, those are the two things I’ve had to work really hard on and still have to work really hard on. And the empathy thing that’s been been huge, just remembering to just stop, focus on the person in front of you. Listen to their needs, and understand their perspective, rather than what you’re trying to get them to do in a situation or the path that you’re trying to lead people on. And then adapt if you need to. That’s been a real struggle. But I’ve had some really great successes on that. I’d say I would my reading because it’s listening, I would normally do in a car or out on the bike and pandemic, life has definitely got in the way of that I haven’t had many opportunities to listen to audiobooks while I’ve been at home. But I’ve got four great books that I’ve listened to out of 50 or 60. Now, the first one is in order of preference. multipliers from Liz Wiseman already mentioned, great leaders eat last by Simon Sinek. It’s about servant leadership, primed to perform and principles by Ray Dalio, that combination of four, really for me, my style that really rounded out, and made explicit some of the innate traits that I had and helped me amplify and work on areas where I had opportunities to grow as a leader. And the last thing I would say, in terms of leadership, growth and development is make time to reflect on your mistakes as a leader, but don’t dwell on them. Don’t let them beat you up, learn from them, change, move forwards better, and forgive yourself often.

Heather Mason  36:52

I love that list. Yeah. And I’m thinking, I’m definitely an audio book fan. And I do listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m running or riding and yeah, listening to nonfiction or, you know, surrounding yourself with people who are in different, similar roles with different roles definitely always gets the mind churning, and I come out with some little nugget, you know, I used to have this Saturday team meeting, and I, you know, I brought the staff together, and I would, you know, go over the greeting and the whole sales process. Do you believe in team meetings? George, do you think you know, I constantly ask retailers? Are you having team meetings? And I always get a mixed bag of answers. What’s your take on that?

George Lee  37:24

100%? Yes, team meetings are fundamental. For for any team, it doesn’t matter if you’re a retailer, or if you’re a surgeon, like you have to have team meetings, they provide your group with complete alignment, they provide you with an opportunity to enhance or redefine your thought leadership within any organization. And they foster a culture of inclusiveness and collaboration, as long as they’re done in an open format, where discussion and an open, constructive discourse can happen. Even if there’s conflicting views. That’s something that you have to foster, we’re doing a team meeting, right is actually pretty hard. You probably know from from doing this, I’ve had failures with team meetings where they’re just boring, and they’re not relevant. You’ve got to keep them relevant. You’ve got to keep the agendas tight. You don’t have to take up half an hour, it can be two minutes, it can be quick, but you’ve got to keep it tight to the vision alignment, you got to make sure it’s operationally relevant, covering any tactics that have been deployed recently, or change recently, you’ve got to cover results. And you have to include social recognition for the great work that your team has done within the group. If somebody is going out of their way to help somebody on a group ride who is struggling, if somebody did 15 cycle counts in a day and organized the whole back stock room, all of these things need to be recognized on it in a social setting, their team meeting is the perfect place to do that. So it’s kind of those four things, vision alignment, operational tactics, results and social recognition, and then be completely genuine with gratitude. Coming from the heart when you have those meetings is people talking to people it’s not robots, digesting information.

Heather Mason  39:16

Yeah, definitely the agenda and giving that positive feedback in front of peers in front of colleagues is a big thing. Any input on frequency George, like I used to do every Saturday morning at 10am. It was like standard, but any thoughts there?

George Lee  39:31

Yeah, definitely. I prefer with myself I prefer weekly meeting. And it really depends on the volume of business, the amount of people you have in your team, how often they’re in the store. You got a small team and you’re tight. Maybe once a month work, you got a large team and you’re part of the bigger organization, then a weekly meeting will probably work better too. I like to combine a regular weekly meeting with the group With a 10 minute one on one with every individual as well that that combination works incredibly well.

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Heather Mason  40:59

Okay, let’s shift gears a little bit here. Cuz I think we could go on about the team. For some time, I want to talk about data and eecom eecom. This has grown significantly over this past year, and continues with local listings we’re seeing locally in the news, click and collect, just let’s start broad any tips for retailers in the e commerce world? George?

George Lee  41:22

Yeah, totally having been at the brand level and the retail level now in different capacities, is very simple. Embrace as much of the digital solutions is operationally viable for you, you should partake in every single one of the vendor programs out there. And you should make sure that your online experience is simple and easy, smart retailing, one of the best ways to do this, they have really simple problem play, multifaceted solutions that can be utilized and fully integrated with with every vendor. So just do whatever is operationally viable for you, as everything that’s offered at the brand level with is really how the future is going to drive.

Heather Mason  42:08

You know, there’s a lot of resources being available right now to retailers. And I’m constantly like, do this get involved, you know, take advantage. And there’s many considerations with econ. And data integrity is a big part. And we talk about inventory management and PL processes. And, you know, it used to be the days where you would close down once a year to like, do your whole inventory. But it really needs to be a constant thing you’re constantly on top of. I’m thinking about some you know, thoughts you have on as we’re striving to be excellent retailers in this regard. Anything you can give to that, George on, you know how to be really smart with your inventory management in your appeal process. Yeah, data

George Lee  42:43

inventory integrity is, I can’t emphasize enough how important this point is. Bad data in your system will result in bad customer service and now rolls over and bad reviews. And that’s, that’s bad for everybody. In any experience. There’s a few specific pain points when you’re managing your data integrity when it comes to product in your stores for specific spots, when you’re setting up the order when you’re receiving the order when you’re labeling the product. And then when you’re selling the product, those four areas where mistakes will happen. And that’s the the best way to mitigate it is to make sure you have everything dialed in those four areas. Dive into each one of those. If you’re setting up an order, create a purchase order in your POS system as well. And make sure you’re adding your purchase order numbers a reference to the vendor order for quick and easy receiving. Double check all of the product info fields, when you’re setting that up. If it’s a new product, or a product you haven’t ordered for a while, you want to make sure that the UPC codes and the cost and the retail are set up correctly. And the item type is set up correctly. When you’re receiving it is the process is the same every time doing line level validation or against the packing slip, making sure that what is on the paperwork matches, the PEO matches the physical product, then you’re validating that the cost you have in your system is correct. And you’re validating the quantity that you’re receiving is correct on the PEO. And you’re making sure that all of the the UPC and the E M codes are accurate to that takes time. It’s a massive pain. I get that but is essential for making sure that data is correct because as soon as that data is your POS system in a digitally connected Well, that’s available for purchase online straight away in most instances. This one is super obvious label printing. Just make sure the right labels end up on the right products. Because this feeds into the fourth point, which is the selling of the product. If it has the wrong label on it. You’re going to sell the wrong product. Then your image Tory’s off, you’ll have a blue item in stock on the computer, but you’ll physically have a red item in the store, somebody else has the blue item online, you only have the red item, it’s bad customer service. When you’re selling and negative inventory message pops up, don’t ignore it. tackle that as soon as possible. Over time, those negative inventory items or the auto ads, or however your POS system works, will end up creating a complete discrepancy in the inventory that you have in store versus the inventory you digitally have in store. And then you end up with the wrong product displaying on your ecommerce platform and poor customer service. Two tips here, train your staff to avoid typing into description to find the product and train your staff to avoid using dumb codes, the shortcuts when they can’t find the products, item ID, those four items, setting up an order receiving the order labeling the product and effective selling kind of the key way to keep your inventory balanced on a continual basis. And then we jump back to cycle counting. So the best way to do that, once a year, I still would recommend you shut down your store for half a day and count the whole store. Then you should be doing regular cycle council key categories helmets, shoes, locks, lights, those are kept neat, organized and tidy. And I would highly recommend counting all the bikes once a week, every week stop cycle count on the bikes is a lot of work. But in the age where your product information is showing up on our brand website and your information showing up on your website. The focus on data integrity, I can’t emphasize it enough.

Heather Mason  46:46

Yeah, this is such an important spot to slow down, take that deep breath, you know, maybe put a specific employee on it but not not hit a problem and be like, Oh, I’m gonna come back to this later. It’s really a spot where we have to really everything’s connected, everything’s talking to each other. And you really need to be very keyed into what’s happening. But what happens when we have a bicycle retailer, I’m a manager, I’m a buyer I’m account I’m a marketing person announces to be an econ Master, I’m supposed to be really into into, you know, maybe I’m not even good with computers, which I’m not actually personally. But like what happens when an issue arises if we can’t put it off? So what’s the action plan? George, like, what happens?

George Lee  47:29

First thing, use those support services hit your vendor up, and I love the support network at smart eternian. Dell, they’ll help you straight away, if you pick up the phone or send an email help is there in an instance, that’s your first point of call is digital. But really a problem arises arises because of two situations. It’s a novel situation and there’s no learned recourse in place, or a system is breaking. So within those two pieces, you’ve really got to define the root cause. Is it a process? That’s an issue? Is it a system you use in this the issue? Or is it a pattern that’s causing the problem. And then you need to define decide if it’s an individual or a systemic fix that needs to happen. If there’s an individual fix a one off, because somebody didn’t know a process, believe it move on. If it’s a systemic problem, then you need to set time aside, you quite often spend a lot of our time in a reactive state in bicycle retail and dealing with systemic problems, which will impact your business in the long term, even though it seems small on the day in the time, that slow gradual buildup can create massive customer service issues in the future. When you identify a systemic problem, put time aside to solve it more holistically. And, you know, if you’re the owner of the store, take the morning off, take the day off and focus on figuring that problem out. The shop will be there, your team will be there. You don’t need to be there every single day. high level. That’s how I like to approach tactical and strategic problems.

Heather Mason  49:05

Yeah, it’s definitely your right team at smartly telling us fantastic too. So I’ll definitely speak to that as well. You know, we talked in the beginning and I can’t believe we’ve always been talking for an hour I’m just gonna keep going on with you, George I hope at the time we we talked about the customer journey and engaging community and and you know, really taking that moment to look at the person in front of you. Any thoughts for retailers who want to stay really involved in this customer journey and be really relevant within the customer journey.

George Lee  49:37

We live in working, I would call an incredibly complex system and when you take a moment to step back and think about it and I’ve had that luxury working in SPC, you to do that a high level with retailers taken out of the store for three days. It’s it’s really exciting to think about the business from that perspective because you can often get stuck in the weeds and everyone wants to make The idea of the customer journey simple, but it’s not this is very complex and diverse in its entirety. And you need to know how you fit into it, you can boil down a typical customer journey into five, five phases that may happen sequentially or may happen out of sequence, awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. Retailers touch points in the journey are throughout those five phases, and they’re very deep. And the best thing you can do is, like we said earlier, identify your values and apply them to every phase of that, that customer journey. Otherwise, there’s so many options and so much choice that it can be very overwhelming. So you’ve got to figure out on where your strengths are. Most retailers in our industry have the purchase phase died, or the experience in the store is normally top notch driven by those people, passionate people in the community, you need to really focus I would suggest on retention within your values and retention is about how do you get that person back? Why are they coming back for IS IT service? Is it rides? Is it product information? Is it a connection to a similar cyclist who has similar goals. And another area that really needs a lot of focus is on awareness. Awareness is being in the marketplace, and then people’s peripherals so that they go to you when they’re starting to consider to purchase. And making sure that everything you do is framed up within your values, because then if people see it, and they resonate with it, when they visit you, it’s going to be a very genuine experience. And that helps to create brand loyalty. Use whatever digital platforms in the customer journey brands provide you with, for helping you with awareness and consideration, clicking conduct platforms, lead generation tools from all the brands, fantastic, because that reach is making their product at a national level, available at a local level. And they’ve got more power and more connection to the wider community than you do as an individual shop. They’re genuinely trying to hand over that relationship to a business, they trusted this small local customer connected,

Heather Mason  52:32

charge them hanging on to the topic you brought up as keep these customers coming back. So you’re, you know, the bicycle retailers in their store, you’re ringing someone out for their new bike. And we’re now thinking okay, well, how am I? How am I getting that customer back? How am I keeping that customer engaged? How am I making sure this customer is a cyclist for life? How do we do this? Like just everyone’s talking about it? Like let’s keep these new cyclists engaged? like where do we start? It’s simple, right?

George Lee  53:02

I actually think it’s simple. It’s a relationship, a relationship types of work. And there’s different things that are going to motivate different people, when you put everything you do in the retention phase of the consumer journey into the store. And it’s visible, that people can pick and choose what they want to be involved in. Better still make it an active part of the engagement. So if you’re retaining somebody, they’re staying engaged with your business over on digital platforms, or in real life or visiting the store, reaching out to people when it’s right to do so when it’s timely is good. But before they leave the shop, plan their next visit simple tricks, like scheduling the new bike check over before they leave the store, you know, only about three out of 10 bikes sold, come back in for the two to three month checkup is so low, and that somebody that’s you know, you know what, by devil, you know, when they bought it, you know, their contact details, you can pick up the phone today and call the three people that bought a bike 90 days ago and say, hey, how’s your bike going? Come back and let’s check it over and make sure everything’s going okay. By the way, have you been riding it wherever you’ve been riding, and you’ve really got to build that relationship and lots of people are scared to reach out to the bike shop for that. I’m sure everybody has a very engaged community. But really, it’s those are the ones that extroverted and go the extra step to actually connect to the bike shop. There is a pool of people who you know, know what they bought, know their contact details that you can reach out to and it’s super easy. It’s one of the best ways of increasing retention is just outreach and ideally before they leave the store planning their next visit. inviting them for a ride and setting the date and time for their fitting appointments in a day and time for their first bike, check over Don’t wait for them to come back actively look for ways to invite them back. If you have your values defined in the events and rights communicated in the store, it’s a very easy, natural, not creepy conversation to have with a customer.

Heather Mason  55:15

Not creepy. George, I don’t know if you’re seeing me like, Alright, so for our listeners, we’re on a zoom call doing this podcast. And I’m like taking notes as George is talking. Because, George, I think you just said as gold, you said schedule, the 90 day checkup while they’re in the store before they leave, like, especially when we’re scheduling service, a lot of shops now are scheduling services out because they’re so busy this is, this is a gold tip moment right now, you should definitely be pre scheduling and getting your customers already committed to come back and visit you and in 90 days, and at that time, you know, they’re going to need maybe the pump they didn’t have at home or who knows now maybe they need another tube or whatever, it’s a great opportunity to check in with them. And you can do that for fit services to George, awesome advice there. Okay, for retailers walking into their store today. And you know, you turn on the light that that rubber smell of rubber hits you What is one thing that someone could do today, that would be the most profound change, that’s a big, that’s a big thing.

George Lee  56:15

I would say, having the luxury of working with so many retailers walking into a bike shop Wherever I am, if the opportunity arises, walking into any business, to be honest, the biggest opportunity for profound changes that first initial interaction, smile, once we can take masks off, which some states you can now and some of our stores do. smiling at people is huge, just being friendly. At the end of the day, we are in a people business, customer service, and people are at the center of everything we do. We happen to be cyclists we happen to sell bikes, but really we’re a people business is very simple. People walking through the door, are there to have fun. You should foster an atmosphere of happiness. Make it enjoyable experience. It’s been a really hard year, and a lot of the people on your team are probably burnt out. You need to remember that. It’s just bikes. And bikes have fun.

Heather Mason  57:21

Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing what we’re doing right, we have the opportunity to change people’s lives and bikes are absolutely amazingly fun. George, when we chatted about a month ago, I think you mentioned that, you know, this has been a trying time. But there’s some distinct areas that retailers could find success now. And I think you mentioned service menu and pricing is that is there something there that retailers can focus on right now to find some additional successes with?

George Lee  57:49

Yes, if any of the listeners have been to one of my classes in an SBC you which I imagine a few have, then they’ve all heard this before about service menu. But this the service menu in the way you go about setting it up is a really easy way to one, make the selection of the service easy for the customer, the rider to help the staff member feel less pushy when recommending the service that they need three, increased profitability in the business. You need to make your menu easy to read. You need to focus on selling what your average customer needs the most. And you need to make it simple to understand first part by making it simple to understand, you get rid of the checklist of items that you’ll cover. In a service. You don’t say true wheels, adjust brakes just really is check hubs, adjust bottom bracket, get rid of that description, talk about how the bike is going to feel after the work is done. That makes it more real for the average person reading the menu. The second part about the language is the name in logic. In psychological terms, this is called priming. If you have a service that everybody should have done once a year, I call it the annual service. Pretty simple. It’s really basic. And I’ve actually done a lot of research into this was working at HBCU. Especially bicycle components University. If anybody has access to SPC, you hit them up about the service menu I helped create while I was there, and all this information is there. The second part of the service menu is about the pricing structure. Psychologically, this is called anchoring. So you want to reduce the sticker shock that some people have of the services says we can go back to restaurants now and eat and drink. You walk into a restaurant and you want to buy a bottle of wine with your meal. If you look at the menu, and on the menu, there’s a $100 bottle of wine and a $60 bottle of wine, a 50 and a $30 bottle of wine, you’re more likely to buy the 50 To the $60 bottle is less likely to buy the $100 bottle. If you go to another restaurant that has the same $100 bottle, but you have a 50 or 100, or 200, and a $500 bottle, I guarantee you that that business will sell more of the $100 bottles, the hardly ever sell that $500. One, the price hasn’t changed, the product hasn’t changed where the perception of value has. And that’s the that’s what anchoring does, helps people fixate on a big number, and then perceived value in the rest of the list. So when you combine your pricing structure on your menu, and your name and logic to be relevant, it makes it so easy to help riders self select, you just ask the question, when was the last time you had your bike serviced? 80% of people are gonna say a year ago, you say I recommend the annual service. something we’ve been I’ve been teaching in SPC, us since 2000 1300s of bike shops over the US and globally have implemented it. But it’s super easy. And on average, this is going to yield you a 2% bump in your gross margin.

Heather Mason  1:01:07

Well, there’s so much here, it’s not just put a put a menu up and and price your service is like the shop next door to you. And also don’t run the 999 tune up, right? We don’t want to devalue service, right?

George Lee  1:01:20

Yeah, we definitely don’t want to devalue service services is super important. And you’re absolutely right. I don’t know what happened. At some point in history, somebody decided that $95 was good for a service. And then everybody else checked them out, set their price at 95. And suddenly, the whole country was at $95. What you should do with pricing your services to make sure it’s relevant for your operation. Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Focus on how you can make your services profitable for your business. Once somebody walked into the store with their bike, it’s highly unlikely they’re going anywhere else, as long as the selection of the services easy. And the mechanics knowledge comes across and they’re friendly. That service is going to happen. Your staff, all professionals, and they’ve dedicated decades to the trade and developing their skills. And time is money. Yes, but more importantly, knowledge and experience is money. So just because it takes you five minutes to change a tube doesn’t mean you should undervalue that the person that came into your store doesn’t know how to do it. They’re coming there for your expertise. You don’t see doctors undervaluing the services they provide and they spent decades honing their skills and their trade to what is simple for you is not simple for others and, and that’s why they come to you. That’s why they trust you. Service is your biggest differentiator, it should be considered the the jewel in your crown.

Heather Mason  1:02:53

You know, Alright, so now I’m thinking about this 999 tuner, you know, how there was the shop who always gave us like really inexpensive tuna devalued. But what about the discounting toward, you know, a lot of customers come in, and hopefully not now because we don’t, obviously shops are charging even above MSRP in some spots. But you know, how can we be okay saying no, it’s such a hard thing. People want the club discount, or the bro discount or whatever,

George Lee  1:03:18

you know, the teams and club discounts I actually support as long as that team is giving back. Are they engaging in the community? Are they leading group, right? They’re bringing people into the business. If there’s writers on teams that are just collecting a discount, you got to look at what they’re doing, how they brought anyone in? The answer is no, look at how much money you’ve lost. If you take a look at your bottom line. If your net profit is the industry average as of a year and a half ago of about 5%. net of gross revenue, then, if you’re discounting any more than 5% are effectively losing money every time you sell something to those riders. And I like to support teams and clubs. As long as they’re giving back what I like more is an ambassador program where they can be affiliated with a team or a club. But their discount is specific to them as an individual helping to lead probe rides or lead clinics or help get kids into mountain biking. But the bro deal I despise, it’s detrimental. There’s some markets in the US like So Cal has been completely devastated by the bro deal culture that happens. And I’m sure there’s other markets that I’m not aware of in the same position. discounting is a completely learned habit for both customers and staff. But they do it for different reasons. The customer does it when they don’t see the value in the product you’re selling, or the environment in which they’re making that purchase. The staff do it as a tool to close the sale when they don’t feel confident. So tackling is a two part process. the easy part is telling your staff to say no, we don’t do discounts. The hard part is them actually doing it. But it’s actually a pretty easy fix for A really great quick tactic on saying no to discounting and given a tool to your staff member who has been relying on it for years. I’ll roleplay this for you. Okay, customer asks for a discount. Your staff says, How much discount would you like, let’s pretend the bike’s 1000 bucks and discounts 10%. This customer says 10%. And the staff then says, great, let me show you some bikes in the same style at $900. They don’t, they don’t have to say no. And the customer has got two choices to make, buy the bike 1000 or meet them where they wanted to spend the money out. And that works incredibly well. It takes all of the awkwardness out for the staff member, then the flip side of that is how do you improve the customer seeing value. So that’s a bit of a bigger exercise. And this is gonna sound crazy, but display less bikes. So quite often, you’ll walk into a store and maybe not now. But quite often, you would walk into a store and hopefully no one’s discount the moment there’s really no reason to be discounting right now. But there’ll be racks and racks of bikes where you just see tires and tires and tires and tires. And you got $600 bikes next to 5000 next to $12,000 bikes, and you got 200 bikes on yourself for when you walk into that environment. There’s a diminished perception of value in the product, because it seems like a big box store and you know, used to look like a discounter. And really you’re selling luxury goods, bikes are classified as luxury goods because of the price point. So you got to think about how do people sell luxury goods, you don’t walk into a Tesla showroom, and see racks and racks of Tesla’s right you don’t walk into a jewelry shop and see racks and racks of jewelry in this arena, Claire’s accessories, that’s a good analogy. You walk into a jewelry store and they’ve got it presented, the lighting is good. And there’s just one there. And maybe they’ve got more, but they’re under the counter, they present that one item of value. I’ve done this a couple of times of retailers tell you about one specific case study won’t tell you the retailer but it’s in the LA market. The store had 280 bikes on the floor on display. And we had an opportunity to work with them and say, hey, look, let’s let’s try this present more with present less but with no value approach. So we partitioned off some of the floor space for storage. And we put the vast majority of bikes into that storage room, and then focused on presenting the unique models, now whittled down to about 42 bikes. So we went from 200 plus bikes, 242 bikes on the floor,

Heather Mason  1:07:44

just as an experiment, George, like you just like got the retailer to do this experiment with you.

George Lee  1:07:50

Yeah, they there was a lot of trust. And it was something that we’d wanted to try what work and especially the thing that I’d wanted to try with the retail team for a while. And after execution, we then took that results and started implementing it elsewhere with with other retailers. So the store still had the same number of bikes, we just at most were in storage like duplicates, sizes, colors, etc. all at the back presented a unique models. So you get rid of all the three tier racks put them into the storage for the bikes on two platforms, but the bikes onto the top of displays, but the bikes in just three waterfalls. And you represent your whole road lineup within five bikes, you just have one model, you have one representation from a specific model. And the impact was overnight. So they went from an average unit value of 16 $100, which at the time was the average for the LA marketplace to $2,800 within a week. And it was the same customers coming in, they did no marketing, they didn’t push anything. They just focused on presenting those bikes with value. And suddenly the high end bikes were moving quicker. They were moving in more numbers, the low end bikes moved at the same rate. And nobody asked for a discount because when they walked into it, they could see the presentation of value. So easy fix a lot of work to parts. Have your staff interact with the customers by asking those questions how much let me show you a bike at this price to create storage in your store and present less bikes on the sales floor with more value. And and that is the tried and tested method. I’ve used to help hundreds of retailers stop discounting now.

Heather Mason  1:09:40

some really great stuff there. George I just want you to come visit every single retailer and just help them through these things because this is fantastic. You know supply is rough and I’m really worried and nervous for retailers going into the summer months you know until product starts coming back and what we think late fall now looking for other stores. As a revenue, is there anything in bicycle fitting in the end services around bicycle fitting that you think retailers could shine right now?

George Lee  1:10:07

Yeah, totally. And I think we all know that specialize them retort heavy and fit in and I worked side by side with the the fitting team was that specialized. And there’s so much missed opportunity, we’re fitting this. probably close to 50% of the fit studios installers out there are just not being used and not being used at the rate they should be. It’s very easy to get a fitter and a fit studio in nearly every shop in the country to be working seven days a week from open to close with fits. Quite often, the people I’ve worked with in the past will reach out to communities and teams and clubs to try and grow their fit in business when in actual fact, your fit market is right there in front of you. And you know who they are. Every cyclist has to most cyclists unless a 99% of cyclists have two hands to fee to sit bones. And those contact points with the bike are the same whether you’re on a bike and riding your kids to school, or you’re entering into Leadville, the same service is needed in every situation. We did a survey while I was in specialized led by Rito. And they found out that only about 5% of the people that bought bikes from a store with a fit studio knew about the fitting service when they left the store. Yeah, so just telling people about it is the the tricky bit and make sure you have a sequential process set up. Fit fit in is a staged approach, right you’ve got sizing, then you’ll have style selection and shoe selection. And then you have a for what we call a country’s precision for a retail motion capture their retort. And each one of those layers builds on somebody’s kind of fit fit in possible if you will to do understand what they need to be comfortable or perform well on a bike and just telling people about it is key. The best way to measure how successful you are is to take all eligible bikes that you’ve sold. So everything excluding kids and folding bikes and trikes, maybe trikes, and then see how many fits you’ve done. So if last week you saw 10 bikes, and last week you did by Fitz, you’re 50% your goal should be 70 plus percent of some kind of fit in service, whether that’s custom footbeds, saddle selection, cleat, set up, sizing or forfeit, use that ratio to measure your success. And it goes back to the other point like how do you plan that person’s next visit. Give them a reason to get that fit in done many stores. Retail also suggest this to a really great tactic if you have your fit menu. And you have let’s say you charge 50 bucks for a sizing, increase that 50 bucks resizing to 150. But give $100 gift certificate towards your fitting program away with every bite. This helps to one you’ll have people pay 150 for your size and services guaranteed. But you’ll also have that hope for those new people. And if you can do that, as they’re purchasing the bike, and on the back of that gift card, you can go to a little date to schedule that sizing appointment in then that’s fantastic. That is a really great tactic to help the consumer see your services and get them back into the store.

Heather Mason  1:13:37

When we got George, that’s excellent. All right rewind listeners. Here we go. So you’re going to do $150 for your basic fit and you’re going to give $100 coupon off at the time of purchase. And you’re going to make that appointment before the customer leaves and they’re going to come back and they’re going to be stoked on the fit and they’re gonna have that aha moment and you’re going to get to talk with him more and next thing you know you’re selling shoes and pedals and all the other stuffs if you didn’t already so George fantastic advice. Okay, so just a few more questions for you. I was surfing around on the on your LinkedIn page and with specialized you were the global program manager for Ryder first retail amongst many other things. But in thinking about rider first retail I noticed probably aligns with many things we talked about earlier, but I want to make sure listeners know about rider first retail and how they can adjust their actions to be more Ryder first.

George Lee  1:14:33

Yeah, the naming is good. It was effectively a consultancy program took nine months of three, three months of understanding the Business, Business integration and then six months of working with the store to make sure they’re providing everything they can put in the customer centric approach to the business that has where the name comes from writer first retail and One of the key exercises to doing that is a process called a hassle map. And I’ll quickly explain a hassle map, you have to put yourself in the end users shoes, and identify from inception to success, every single pain point along that journey. And that’s a hassle map, it’s all the hassles, you’ll have to work your way through to be successful. done this exercise quite a few times in classes as BCU. And in the rider first retail program. And it’s a fantastic tool for figuring out what solutions you can present as a service or as a product to consumers in that journey. And focusing on transformational experiences and culture. Within that hassle map is how you can make the customers the center of your business, you should always stop and review the market and the retail landscape and adjust. And I would suggest and I do this once a year, taking a day off of regular operational work and just passing mapping your current experience, where are the pain points that have cropped up or seep their way into the business that you can solve? And then if it’s a solution that is you can commercialize. How do you make sure that it’s relevant, genuine and enticing to your your customer base, you should always seek help contracting industry experts, consultants within our particular industry is fantastic. And there may be some sticker shock with how much some of them charge. But quite often, their eyes on your business and their questions about your business will frame it up in a way that you haven’t considered. And having an open mind and going into those types of exercises with your team as well, if you include your staff is very powerful experience will always hold you back into putting the rider first in your retail business. I like to stay on top of things that are happening in industry. So we should all join the NBA if you’ve already signed up, and you should subscribe to this podcast every week because it’s awesome. But ultimately, the best thing you can do is just listen to your customers. Listen to them. And don’t be scared about asking, How can I improve my business? What are your best customers that come in all the time? They may not want to voice their their criticisms or their suggestions. Maybe they do. And they’re fantastic people but the vast majority one, ask them, you know, Hey, I know you come in here every every week and you come to the right? What would make it better for you? What could we do to make this more enjoyable for you? And then do it?

Heather Mason  1:17:53

Yeah, that sounds so simple, right? But how many times have we actually asked our customers? You know, what do you really, you know, what would you really like? So that’s a great thing. I tore everyone with who’s listening to do that, you know, in the next week, ask your customers. Alright, George, if you had a crystal ball, any thoughts for the future and how retailers can find success?

George Lee  1:18:15

You know, I’ve always, yes, I’ve always struggled with this. And I think over the last five or six years, it’s just become more and more apparent as the kind of scary nature of the way the digital world was changing. First, there was online sales, and then there’s direct consumer sales. And there’s so much going on. And everybody’s always like this change this change. But ultimately, I think the winning mix is how you do it. Just make sure you have those four things identified and managed people, passion, community and operational excellence. If you do those things, right, and your local customer and connected business, you’ll be relevant forever. All you have to do is adapt to the changing operational landscape around you. I don’t think that will ever change. people gravitate the people cycling as a social activity. And if you’ve got the right people who are passionate, and engaged community, and you’re being as operationally savvy as possible to give the best, smoothest experience to everybody. You’re always going to be relevant. So my crystal ball is hunkered down on what you’re doing well. The brands are gonna lead a lot of the development in the next digital phase, just because they have the resources to do it. Having come from the brand level, I know that they all have the rider in that local relationship in mind. Some brands going about it differently to others. Just align with the ones that are working in your best interest and they will continue to work in your best interests. People will still need good trustworthy Engage local businesses to do it. And the brands are relying on you to do that. So I would just say, just refocus and listen to your customers. Finally, you should consider any acquisitions that enable you to continue what you’re doing, and what you love being a small business and they have vastly changing landscape in terms of structure and resources, you should, if the opportunity arises, start to consider joining a larger organization, if there’s a chance for an acquisition, and you get to continue doing what you love, get a payout and join a larger, more organized focus team, then that’s definitely something you should consider. And that’s something that I’m trying to do, along with David and Wayne owns a Qantas bike shop is helping enable our store and our culture to grow, but also help those smaller businesses that are really struggling to see a future with the changing landscape. join a team that is focused on the people in the business.

Heather Mason  1:21:08

Yeah, it is a changing time. And yeah, we can’t see that as a failure. You know, if that happens, if an acquisition happens, we can certainly see it as a continuation, and another chapter and another opportunity. And yeah, just keep, you know, focusing and listening and being a trustworthy person. Alright, George, this is the big one. This is the big final question for you. We have right I’m ready. Alright, so bicycle retailer excellence awards are happening and the People’s Choice voting will start in June. Bicycle retailer excellence awards are meant to award retailers who are really being excellent in many different areas of retail excellence and in bicycle specialty retail, what does retail excellence mean to you? What does that look like?

George Lee  1:21:53

My mind automatically adapts to perceive in this as a customer. So I’m going to share that perspective in her answer. And it’s a blend of a few things. Physically, the design the vibe, the materials used, the lighting, the features should be creating a relaxed, cozy, and approachable environment. There should be a showroom of display of bikes with backs up for inventory like we discussed digital interactions on the sales floor where it’s possible. Having your website just on a touchscreen in the store is a fantastic way to help people navigate what you have available and what vendors have available. Even when it’s not in the shop. It’s better than spinning the screen around console and from behind the counter, making sure your team will have warm smiles and friendly Greetings, a coffee beer or food component, the increase in that Riot hub field the start and stop point that all the local cyclists want to come to you should have top class friendly, engaging service crew with a bar where people can sit down and watch their bike get worked on very interactive nature, and a production workshop out the back where people can’t get interrupted. They tend to be front and center. In the experience. I don’t know any cyclists that one don’t like talking about bikes and two don’t like talking about their body, when you combine those to fit in is an incredibly powerful experience for people and rides and events, or should be focused on a transformational experience. So being inclusive, setting goals, helping people achieve those goals and then socially congratulating them with the rest of your community. And then switch to a business perspective. And this is pretty simple, clear reporting and communication within the team so that people know where they’re at and where they’re going defined tasks and deadlines so they know what to do to get to where they’re going development opportunities so they know how they can grow and flourish within that framework. And valuing your service making sure that your services you offer outside of product are valued in the highest regard. And to me if you can get that mix right then retail excellence has been achieved.

Heather Mason  1:24:13

So many great things there. I love that you you’re bright your brain went to answer from the customer’s perspective. And, yeah, retail excellence right there. I feel like we’re gonna have to like, take the whole podcast, let people listen to it, but also maybe put it in print because there’s so many good tidbits and I think we’re gonna have to do some more stuff together. You’re just a true industry expert. I can’t thank you enough for coming on. If the listeners want to contact you if they want to learn more about anything that we chatted about, would you provide your contact information?

George Lee  1:24:44

Yeah, happy to do so. My email address. You can email me@g.li at Conti bikes calm and you can find me on LinkedIn. George Lee County’s bike shop will get you results pretty rapidly and be happy to help as long was not a conflict of interests. I’m more than happy to help lift the industry.

Heather Mason  1:25:05

George, you are fantastic. Thank you so much. I know you put a lot of effort into the conversations with me meeting several times so I can’t thank you enough and our listeners This is a definitely listen ones Listen again type of show. That is it. I invite you to connect with me Come on bicycle, retail radio, share your story with our listeners. You can contribute to our blog or become a feature on our member spotlight. Lots of love for our industry. There’s lots of great webinars coming up lots of member networking meetings every Monday, please come go ahead and subscribe to the show on Spotify. Apple podcast, share your favorite episode with friends on social media. And with this we go

NBDA   1:25:45

this has been bicycle retail radio by the National bicycle Dealers Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us at 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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