Jay Townley:



The specialty bicycle industry's best kept secret weapon

download 16 minute talk mp3 by right click and "save as".

"The early years of specialty bicycle retailing".

Jay is the author of the original Schwinn retail sales manual, 1965.

Jay Townley – History In The Bicycle Industry

Jay Townley is completing his 48th year in the bicycle industry. He started as an employee in a bike shop in St. Paul Minnesota in 1957; worked for the Schwinn Bicycle Company for 24 years as a Writer, Sales School Instructor, Cycle Dealer Consultant, Total Store Program Manager, Sales Promotion Manager, Director of Product Safety and Governmental Affairs, Vice President Product Safety and Governmental Affairs, Vice President Marketing, Vice President Bicycle Marketing, Vice President and Assistant to the President and Vice President Purchasing.  Townley owned and operated Venture Out Unlimited, a bicycle touring company located in Wisconsin; served as President of Giant Bicycle Inc., as President and a Director of Browning Bicycle Component, LLC, and as Executive Director of The Bicycle Council a (non-profit) bicycle industry marketing association. 

Currently Townley is a Partner in The Gluskin Townley Group, a marketing and research consultancy that offers its services to the sporting goods sector and specialty retailers [visit www.gluskintownley.com].   He also manages Jay Townley & Associates, LLC (JT&A) a business services group that includes The Bike Shop List, a marketing and mailing list specializing in the bicycle dealer channel of trade [visit www.thebikeshoplist.com].  JT&A is the North American sales and marketing representative for Body Scanning CRM, a retail shopping and client relationship marketing system that is marketed and sold exclusively to specialty bicycle retailers [visit www.bodyscanningcrm.com and www.bikecomfort.com].  JT&A is a partner in BikeMarketer.com an online provider of direct response marketing, database and web site services to specialty bicycle retailers [visit www.bike-marketer.com].   JT&A operates bikeprofits.com an education, seminar and teleconference service for specialty bicycle retailers, managers and employees [visit www.bikeprofits.com].     

Related activities include serving on the Board of the Youth Bicycle Education Network, the Board of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and the Board of TransBike Systems.  Jay Townley & Associates Taiwan is affiliated with Z-Cam International, a Taiwanese product development trading company.  Townley contributes articles to the NBDA newsletter and is a frequent speaker at industry trade shows and special events.  For six years, from 1999 to 2004 Townley produced the Bicycle Retail Education Conference later renamed the Bicycle Industry Leadership Conference [visit www.bicycleconference.org].  For more detailed information about Jay Townley visit www.jaytownley.com

The following is an introductory excerpt from section one of Jay Townley's book "Creating Extraordinary Specialty Retail Shopping Experience". This book is a compilation of over 40 years of specialty bicycle retailing experience.

Section 1

Introduction

Learning about the retail shopping experience!

By Jay Townley

My name is Jay Townley.  I got my start in the bicycle business in 1957 as a young, part time employee of Hazel Park Bicycle, Hobby and Skate Exchange (Hazel Park Cycle Center) in St. Paul Minnesota.* You can do the math, or take my word for the fact that I am about to complete my 48^th year in the bicycle business.  Don’t worry – I am not going to take you through the whole story, but I do want to share what I have learned about the retail shopping experience.

This publication is the direct descendant of a two-volume work titled Management And Sales Course For Bicycle Dealers: A Course For Prospective and Established Bicycle Dealers that I wrote while working at Hazel Park Cycle Center, and which got me a job at Arnold, Schwinn & Company in December of 1965.  Here is what I wrote in the Preface:

“For some years now we have been keenly aware of the need for a sales and management course specifically tailored to the needs of bicycle dealers.  For years, our business has been looked down upon by our fellow retailers and by many of our customers.  Our business has changed with the times and we have finally come of age.  But like the boy who has just turned 21, many of us do not know how to cope with our new position as retailers.

“Our firm has been in the business of selling and servicing bicycles for seventeen years.  We are just a fledgling compared to many of you but the point is that we have come up the hard way, just as you have, and we know from our own experience what the needs of the average bicycle dealer are.

“We have taken it upon ourselves to write this course because we feel that nobody but a dealer can write about a dealer’s problems.  The only way to gain knowledge in this business is through experience, and we wish to share our experience with you in the hope that it will increase your knowledge of the bicycle business.  It is also our aim to learn as much as we can from you, our fellow dealers.”

Hazel Park Cycle Center

November 22, 1965                                                                 

Reading this, forty-years after it was written, I can’t help but reflect on how some things in our business are exactly the same.  In some ways we still don’t know how to cope with our position as specialty retailers. 

This new publication and related education and seminar tools are intended to help bike shops and specialty bicycle retailers alike find and get back to something we originally found in the mid ‘60’s with the help of George Garner and the Schwinn Total Store Program, which was total focus on the customer … and then lost in the decade of the ‘90’s as our channel of trade became more product-centric.