Madison updates on adjustment to sales staff structure

Madison has responded to an online forum thread calling into question whether certain sales staff have had their agency agreements ended, with CEO Dominic Langan penning an open letter explaining the restructuring.

The letter in full:

It is always important to listen to your customers and to constantly adapt your business to meet their needs. The world is always changing and the speed of change was accelerated by the pandemic and the cycle industry was not impervious.

As a leading distributor in the UK and Ireland of many of the best global cycling brands available, we must always be doing our best to add value in everything we do or we simply serve no purpose.

We already have a powerful B2B platform, live electronic catalogues and great logistics which makes ordering from Madison and Sportline easy and efficient, always available for whenever convenient for our customers. However, products are becoming more and more complex and retailers have to become more and more sophisticated to meet the needs of their customers. This is where we believe we can add value and further support our retail customer base with in-store technical training, visual merchandising, ranging support, event support, point of sale installation, marketing support, and working together to help develop the profitable sale of our brands within the store.

As part of this restructure, we have terminated with immediate effect, the agreements with four of our sales agents. A further four sales agents will also cease being self-employed and instead become salaried employees of Madison and Sportline. All future sales recruits will also be employees.

For many years now, we have been advocates of Product Promoters and we intend to invest more in these skilled staff members and less on the traditional “sales rep”. During 2022 we will have six product promoters active in the market, including one resident and dedicated to our sales team and customers on the Island of Ireland. These product promoters will work alongside our already well-established Shimano Tech Reps.

We are also recruiting a Key Account Manager which will allow our field sales resources to focus solely on the Independent Specialist retailers, which is a very significant part of our business with huge potential for growth.

This restructure of the Madison and Sportline sales team is to ensure we are best placed to meet the challenges and opportunities of the post pandemic marketplace.