For the past number of years, we’ve been passionate about the growth of cycling through local advocacy. From this, we have learned why compassion, creativity and connectivity are so crucial for successfully selling cycling to riders of every group.
Compassion
Start with yourself and your store staff. It's never easy to change and learn to do things in new ways. It's especially challenging in today's tough and transforming retail market. Recognize everyone's strengths, including your own.
Next, use the concept of compassion to create a space for your team to try out new ideas without harsh judgment and criticism. Recognize that success will only come if you're open to tweaking and polishing regularly even if your first efforts don't net the results you want.
Finally, expand the concept of compassion to your customers. If you want to serve customers who are not professional athletes then you have to create a space in your store for those customers. You need to show that city bikes and cruisers are as important to your store as the top of the line road bikes.
Creativity
Make sure that the commuter and city bikes in your store are shown decked out with baskets, racks, panniers and water bottles to showcase the possibilities.
Make sure you're using inviting, happy images of all forms of bicycling on your website. Don't just show road racing and mountain biking if you want to attract commuters or novice riders. Reach out to your suppliers and request images, or use crowd-sourced images from your followers on social media sites.
Connectivity
If you're not already connected to your local bike advocacy organization do so now. Why? They are making the streets safer and more accessible for cyclists. They are working on laws and infrastructure and policy, things that have long-term benefits and take a lot of dedication and passion to make happen.
Our bikes are designed in Brooklyn—by our in-house team in collaboration with members of our Board of Advisors, a select group of industry experts—and manufactured in China and Taiwan.
