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Steve Hellin – Head of BikeExchange North America

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Meet Steve Hellin. Steve is the driving force behind Bike Exchange. Bike Exchange makes it easier for people to find, research, and buy all their cycling-related needs, through destination marketplaces. They support and connect hundreds of retail bike stores and brands around the world. Steve joined BikeExchange in March of 2020. Prior to BikeExchange, Steve held various leadership positions in the software and e-commerce industries at companies including IBM and ChannelAdvisor.

Key takeaways:

1. Utilizing Bike Exchange as a sales channel
2. Keeping the bike boom alive

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Steve Hellin – Head of BikeExchange North America

Wed, 4/21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bike, shops, bike shops, marketplace, retailers, people, sellers, business, industry, bicycle, buy, online, platform, brand, steve, exchange, australia, cycling, website, consumer

SPEAKERS

Heather Mason, NBDA , Steve Hellin

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 NBA. This is Heather. Thank you for listening. If you’re a first time listener, be sure to check out all the previous episodes do us a favor and leave a review it helps members of our industry find our podcast. As always, the NBDA is thankful for our donors and association members. If you’d like to make a donation to the NBA, you can do so directly on our webpage. A special thanks to bikeexchange for their continued support of the NBA. Not only are they an association, member and preferred partner, but bikeexchange recently made a contribution to sponsor bicycle retail radio for the month of May. I personally find bikeexchange to be a great way for retailers to connect with new customers. The global platform is a driving force in online optimization and connectivity. I highly encourage retailers to learn more about their services if not already using them. And that brings me to today’s guest, Steve Helen is here with me. Steve is the driving force behind bike exchange. And bike exchange makes it easier for people to find research and buy all their cycling related needs through destination marketplaces. They support and connect hundreds of bike retail stores and brands around the world. Steve joined bikeexchange in March of 2020. And prior to bikeexchange, he held various leadership positions in the software and e commerce industries. He’s worked for companies including IBM and channeladvisor. And Steve currently leads all sales and operations for the US and Canada. I’m so excited to talk to him today. some takeaways that I expect to get out of today’s conversation is how we can utilize bikeexchange as a sales channel, and how bikeexchange can help retailers to continue to keep this bike boom alive. So without further ado, welcome, Steve. How are you doing?

Steve Hellin  02:08

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Heather Mason  02:10

Oh, I’m so excited to have you here. So I think like a month ago or a little more when I first met you. I was like we have to do a podcast. So it’s been a long time coming now. Right? Here we are. Yeah, I think we’ve spoken about a half a dozen times at least. So it’s it’s great to be live with you here today. I want to just continue to express my gratitude to bikeexchange for their continued support of me vi when you have just continued to say yes, every time I’ve reached out and I can’t thank you more.

Steve Hellin  02:40

Yeah, absolutely. It’s our pleasure. I mean, it’s obviously we want to have a positive impact on the industry as a whole. So it’s happy to support.

Heather Mason  02:47

So I can’t wait to get into today’s conversation because I know that a lot of retailers possibly don’t know what bike exchanges they have maybe not visited the website and got to know the services that you offer. I for myself, I love to work with people who are super capable and always on their game. And for me, every time I send you an email or call you I think you respond. So super quick. It’s awesome to work with you. But I’m curious. And a lot of time our listeners are wondering where we are. So I’m in upstate New York today. Where are you at?

Steve Hellin  03:17

I am in Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. So we refer to as the metro east part of St. Louis, across the mighty Mississippi, have the bike exchange like the team?

Heather Mason  03:30

Have you guys been working from home basically remote for this past year?

Steve Hellin  03:33

Yeah, it’s interesting. So I joined bikeexchange, a little over a year ago, I think March 2 was my start date. And I was taking over for a gentleman who was moving back to Australia who had been leading the North American team. And it’s important to understand that bikeexchange is a global company that was founded in Australia in back in 2007. It has only had a presence in the States since about five or six years ago. And so anyway, I was coming in to take over the team at the time, the team was about five or six people, all based in Orange County, Southern California. And we had a very strategic transition plan. It was going to be over a four week period, you know, I was going to meet the team when the business started to take things over. And then of course, like about two weeks into that process, everything started shutting down. And my predecessor was concerned actually that he wouldn’t be able to get back to Australia because the international flights were really starting to shut down. So at that point, he got on a plane went back home. I then took over the team and also our office had to shut down. So not only was I coming into a new business taking over the leadership role for the team, but now I have a team that’s never worked remote has suddenly learned how to do that, you know from it was a lot of adjustments happening all at the same time. But fast forward a year later. We’re still Remote team. I’ve actually hired about 10 people during that time frame. So we’re about 15. Now, and we’re spread out physically across 10 or 11 states, and still have a handful of people in Southern California, but nobody’s going into an office on a regular basis.

Heather Mason  05:19

Wow, I can’t imagine coming into a new job and you’ve got all these plans, and then all of a sudden, just everything’s up in the air. And you’re, well, I mean, hiring 10 people this past year. So that’s great. Congratulations. That sounds like you’re on the road.

Steve Hellin  05:32

Yes, thanks. And of course, a big part of that was we did recently do an IPO listing on the Australian stock exchange the ASX. So we are trading under the B e x ticker. And that brought in about $20 million of putting million Australian dollars of funding to really drive growth and sport of the business across globally. And a big part of that growth is, of course, in North America. We’re divided in terms of the company’s really four regions. So North America, which I have is really the US and the Canadian sites. And then Australia is a New Zealand is really the headquarters it would be Australia, but the that region is really Australia, New Zealand, then we have activity in Europe, mostly in Germany, Benelux area. And then we also have Colombia for Latin America. So very much. I mean, we are global. But we also have like plenty of opportunity for growth beyond those kind of initial geographies.

Heather Mason  06:35

So you’re starting with a new company in March and you know, COVID is rapidly picking up speed here. Have you been to headquarters even Have you visited Swanee?

Steve Hellin  06:45

The first time I went back was when we were trying to clear it out because we found someone to sublease the place. And we finally decided that it didn’t make sense to keep it. In fact, I’ve since in the past month, I’ve changed our address to my local town here, which is O’Fallon, Illinois, as will be our our headquarters, but it’s kind of a headquarters in terms of just having a legal presence and a physical address. We don’t anticipate having a large team of people in a single location anytime. Yeah, it’s definitely this past year has switched the way a lot of businesses are doing business in that regard. makes total sense.

Heather Mason  07:21

Have you been to the headquarters overseas, though? I wonder, too.

Steve Hellin  07:24

Oh, no, in fact, probably, I’ve would have by now, but and I was going to connect with most of that team, the video player, I think was last April would have been the sea otter events. And the exact from Australia, were planning to come in for that. But then, of course, when that got scrapped, and, you know, there was just no travel. So there hasn’t really been, I mean, honestly, there wouldn’t be a ton of reason for me to get to Australia for the purposes of bike exchange in the near term. I mean, because once we can start traveling, it’s more likely that I want to be spending time with some of our key retailers and brands and going to, you know, North American based events.

Heather Mason  08:03

So, bike exchange, I’ve heard a lot in the news recently about the teen bike exchange. And it seems like you said 2007, what started here in the US, but I’m really, I think this past year, even just accelerated bike exchange on the radar. But I always like to know like about the finding, like the founding part of the company who started the company is there do you know like, the backstory to that?

Steve Hellin  08:26

Yeah, so there’s two guys started in Australia is Sam Salter and Jason Wyatt. And I think the story is basically they were, you know, childhood friends had a passion for a cycling. And it really started out as more of a classified listings site. So almost like a Craigslist type of listing for just focused on cycling for people that were looking to, you know, buy and sell bikes. But they quickly evolved that platform to more of an e commerce type of solution, and ultimately into a marketplace of buyers and sellers that can sell online for direct shipping direct to consumer for pickup in store for, you know, there’s a variety of ways that we can conduct business, including just driving leads into the physical retail locations. But then a few years back, they actually they spun out the software platform that this solution was built on into a separate software company. So that is known as marketplace or, and so they’re also headquartered in Australia there. But marketplace is also now a software platform that it runs other marketplaces besides the bikeexchange. One, of course, that’s nice for a couple of reasons as the marketplace. You know, we don’t have to really invest much of anything in software development and research and development, because we have a strategic partner that is the platform that we run on, you know, so there’s a benefit there. But also, since we were the kind of original user of the platform, there’s a lot about it. It’s really was optimized for the bike world. And part of that I think, is you Kind of acknowledging upfront that just doing an e commerce scenario where everything’s being shipped around was not going to ever be right for the bike industry, you have to anticipate things like, you know, buy online, pick up at the bike shop, putting a deposit down, doing the research online that then driving the sales offline into the stores. So I think like, if you just look at the technology relative to other kind of general purpose ecommerce platforms like Shopify, bigcommerce, Magento, I mean, the whole WooCommerce has a whole list of them, you know, where those are all like ecommerce first and the marketplace, the platform is really always been about a hybrid approach of online and offline sales.

Steve Hellin  10:48

Yeah, I mean, I’m a fan of your website, because especially representing retailers across the US, right, we want to have an online platform that is very retailer friendly. And I mean, I know you have a map of the US, it’s super comprehensive with bicycle dealers on it. And then right on the website, you even have stores and you have inventory. So it connects to retailers point of sale system, it’s super easy for retailers to work with, like exchange. But I don’t know if everyone listening understands fully what like exchange does, what the capabilities are, we should probably talk about that a little bit.

Heather Mason  11:21

So the way I typically explain it to a new perspective shop is to start out by saying, you know, you can think of us as an online marketplace, which means, you know, buyers and sellers online. But there’s a couple of things that distinguish us. So the one of course, is we have that niche focus on the bike industry. So the only thing you’re going to see on bikeexchange are bikes, helmets, apparel, parts and accessories, nutritional supplements, you know, anything that’s relevant to something you would find in a bike shop, essentially. And that focus is key, because that lets us tell the sellers, which are the, again, the bike shops, or a brand potentially selling the rack, that you know, we have a very focused consumer that’s on our site, like nobody’s coming to our site, because they’re trying to place a toilet paper reorder, and then they happen to think about getting a bike while they’re there. Right. So we’re not a general purpose marketplace, we’ve got that focus. The other key thing that distinguishes us is really what we started to talk about in the sense of, we’re not exclusively an e commerce platform. So I mean, there are platforms like that really, like that’s really the primary model with like, you know, your general purpose marketplaces, you know, you’d buy something on Amazon, or eBay or Etsy, or whatever it might be, you’re expecting that it’s going to be shipped to your house, right? Well, that doesn’t work in this industry, in part, especially in the US, because there are a lot of archaic rules in place. Well, I would say archaic, but there are a lot of rules in place that restrict what brands are allowed to be sold online or shipped online. Or, you know, whether they have to be picked up at a certain location, or, I mean, the actual distribution rules are very different from geo geo. And as a result, you know, the flexibility in the platform allows us to accommodate those scenarios. So we are able to say to a seller or brand or anyone that is looking to leverage our marketplace, we’re able to say to them, okay, well, if you want to ship direct to consumer, we can enable that. If you want to require that those goods are purchased online, but they’re shipped to a location to be picked up, we can enable that if you want to advertise and promote your solution in your product. But you want to indicate that that may only be purchased offline in the store. But we can enable that you know that we have lots of flexibility and kind of how we go to market and how we deliver and distribute the goods and fulfillment of the bikes and the merchandise. Yeah, because a lot of accessories you can ship out. And then like you said, a lot of bike brands limit to pick up in store in the US. So we have to be flexible and accommodate that. For me, Steve, I think it’s the biggest thing about meeting consumers where they’re at. So let’s be honest, everyone shops online, right, everyone looks online, at least to get some knowledge and education. And if you are a retailer and you’re working with you need to be found. So you need to get on as many platforms as you can to make your inventory found. This is a great time for that.

Heather Mason  14:34

Steve this past year. I’m sure we’ve seen people online more I feel because of the change from COVID over the year. Are you noticing that traffic is up? And are you finding you’re working with retailers? I’m sure all the time. Is that what you’re stressing to? This is a great time.

Steve Hellin  14:50

Yeah, I think the way I would say it is it’s a great time to make strategic investments. It’s obviously very tempting to sit back and say Oh, I don’t know, when I’m going to get more product, I don’t know what the supply chain is going to be. There’s a lot of uncertainty. And it can be scary. I mean, in any industry when you have clouds of uncertainty, and you know, some of that was the virus and the pandemic itself, some of that is just a supply chain, relative to shortages and issues and getting parts, accessories, bikes, whatever it might be. And, you know, I think that it’s easy to say, well, let’s just see how it plays out. And, you know, we’ll figure out something in a few months we’ll look at again, but ultimately, like when there’s disruption happening in the industry, that’s the time that you either seize the opportunity, or you get left behind. So like, I think we’ve done our job and are part of seizing the moment of this bike boom. And, you know, we’ve done what we need to do to grow a team and be ready to grow to scale. But I think, you know, we continue to run into some roadblocks. And some of the industry players that are just still I would argue, haven’t adapted their mindset to what’s actually make sense in the kind of the new world of just more things happening online, more things happening, kind of peer to peer or direct to consumer, or, you know, brands having more of a direct relationship with their consumers. And there’s a lot of kind of macro trends in just the e commerce slash marketplace space that are relevant here. But, you know, there’s a whole wide range of bike shops in terms of their general, like, maturity is the wrong word. But you know, sort of like the, they’re kind of To what extent they leverage, you know, technology or just updated business practices. And, you know, depending on where they are, and those kind of adoption curves will determine, you know, what kind of a business they have in six months time,

Heather Mason  16:53

I’m totally feeling what you’re saying. I mean, I’ve been in the bicycle industry for 20 years. And I think this past year, I’ve seen more adaption to technology than ever before, but I still think we’re behind a little, you know, behind the curve. But for me, it’s super interesting that, Steve, I thought you had been in the cycling industry forever. I didn’t know you’ve been I mean, your prior experience is not cycling industry. It’s eecom. And its high level positions. Right. So is that unique role for you to come over into a new industry? Like, how does that change your strategy in any way? or?

Steve Hellin  17:24

Yeah, so actually, what I had mentioned earlier about marketplace there, that was actually kind of how I found this role. I was, you know, most recently at channeladvisor. Quarter, my role there was signing up recruiting new marketplaces to be part of their platform, from an integration perspective. And so I was familiar with marketplace of the company. And, you know, I was looking for something new, and I got connected to someone a marketplace there. And I had proposed to them that they need to be doing more in the States. And maybe I could be like a business development resource. And the first thing the recruiter said is, well, why don’t you fly down to Melbourne and need a new salesperson here in Australia? So I said, Okay, well, I’m not necessarily ready to move the family at the moment. But anyway, that it, then they may be aware of this opportunity. And, you know, California, at least in the US to take over the leadership of this, this group. And And sure, I mean, I mean, the bike part of it, I’ll actually all sounded great to me. I mean, I mean, I’ve been, I would call myself a cyclist, or at least a casual cyclist for many years. And, you know, the whole bike, part of it I wasn’t concerned about it was more that I had never really run a small business. You know, I mean, the businesses I had run were, you know, 100 million dollar businesses inside of a large corporation. They weren’t like, you know, the kind of businesses where you have to actually worry about filing all the paperwork with all the different entities in which that part of it is still of course, the part I enjoyed the least. But that’s just the nature of paperwork. Yeah. business in America, I suppose. But um, yeah.

Heather Mason  18:52

So you would call yourself as cyclists, you have an amazing team. So tell me a little bit. I’m a retailer, I have a shop, I’m reaching out to you. I want to get partnered with bikeexchange. What does that look like? Do I talk to you one of the team on your staff? How, what’s the process?

Steve Hellin  19:07

So we have a sales force now of about four or five people and a couple of business development people as well. So, but really, like if you wanted to get started on bikeexchange.com, there’s a slash promo slash start page, which would be, you know, kind of a quick snapshot of the capabilities. And actually, I guess we should make a mention that we do also have the there’s a slash promo slash NBDA page, which is, of course, promoting our partnership and some special discounts for NBDA members as well. But yeah, I mean, if you fill out a form on the site, it’ll go to one of our sales people. You can also of course, always reach out to me directly. It’s Steve at bikeexchange calm. But you know, from there, basically, like we’re gonna have a basic kind of discovery call with the shop and get an understanding of what you’re doing anything. online today, do you have a website? Are you doing any kind of e commerce through the website, you know, depending on those answers, we might recommend different types of solutions, then we’ll probably talk about what kind of brands you’re focused on, because that will then dictate what sort of options there are in terms of the platform. And whether you want to be, you know, leveraging a selling online or leveraging more like a deposit mechanism, or click and collect, you know, there’s a variety of different options there, depending on what the shop needs. But ultimately, we want to figure out how to help grow your business, and how to connect buyers and sellers. Like any marketplace, at the end of the day, ultimately, what we’re doing is enabling those connections, we’re facilitating the connection between those buyers and sellers, you know, at the global level, really. So we have about 1500 brands, and that are, you know, close to 1500 retailers globally, and something like over 600,000 products that are being, you know, exchanged through this marketplace. So, you know, there’s a real opportunity for a local shop to take advantage of that scale. And some of that is just getting online. Some of that is, you know, leveraging some of the more advanced capabilities we can provide around the marketing side of things. And, you know, some of the other digital capabilities. So I think, and that’s not to be too forward looking. But I think, you know, today, we’re really a marketplace. And we’re, you know, you can think of us as like, we get you online, we get you trading, but I mean, at least my personal vision is that we’re more than that in the States. And we’re much more of a just a trusted adviser to the industry, around everything digital with respect to cycling.

Heather Mason  19:42

Yeah, I constantly see you on LinkedIn, I constantly see you in these conversations that are happening about what’s going on digitally. So I know that I’m hearing from a lot of retailers that the emails just too much they can’t keep up, they can’t keep up with the order fulfillment online, if they’re running their own website, any tips for retailers there on how to keep up with you know that another, you know, another thing to check every day?

Steve Hellin  22:20

Yeah, I mean, so, there’s a couple things with that. So I mean, it is frustrating, because, you know, if you’re a shop, and you’re not sure about your inventory, your supply, but then you also might be overwhelmed by the demand. And you might not have time to respond to the inquiries. So we’ve actually had shops, it was really, in the beginning of the pandemic response, we had shops that were basically wanting to cancel their membership with us. Because they were getting too many leads, they were getting too many orders, like they couldn’t keep up on the fulfillment side. And they said, so it’s like now, you know, from a business standpoint, it’s hard to wrap your head around, like turning away business, but it was just so chaotic at that point. That essentially, you have to like what what’s hap itself? Right? You feel like? De stress? Yeah, exactly. So anyways, we’ve learned a couple things from that. And one of those things is that, you know, the leads that provide are great, and they are, there’s monetary value in those increase those leads that we were providing. But ultimately, for some shops, they just can’t handle the volume. And this is where our concierge service can be helpful. So we have concierge, which is essentially a personal shopper type service. And if you go to bikeexchange comm, you’ll see people, you know, fill out a form, say, Oh, you know, I’m six feet tall, I’m looking for a mountain bike looking to spend, you know, not more than $3,000, you know, what’s the best one for me, and one of our team will actually respond back with some suggestions or, you know, just kind of work one on one with that consumer for that service, that we can actually use those concierge resources, but direct them to be dedicated towards a specific shop or specific brand partner. So you know, if a brand came to us, or a large shop came to us tomorrow and said, Look, you know, we were on with you guys earlier, but we couldn’t keep up with the volume of leads. So we can’t do it, we would probably say look, we have like this concierge program. It’s, you know, an extra $50 a month or something small depending on the package. And the nice thing is that we’re going to triage essentially all of those requests. So when something comes in, it’s gonna come to my team and my team is going to say, Oh, this is a bad one. That person is asking for something that doesn’t exist or that person lives in Alaska and they’re trying to buy locally in Florida and, you know, we kind of triage out the ones that don’t make sense and then only bring to the shop the cases that are You know, the leads that are strong enough to they should be a quick win for the shop.

Heather Mason  25:04

That’s amazing. That’s a great service. I mean, I talked to a shop today who turned off their phone, you know, said just left a message saying, you know, email us because they’re too busy. You have to protect yourself now. Just you can’t do everything. So I see, I think pivoting and offering that service was pretty clutch for retailers.

Steve Hellin  25:22

That was awesome. Yeah, they’ve had some success with that actually in the other geo. So it’s totally new for us in the States. But in Colombia, for example, that drives a large volume of their sales are driven off of that concierge service, as well as in Australia and Europe, they’ve had some good success with that.

NBDA   25:39

Why wait to see if they’ll come back to your store for service. Why not sell them a plan that keeps their bike working perfectly all the time, and brings them back to you every time? Go to NBDA calm to learn about our righted daily extended service plans that are only available to NBDA. Members.

Heather Mason  26:02

Okay, so maybe I’m a little naive here. Is it new bikes, used bikes and accessories or tell me what is listed on the platform, it’s all of the above,

Steve Hellin  26:11

I would say that, for the most part, the sellers are selling new bikes. Although, you know, that’s also we do have the private classified listings piece, which as well, which would be a private seller that could be selling a used bike. And some of the shops do have a focus on refurbs. And, you know, some kind of like more specialized operations, not the brand. But you know, so there are some use or lightly used bikes, but the vast majority would be new stock.

Heather Mason  26:41

And the MBTA is super thankful for you. I know, like you mentioned, we have a preferred partner discount for our MBTA members. If you go on MBDA comm preferred partners, there’s the base exchange web link there. Can you tell me more about that’s for the elite package of certain packages? Correct? Right.

Steve Hellin  26:57

Right, exactly. So basically, we kind of group our offers into three membership tiers at the moment. So it’s the basic membership is, you know, $189 per month, which is enabling people to sell on the bikeexchange marketplace. And you know, there’s you know, kind of basic functionality with that. What we call pro then is everything from the basic, but we also provide the Web Store capability. And so this would be the case where you want to sell on your own site on your own, you know, URL domain, but you also want to be selling in the marketplace. And so there’s a, you know, different kind of bundle of services there in terms of you know, what’s included, but then we’ve created this new package recently, which we call elite in the States. And this is a $750 a month is the standard package, I think we’re giving a 10% if I recall, correctly discount to your members. But essentially, this is a bundle, where it’s not just the marketplace and the website, we’re also turning on our digital marketing capability. So it’s getting your listings out to places like, you know, the social, so Google, Facebook, other websites that are fed through those networks, we also are leveraging some of our own marketing tools. So to go out to emails, SMS text messages, as well as other types of you know, distribution of video. And, you know, there’s a kind of a more of a prominent spot on our website, where you have a banner and a tile and real promotional value on the actual bar homepage. And then so there’s more of a landing page there as well. So there’s really kind of like a, just a lot more promotion. So that really, I think it’s a really good package, if you’re willing to make a small investment with us, you’ll get a much larger return on that in terms of the value of everything that’s in that bundle. And I think, you know, this is what I thought was a good fit for your shops actually. Because, you know, the shops that are America’s, you know, best bike shops, they tend to be the ones that have already had some kind of forward thinking around, you know, what’s the right way to grow the business and invest in the business, you know, the kind of like the random shop that has like, just you doesn’t necessarily have a website or they’ve got the website looks like it was a on AOL or geo cities or something that they’re probably not going to be the prospect, although they probably also could use our services more than anyone else. So yeah, anyway, that is the package in at a high level and of course, it’s they’re listed on your preferred partners site so that anyone can find out more about that. But we of course, would be happy to have a conversation about how to customize that and how to tailor to specific needs of a given shop or brand or solution.

Heather Mason  29:54

Sounds like it’s super complete and very well thought out. And I think a lot of people when we start to look at it, myself included I start to look at it. It’s like, Oh my god, there’s so much here. But once you dive into it, and you dissect every little piece, it’s a really great package that put together from someone like yourself who’s super knowledgeable and knows how to get in front of these new consumers. I remember I think a couple weeks ago, I got this email from you, like out of the blue, and it was a great like a paragraph about how we keep these new cyclists engaged. I don’t know if you’re even I’m sure you recall. Talk to me a little bit about that. Because I was first you’re an amazing writer. And second off, it was just completely out of the blue. So share with me your thoughts,

Steve Hellin  30:33

you might have to refresh my memory a little bit on what triggered that. But yeah, I mean, I think that I think I saw something that you were doing. And you were like, you were I mean, because you were also like, you know, obviously, moving 100 miles an hour and ramping up with the industry like the rest of us. So I think I saw some that you were doing. And I was thinking, you know, what’s the process to not just like, say, Okay, welcome to the industry have a nice time, but like that you’re actually there’s sort of like a nurturing kind of ongoing process to reach back out and say, Oh, hey, you know, just like, it’s sort of like the macro version of what you should do as a good shop. Right? You know, so you sold the bike, but then Okay, maybe a month later, you’re doing a follow up, and you’re you’re offering some kind of a class. So there’s a, you know, beginners ride or whatever that kind of series of events is. I mean, our goal, ultimately, is that we are, you know, we’re advocates for the industry, but from both sides of it. So from the consumer side, and from the purchase, or the brand and shop side. So I remember what you’re talking about, I don’t remember the exact context. But I think that was essentially where I was going is that I think what’s happening is we’re like feeding off each other now in sort of, like a infinite echo chamber loop or something. So

Heather Mason  31:44

good ideas. Yeah, I think, on whatever I was saying about, you know, it was at a time where we were learning that we would get some stimulus checks nationwide. And, you know, you had reached out to say at one point, additionally, saying, this is the best thing, buying a bike is the best thing you could do with your stimulus check. Because it’s healthy. You know, it’s fun to do with your family. It’s good for the economy, for the environment, it’s good for America. I mean, you weren’t even like,

Steve Hellin  32:13

yeah, so that was me probably trying to, like, you know, test out some talking points, because I, you know, I had some pushback, actually, I had some people on Twitter that like, that was shouting me down, because I was, you know, implying that spending $3,000 or 20 $500, on a bike, whatever your was not what the stimulus was all about. And like, you know, the, you know, people are out of work, and, you know, people can’t put food on the table. And, yeah, and I was kind of like, yeah, I get all that. But, you know, still, I wanted to confidently make the case that just like you said, like, that is the, if you suddenly had money that you actually didn’t really need, like, I mean, I get it, if you were out of work, and you were struggling, of course, buy clothing and groceries, whatever you need. But if you’re really just getting this money, because the government couldn’t figure out how to get it to the right people, then it’s a great time to buy a bike. I’m having to defend that position. Because, yeah, for all the reasons that it’s always a good time to buy a bike. So, but there was some sort of controversy about that, because Oh, that was the one person accused me of like, you know, because of the fact that we sell, you know, what we sell is would be considered luxury items, which I thought was really funny to me, because, I mean, yeah, if you’re used to buying a $50 bike at the big box retailers, then sure, like spending a couple 1000 might seem like a luxury item. But, you know, you know, I’m sure some of the bikes you’ve written on have been much closer to $10,000. And so I think that was just like people that didn’t really know what they were talking about trying to make a point. And I don’t think I had the patience for it at the time that they made that point. So

Heather Mason  33:43

I think you’re like me in a way, like we lead with passion, right? And I think you’re always gonna get people who say, you know, no, or what are you thinking or, but if you have good intentions to come from a place that is good intention driven, and then you know, you’re okay. And I, when you reached out to me, I was like, Oh, my God, you’re so right. You know, if you don’t need the money to live or survive, you know, and you’re covered, there is a great opportunity to invest, you know, maybe upgrade your kids bikes, or get the whole family new helmets or whatever, you know, so I fully agree with you.

Steve Hellin  34:14

It did help. I mean, I should say, like, by all measures, we did have a stronger March as a result, at least in part of the stimulus funding. So yeah, I feel Thank you, American taxpayers.

Heather Mason  34:29

You know, we have conversations with like retailers all the time, and many of them are still hoping that those stimulus dollars end up in the shop. So, but I feel a great connection to bikeexchange because, well, you know, I worked for VIP in the past, right? So now big and bikeexchange have partnered up for the team and what do we have two victories in one day? A couple of weeks ago, right? Yeah.

Steve Hellin  34:50

Yeah, it’s really wild. But I gotta be honest, when we announced that it was like New Year’s Day, I think was the naming rights announcement. And, to me, I said, Okay, that’s it. Just saying that’s nice, whatever, but I didn’t really fully get the magnitude of the media and marketing machine that goes along with that team. And yeah, it’s great. I mean, they do well, and they get a ton of earned media. So we get to just be celebrating it as because they’re carrying our name. So, you know, we do you get a lot of questions about when Can people buy, you know, that bike or this kit, or whatever. And they’re, I mean, I can only say that there’s things in the works to make that possible. It’s just that, you know, that was all not quite worked out at the time that the partnership picked up. But I think at some point, you will be able to see, you have the ability to kind of buy the things that the team uses

Heather Mason  35:38

the working for VIP last year, and the success that the team had, you know, the tour and whatnot, having bikeexchange you know, front and center on Team bikeexchange. Previously greenedge Cycling is a really big thing. And you’re gonna see, definitely more web traffic. You know, I saw it firsthand working for big, so congratulations on that. That’s pretty stellar. Yeah. So I am just pumped to have you on and have this conversation. I have a couple other questions that I wanted to ask you. And basically, I’m sure that you talked to retailers all day long. And we’re talking about bike exchange, and we’re talking about the different packages that you offer are the capabilities for retailers to show their inventory and connect with consumers in a whole nother marketplace. Tell me a success story tell, you know, any retailer that’s really had some great success that you can talk more about?

Steve Hellin  36:26

Sure. Yeah. So we did a case study recently with endurance house, Delafield, which is actually one of the shops that are part of the play try network. And that was just good to get some stats in terms of what they saw as part of being with bikeexchange. And, you know, for the period that we were looking at, they had seen 125% growth in sales. And I think what they were most interested in was the fact that they were suddenly accessing a market around the country, whereas previously, they were essentially, you know, looking at their local area. And I think what the quote is, from Jason Jensen is the owner, just want to read his quote, because I really liked it. As you know, bikeexchange is an online solution to sell bikes, it’s quick and easy. And it more than pays for itself immediately, we were selling bikes like wildfire. And this, by the way, is something that was essentially pre pandemic pre COVID related boom. So he kind of like already was having good results and got it from there. You know, we have it is a common, the shops that are doing well, like one of the more common things that they refer to is the fact that they suddenly are getting customers that are more than 100 miles away. So and sometimes those are people that are still willing to drive and pick up the bike, sometimes they’ll do the shipping or whatever. But you know, that was something that was just new for, you know, these shops is that it was the

Heather Mason  37:53

consumers are searching. And I’ve heard consumers are driving 234 or five hours when they find a bike that’s in store. And I know Jason from over 100,000. Now I know they run a great business, and he’s really in tune to everything. So to hear his success with it, if that feels good, you know, because at the end of the day, we’re human right? And we want to make sure that anyone that we’re working with has a great experience and finds, you know, success. That’s what we’re all looking for. Right? So he’s a cool guy, the play try accounts are pretty amazing. But what if I have no experience with online sales? I don’t even know how to make a website, I don’t even you know, I can’t even take pictures of my bikes, like, are you guys gonna go? Because there’s a lot of time for this.

Steve Hellin  38:37

Right. So there’s a couple of things that we have that enable, you know, shops to get up and running quickly. And, you know, part of that is just the fact that you don’t actually have to provide your own content. So we typically integrate with the point of sale systems. So like, lightspeed, for example, is one of the more common ones in the States, but we also integrate with those popular ecommerce platforms. So Shopify, bigcommerce WooCommerce. So if you already have a system that we can connect to, that we can basically pull your inventory over into bikeexchange. And we can use our own product database to generate the content and the listings and everything. And we are then able to, you know, get you up and running pretty quickly and actually, you know, delivering product to the market. So, you know, that’s really there’s a lot of things that we can automate so that you don’t actually have to be, you know, making a huge investment and doing a lot of custom things yourself. Of course, some of our best shops do decide to take the personal pictures or the photos of their inventory so that they, you know, can basically, you know, just have a more of a personal look and feel to their presence on the marketplace. But yeah, it’s really easy to get started and we typically have shops up and running within a week in terms of You know, having their listings live and being able to, you know, actively start trading.

Heather Mason  40:04

So another thing about bikeexchange that I don’t want to keep leaving on, but I did some research for our call today and the world’s largest online bike marketplace. That’s a pretty big hat, the world’s largest. And I know bike exchanged coined the term. And maybe I think it was a global brand campaign where the world rides, right. Right. I love that where the world rides. And basically, that was a campaign that highlighted the passion of cyclists all over the world, and how you can connect on a global basis, people to buy sell. And I mean, you even have a blog so they can keep up to date with what’s happening in the races and different tips like I know the blog, I mean, check out their website, bikeexchange, calm, there’s a great blog, like best places to write in the US like tips to stay healthy, really great content. So where the world rides, anything else we should know about that campaigns do because I’m pretty pumped about it. I think it’s neat. It feels good.

Steve Hellin  41:04

Yeah. Yeah, no, it is a good one. I think, you know, if you look at some of the campaign materials, it would say like, where the world by sells, learns, and rides. So the idea really was that it’s not just the marketplace, it’s also that place to learn, it’s a place to understand about cycling, you know, and it’s sort of like, again, like, we’re connecting buyers and sellers. There’s an exchange there. And there’s sort of like, we catch people, depending on how serious they are. So they might not like we don’t believe the consumer journey is a funnel, we believe it’s more sort of an iterative process, right? where, you know, someone looks at a bike, and then does some research, and then doesn’t do anything for a while, and then they, you know, the weather gets nice, and they’ll start looking again, and it’s sort of like that loop of, you know, interest. And then the point is that we can kind of help in every aspect of that discovery process. So whether they’re trying to get information about what kind of bike is right for me, or to the point of whether they are trying to say, I know that I want a mountain bike Now tell me is it you know, which brand is right for me to the point of pay, now I have my bike, and I’m trying to learn about what accessories I need to get to the next level. And you know, all of that, you know, we’re kind of there at every step in that research, as well as then being there at every step of the way. On the fulfillment side, on the seller side with brands and retailers. It’s how do we then make their lives easier? So to me, this is always what’s been exciting about being in the marketplace business is it’s not just it’s not a website, it’s a two sided two headed monster, right? Well, you’ve got to, you’ve got to make it work for the buyers, you’ve got to make it work for the sellers. And it’s, you know, where this kind of the magic that happened in the middle that facilitates that connection enables those connections. But yeah, I mean, we that is really the if we’re doing our business, right, we’re making it easier for the sellers to sell, and we’re making it easier for the buyers to buy.

Heather Mason  43:00

Yeah, and with the concierge service, you’re acting as like experts, and you’re helping the shops, you know, sell this product. Could you have the same consumers coming back? Can you notice traffic to your website? Or?

Steve Hellin  43:12

Yes. You know, I mean, to be honest, like not to the extent that I would hope just yet I mean, we do have some of it. And especially with the concierge service, we are seeing people that are had expressed some interest months ago, and then they came back and said, Okay, now I’m ready to go move ahead, then you got to hope that the person what they were looking for is still available. And sometimes we have to do like a kind of a substitution where like somebody says, I really liked that $3,000 Cannondale bike, but you know, it took me a while to decide on it. So now, they placed the order and it’s not available. Okay. Well, this is when we do we sort of do this, like concierge process in the middle of a transaction where you say, Okay, look, you were looking for this, that one’s gone. But I got something similar over here. And you know, it’s a little bit different. But, you know, it’s probably still pretty good. You know, I mean, we’re matchmaking at the end of the day, right? So it’s trying to put the bike in the right bike for the right person at the right time. And it can be tricky, of course, but yeah, I mean, it’s, uh, I was gonna say is like, if we’re doing our job, right, the buyers and the sellers would both be pretty happy with us. Right? Right. So we’re in a situation right now. Where I would say, we are selling like our e commerce numbers are off the charts. So people are finding bikes to buy and our growth that area is is very high. On the seller side, it’s more been like kind of a slow trickle up, because there’s so much more unknown on the shops, the shops, and the brands are the ones that are kind of like, Well, you know, should we wait and see what happens with that big thing in the Suez Canal? did that affect us to like, you know, and then of course, then it feeds off itself because then you get the rumor mill starting right. And it’s like, you For the same story that I have in some of these events, we people that are inside is talk about just the actual the freight process and like the things that come from Japan or China, and it’s wild, I mean, it’s a nerve

Heather Mason  45:11

wracking time. And if you listen to everything you hear, you know, some I’m, I have a type of personality where, like, if I still had my shot, I would have to sign up and try it, I’d have to at least give it a couple of months and try it. Because if you don’t, you don’t know what you’re missing, you know, and for anything, you know, I wouldn’t wait, I would buy all the chains and consents I could get, you know, I wouldn’t stuff like that you don’t think about. So. I think sometimes we wait too long we think things through, I mean, we should make always very educated choices. But sometimes, you got to leap sometimes and be you can’t be in the game if you’re not playing, you know.

Steve Hellin  45:46

And I will say like, we make it very easy to iterate. And by that I mean, you know, we don’t really do a lot of like long term contracts will typically offer like pretty simple payment plans and subscriptions. And if somebody wants to kind of like try it out for a month, and then it was not working, then they might be out, you know, one month, typically, we might give like $1 for the first month anyway, just so someone’s like trying and kind of like, we want to prove the value. So if it’s not working, we don’t want to be in the business of just taking your money, and then you didn’t get any value. But yes, if somebody wants to, I mean, we’re pretty flexible on, you know, meeting the seller and the brand where they’re at. So for example, like for large brands, you know, we have capabilities we call the brand store, multi store, where we can tell we can have a brand’s warehouse inventory reflected across every retailer they have in the country, and it really facilitates like, click and collect programs and buy online pick up in store. But it also is some level of a leap of faith because you’re, you know, potentially have one or 2000 shops on the platform all at once. So you know, we’ll often do like a pilot will just say, Okay, let’s just do all the shops in Florida, or let’s just do you know, 50 of your shops will connected, see how it goes. And then you know, just kind of grow from there. And, again, I mean, to my message to the brands and the retailers out there, if there’s something in the world of getting digital getting online, trying out a web store, e commerce, you know, we will meet you where you’re at, and you know, help you grow that and go on that journey together. And, you know, I think ultimately, we’re the only platform solution provider that can say that and actually do it too. So you’re happy to have an initial conversation with anyone.

Heather Mason  47:29

I’m giving everyone their personal number. Like they need to talk to you. Alright, so coining a term bicycle retail excellence. And we want to provide resources education to bicycle retailers to be excellent. But what does that term mean to you excellence in bicycle retail?

Steve Hellin  47:49

Yeah, so I mean, when you’re sort of at that top tier, that essentially means that you know, someone can research the bikes that you carry, can buy the bikes that you carry, from pretty much anywhere in the world, or let’s say anywhere in the region. And once they’ve made a purchase decision, they can then have that purchase fulfilled in any way they want to have it fulfilled, which means either it gets shipped to them, it gets picked up in the store, it gets put aside as a deposit and someone comes in and gets it. And I think you know, from that kind of excellence, then like, aside from just the transactionality part of it, there’s also the, you know, that shop is doing a better job of communicating with their customers on a regular basis, nurturing those relationships, they’re also doing a better job of following up and facilitating future sales. They’re doing a better job of, you know, just, I mean, just naturally through the course of business, they are going to have a better reputation and have a better experience with their customers because they’re leveraging the right kind of tools that has made their world easier. And you know, ultimately, it’s a happy buyer and a happy seller and everyone lived happily ever after.

Heather Mason  49:09

No, I love it. I love

Heather Mason  49:12

the space right now he’s got the biggest smile, but it’s true. Meeting customers on every angle and following through and creating community and making sure you’ve got the right tools to get the rider. I’ve been walking a lot in my neighborhood recently, and I’m seeing people out on bikes and their new bikes. You can tell they’re new. And you know, I see tire pressure too low and the saddle height not adjusted. And I’m thinking oh my god, excellent. Some bicycle retailer. Someone didn’t. I mean, maybe we did help that person up or maybe we didn’t fully educate them. So we got to make sure we’re Yeah, creating new riders that are educated.

Steve Hellin  49:44

Yeah, and that’s a great point. I mean, like my local bike shop, I know they do. I’ll give them a plug for whatever reason bikes urgent in O’Fallon. They do a great job of that kind of customer service stuff and like education and the vans and everything. But I know that that’s I mean, I think that’s are one of your America’s best bike shops. So like, they get it. But yeah, there’s a whole group of bike shops out there that, you know, there’s different versions of it, they’re either maybe they’re really good at helping people do repairs and stuff, but they’re not really like if somebody walked up the street, they’ll get like, either laughed out of the shop or something. The other version would be like more of like the, you know, traditional retail, where they have lots of shiny inventory, but there’s nobody there that can actually explain anything about it. Like when you’re buying, like, I mean, I’ve had a couple of experiences buying, trying to buy my daughter’s bicycles at you know, like toys r us when that when that was still a thing. And you know, when you’re lucky if you can get the bike down off the top level, never, never mind trying to have someone explained to you what it does, and how to work it. And so yeah, I think that I mean, I think it’s, you know, you think about, like, there’s a lot of initiatives happening around like the modern city and the modern transportation and all this stuff, right? Well, you know, if you want to talk about what becomes the hub of a modern community, you know, we already know the answer that it is the modern bike shop, right. And one of the things I love is part of what’s happening is, every time I see that, like a regular road is permanently close to cars. That’s like, I mean, someone’s got to be ringing a bell somewhere every time that happens. That’s like a major victory, right? It is, it is, there’s

Heather Mason  51:15

a lot more accessibility, we’re seeing a lot more ebikes our cargo bikes are going to be the next thing. So I’m really excited about the new slew of riders that we have in the sport. And I’ve even just seen cycling in general, online more. I mean, there’s commercials now for bikes. I mean, I don’t know you’re seeing it, too. There’s a lot more articles being published about the boom, and it’s just Cycling is getting more and more mainstream, and accepted as a sport so amazing for the industry. We’re gonna have to just do this again. So, so Steve would like to come?

Steve Hellin  51:49

Are you going to be at the bicycle leadership event? Three days? I’m

Heather Mason  51:53

really looking forward to it. Yeah. peopleforbikes has done a great job assembling a stand up, you know, lineup for us. So yeah, I’m really excited for us. I’ll see you there. Yeah, I

NBDA   52:02

was gonna say, well, you can hop up our virtual table. That’ll be fun. Whatever that means. Yeah.

Heather Mason  52:09

So listeners who want to connect direct with Steve at Steve at bikeexchange, calm, and he’s ready. And he’s going to be kind. And now Steve is amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. Like it’s a pleasure. Yeah. And any last words? any parting thoughts, Steve? Oh,

Steve Hellin  52:27

1. I mean, just again, like, thank you for everything that you do. And it was really, I mean, I think we met like, right as you were taking your role. And it was shortly after I’d taken my role. So we’re kind of like, both in new leadership positions in the industry. And it’s been a pleasure to work with you every step of the way. So, if you’re not already subscribing to Heather’s many forms of communication, I encourage you to do so. Immediately.

Heather Mason  52:53

Thanks, Steve. Alright, so that is it. I invite you to connect with me and come on bicycle, retail, radio and share your story with our listeners. You can contribute to our outspoken blog or become a feature on our member spotlight. Lots of love for our industry. There’s lots of great resources on the NBDA website. Look at that preferred partner page for bike exchange. There’s lots of good information there. Don’t forget to share your favorite episode with your friends and on social media. Thank you for listening.

NBDA   53:19

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

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

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

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