INTERVIEW: A new vision and mission for ZyroFisher
One of the cycling industry’s most significant distributors has a new CEO at the helm and has been making some significant changes behind the scenes. Cycling Industry News quizzes new ZyroFisher boss Tom Ainscough about overstocks, bolstering industry skills in the North East, leveraging the firm’s global heft with sister company Royal Velo France as well as taking us through the recent internal changes and focuses for ZyroFisher.
It’s probably been a year to forget for the industry for many reasons, but now – at the end of 2023 – have you got a view on how business has gone compared with 2022 (or compared with 2019)?
Business in general in 2023 has been really tough for a number of reasons, both inside and outside of the cycling industry. Comparing to 2019, there were clearly overstocks at that time as there are now, (albeit not to the same degree post-Covid, especially bikes), but compounding this further have been a number of factors that were simply not present then. Covid, Middle East crisis, Russia, Ukraine, energy prices, the cost of living crisis, interest rates, even Brexit. These were all socioeconomic business impacts we were not familiar with. Going up against these issues for all of us over the last three years are generation-defining moments in cycling industry leadership.
How about the overstocks challenge – is that something we’re looking at normalising in 2024 or will that be resolved further ahead?.
We historically invested heavily in a really strong demand planning team. During Covid we developed a two year planning horizon within our forecasting system and integrated our forecasting data into our business planning model through an S&OP process (sales and operations planning). In January 2023, we developed a strategy to reduce our inventory gradually over time. As we get to the end of this year we have been able to reduce our inventory by over 40%, so we will go into 2024 in a clean position giving us the flexibility to maintain high service levels on all our brands for all our customers. By focusing on our forecasting we can ensure high service levels from ZyroFisher through periods of overstocks and understocks in the cycling industry.
You’ve been with ZyroFisher for five-plus years and recently became CEO – how has the transition been? It’s been a tumultuous period in the industry to be taking on that role at one of the largest UK cycle industry distributors…
Having a great team at Zyrofisher, full of excellent people dedicated to the industry and passionate about cycling, has made the transition from COO to CEO easier.
What we tried to do from day one as a team was to move fast and be decisive when reacting to the changes in the market.
We both developed and implemented a 100-day plan which allowed us to really focus our efforts as a lean agile organisation.
At the same time we set a new vision and mission, and strong financial support through our investment partners, focusing on our core values, brand partners and customers.
Can you take us through some of the other changes at ZyroFisher HQ? E.g senior exec changes and other significant updates? There have been rumours of a change in approach to bikes/P&A?
As a business we offer a premium value-added service to our brands and customers and recognise that a coordinated approach on a go to market strategy for our brands encompassing sales brand and marketing is key for driving success. Leadership changes we made were to consolidate decision making strategy, and reapplication into a smaller, more focused, agile team. This gives us the ability to leverage multiple aspects of our value proposition quickly and efficiently at the right time for each of our brands.
Based on previous market indicators we had historically looked to grow through adjacent sectors expansion, however this requires a significant amount of investment to grow these sectors. I feel our core strength is in P&A, and with the changes in the market and the opportunities that we have with our current amazing innovative and exciting brands, I have the firm belief we had the ability to grow together organically. Our core focus is on our brands, customers and P&A.
Obviously bike shops are facing a range of challenges, how can ZyroFisher help them tackle them? Eg through sales reps, enhanced B2B… To put that another way – has the way ZyroFisher works with bike shops evolved over the past five years?
We keep our frontline sales teams focused purely on our IBD customers, backed up by a fantastic internal sales team. We have an equally strong separate sales team working with our national accounts. This allows us to focus on two sales channels independently and give a high degree of support and focus to both without getting distracted. Our team are constantly out visiting customers and supporting them when needed.
We have spent a lot of time recently developing our B2B, and have added functionality with the aim to make the digital journey as smooth as possible. We have added in daily deals in the last couple of months, where every day our customers can expect a fresh new deal on our B2B. We recognise that sometimes things don’t always go the way we planned, so we have again heavily invested in a new customer service platform Zendesk (went live in October 23) which now coordinates across our customer services, warranty and SRAM tech services. Our OTIF levels are still very high as is our stock availability levels of all our high performing lines.
Your head office must be pretty busy – you opened a Cytech/Activate Cycle Academy last year and this year the SRAM Technical Centre – how are both of those going?
We are strong believers in sustainability and growing the cycling industry we love and have therefore invested heavily in both Cytech and SRAMtech. The Cytech training workshop continues to go from strength-to-strength. Recent bookings have been significantly up on earlier in the year and the pipeline and demand for Cytech courses, remains strong for early 2024. Having the Cytech workshop based at ZyroFisher has also had a positive impact on the delivery and reach of the bicycle mechanics apprenticeship in the North East area. The number of apprentices enrolled on this training programme in this part of the country, has grown steadily since the workshop opened last year. Bringing this level of
specialist bike mechanics training to ZyroFisher, shows our commitment to help address the industry-wide recognised shortage of trained and skilled mechanics across the UK. It’s been hugely beneficial to partner with Activate Cycle Academy with this workshop. They bring so much experience and expertise in delivering this level of skilled technical training to the cycle industry. We look forward to continuing this partnership for many years to come.
We believe in a value added partnerships with our brands and are huge advocates of the technical innovation and sophisticated engineering of SRAM products. We have recently solidified our partnership with SRAM for a number of years to run SRAMTECH alongside SRAMTECH UNIVERSITY co-located in our Darlington head office. We built these workspaces from the ground up, designing alongside SRAM what a best in class facility would look like. We made these investments as we wanted to bring the fantastic work that these two teams do closer to our organisation expanding our knowledge and our ability to help bring to market a whole range of really exciting and innovative products and services.
Royal Velo France has been part of the ZyroFisher family for some time now, does that give ZyroFisher extra leverage – and is the French market facing similar challenges to the UK?
RVF has seen huge growth over the last five years, we have a number of brands in common and have worked together to leverage a whole host of synergies between the two businesses. Recently we have invested in a new facility in Torvellier in Troyes four times bigger than the previous facility, based on our successful UK warehouse footprint, and integrated
all our IT and planning systems. Both the UK warehouse and the French warehouse are bonded, our ability to leverage our group facilities gives us a real advantage when it comes to shipping product both into and out of the UK. Leveraging our group operations allows us to reach a pan European consumer, and take brands into markets that will really allow them to grow outside of their core markets. We operate at a group level but with agile decision making with local knowledge and expertise.
I have to ask about sustainability – how’s that impacting on ZyroFisher in terms of operations and targets?
Sustainability is core to what we do, especially on our own brand Altura we have put a huge effort in the last few years on sustainable fabrics and supply chains, through our fantastic design and production teams, where we can we look to use recycled materials to produce our products we are very proud of the sustainability story around our products.
Any other trends you’ve seen at the bike distribution coal face?
The rise of eBikes is an interesting trend, and whilst we have moved away from bike distribution, we have partnered with key eBike P&A providers, most recently Mahle where we support their UK service and warranty offering. We are also working with our brands on providing products and componentry that fit the eBike sector.
We spend a lot of time trying to emphasise the positives of the market – while the short term has been painful, the mid to long term view of the market is of growth – is that a view ZyroFisher subscribes to?
We look at longer term consumer trends and whilst short term sales tell a different story we believe there is still a really strong consumer market in the UK, as the overstocks start to unwind we believe the market will recover. It’s important for us not to swing the industry around sales, but focus on long-term consumer demand.
What does the forthcoming months have in store for ZyroFisher, into 2024?
We are really excited, we have spent a lot of time and effort getting our organisation into a lean efficient agile business poised to drive forward the market recovery. Consumers are going to be really excited about some of the fantastic product innovations our brands are bringing to market next year and we feel privileged to be able to bring these products to UK consumers. There is so much going on now, its hard to say what will happen, but we are ready for any challenge, and excited and eager to connect our brands to our customers and consumers.
