Ask the trade: Are you shaping a store around cycling for transport?

Following on from yesterday’s discussion around customer profiles, today our panel share their thoughts on adapting the store and staff skillsets around a transport cycling movement…

Are you finding the need to recruit for different skills to best serve customers focused cycling as a transport form?

David Sheppard, Balfe’s Bikes
We focus our energies on top grade customer service, the highest level of product knowledge across all disciplines, first class servicing standards and a great team mentality where every colleague gets the support they need to progress in our business and provide the best service possible.

Henry Hayes, Fully Charged
We’ve invested quite significantly in our team and infrastructure in the past year, last year taking over an 11,000 sq/ft premises in London Bridge to offer servicing and repairs for our customers, families and businesses. We are always looking to add more workshop bays to ensure that our customers are out on the road, considering our products are their primary mode of transport and in business use-cases, paramount to their business model.

We’ve taken on a customer success team, as well as having dedicated eCargo specialists, both in business development roles and as trained e-Mechanics, to keep our fleets happy. We’ve invested heavily into adequate compliance and due-diligence on our brands and suppliers. At our height we stocked 30 brands, and now only have 10, dramatically reducing our brands based on the quality of their aftercare. This ensures if our customers ever have a problem, we can get it looked into ASAP so they’re back on the road.

David Hicks, Rutland Cycling
Customer service has always been, and remains, at the heart of our operation, across all of our channels. We don’t envisage that changing. We employ passionate people who strive to exceed customers’ expectations, and that, we think, appeals to all profiles of customer. One of the evolutions over the past five years that we have witnessed has been the lessening of the requirement for our colleagues to be avid cyclists, and that’s in part due to the A to B customer who generally feels less emotionally connected to their bike, utilising It more as a tool than a prized possession. We still need, and want keen cyclists in our teams, but they are increasingly complemented by non-cyclists, in cases where they’re motivated by a desire to offer great service and work in a performance related, but informal, environment.

How are you managing floor space and merchandising to maximise the value of a significant growth in cycling for transport customers?

David Sheppard, Balfe’s Bikes
Our London centric locations have a very high commuter mix, so our stores have always had a significant amount of space dedicated to bikes and pedal-assisted cycles that are aimed at transport cyclists. Our next day click and collect service from our central warehouse also allows customers to order less common items into store (or for home delivery) if they can’t find what they want on display in store. This is really popular with our local customers who love the ability to ride into store and have their purchase fitted.

Henry Hayes, Fully Charged
With the significant growth we’re finding in family cargo bike sales, our London Bridge showroom now has a dedicated children’s playing area, and both a front-loading cargo bike and a rear-loading cargo bike areas, independent of each other. Arch 1 of our eBike Service Centre on Holyrood Street comprises of our B2B Cargo Bike Showroom, where we hold demo stock for businesses to try differing models.

David Hicks, Rutland Cycling
The impact of Covid on supply chains and stock availability has meant that we’ve been able to manage this fairly fluidly. Most of our stores have a large footprint so while stock availability has been challenging for our store teams in particular, it’s certainly allowed us greater flexibility in merchandising our retail space to accommodate commuter focused bikes where it fits our customer profile for that location.

Have you considered, or have you already opened, a dedicated electric bike retail store?

David Sheppard, Balfe’s Bikes
We’ve considered the possibility of an eBike retail store, however for our customers the workshops and mechanics are the heart of our stores, so we don’t want to segregate our customers by their preference for electrification. Our stores carry a range of eBikes to start a customer of their buying journey, and we encourage our customers to test ride our bikes to experience the difference an electric bike can offer. We are lucky enough to have 13 electric bike brands. We can have the right bike ready for a final test ride in store in as little as 24 hours. Right now, we think we have a great offering, but who knows what the future may hold.

David Hicks, Rutland Cycling
We introduced specific ‘electric bike areas’ into the majority of our retail stores back around 2015, so there has always been substantial floor space dedicated to electric bikes in our stores. This is increasingly the case, and while we don’t have a dedicated eBike retail store in our portfolio, our purpose-built Leicester store, opened in 2019, has the entire ground floor retail space dedicated to electric bikes. Meanwhile, our Barnwell Road store in Cambridge is typically around 80% electric bikes and has a dedicated electric cargo bike area.