The Opportunity
By
Jay Townley & Associates, LLC
bikeprofits.com
Gluskin and Townley Group, LLC
bikemarketer.com
Part of the problem we have in fully committing to up-market product, and pricing, is lack of confidence. Unfortunately this leads us to undervalue all but our top competitive and race ready products, and worse yet, ignore whole blocks of potentially highly profitable and loyal clients. This lack of confidence is fueled, in part by not knowing who our potential up-market client base is, and how to connect with them.
If you are stuck in the middle, that is with an average bicycle unit retail at or below $400, because you don’t think anyone other than your enthusiast customers will pay up-market prices for their bicycles, or just don’t know how to reach out to potential customers who will pay up-market prices for your products and services, consider a very slight change in your marketing and merchandising focus.
Here are just two potential up-market consumer segments that we tend to ignore or discount as not being interested in spending money on real bicycles, along with some suggestions for reaching out and connecting with their up-market and trading up potential . . . (page 72)
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The opportunity is really quite simple. There are over 81 million Americans between the ages of 40 and 59. The vast majority born between 1946 and 1964 are more commonly referred to as baby-boomers. Another 31 million Americans between the ages of 60 and 74 are referred to as seniors. Most Americans ages 40 through 74 want to be healthier, loose weight, get out and enjoy nature, have some fun with friends or family, and find relief from the stress of the daily grind. Bottom line is they want … they need to be healthier and happier . . .
That’s a total of over 112 million Americans, or 38% of the whole adult population that are a potential market for the bicycle products, services and lifestyle that specialty bicycle retailers can provide … with relatively little change in channel business strategies, marketing tactics and retail store policies, and virtually no-risk.
All we have to do is adopt a consumer-centric mindset and focus totally on providing a satisfying retail shopping experience followed by an extraordinary bicycling experience!
However, until now our channel of trade has dramatically under-served the vast majority of baby-boomers, seniors and women of all ages.
We should, quite rightly, congratulate ourselves on doing a good job of continuing to hold on to adult enthusiast cyclists, who number approximately 3.6 million, mostly white, male baby boomers. Enthusiasts represent about 15% of all bicycle riders, and they influence other adult purchases of bicycles because they are considered the “experts” in their communities, and they are the word-of-mouth ambassadors for specialty bicycle retailers. As noted, adult enthusiast cyclists are 82% male and 91% white, and this complete imbalance compared to the U.S. population underscores the size of the opportunity sitting right in front of us.
Here is what the authors of the Cycling Consumer of the New Millennium, published in 2001, advised the specialty bicycle retail channel to do going forward:
“In the next decade bike shops will prosper by following three strategies. First and foremost, they must hold on to their most loyal customers – mostly white, male baby boomers. Second, they must persuade Casual riders to become more involved with the sport. Third, they should try to persuade women, minorities, and other non-riders to get back on their bikes.”
Great advice, but in the half decade since the Cycling Consumer of the New Millennium was published there has been little or no progress in the specialty bicycle retail channel adopting two of the very sound strategies that this research report recommended. Our channel of trade has worked hard at holding on to our most loyal customers – the mostly white, male baby boomer enthusiast cyclists.
However, we have paid little or no attention, time or resources to really persuading casual and infrequent riders to become more involved with the sport, or in really trying to persuade women, minorities and other non-riders to get back on bicycles.
This lack of enthusiasm from 2001 through 2005 in embracing what is now a very obvious, in fact compelling market opportunity is explainable by understanding that
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