Creating An Extraordinary

Section	Summary	Page
1. Introduction	Learning about the retail shopping experience.	2
2. It’s All About Them	Focusing on the new consumer.	6
3. What Are You … A Bike Shop Or A Specialty Retailer?	What you do makes a difference in the answer.	10
4. The Anthropology Of Shopping	What we can learn from “the Margaret Mead of Shopping.”	14
5. Total Concept Focused On The Customer	George Garner and the Total Concept Cyclery got it right in 1964.	26
6. Consumer-Centric Retailing	“Most retailers today would argue that they are consumer centric.  And on this count, most retailers would be wrong.”	31
7. The Consumer-Centric Store	The total experience.	41
8. Your Store Is The Brand	“Your brand is not what you say you are … your brand is what your customers think you are.”	52
9. What Is Marketing?	You don’t “sell” anything at retail anymore – everything you do and everything your employees do today is marketing!	55
10. Developing An In-Depth Understanding Of Shoppers	Understanding customers’ and returning clients shopping decisions.	58
11. Don’t Get Trapped On The Yellow Stripes!	“What can a dead armadillo teach retailers?”	65
12. Look Out … The Future Is Here!	We’re now in a consumer-centric market where consumers are the decision makers!	69
13. The Opportunity	There is a Huge opportunity … right in front of us, today!	72
14. Personal and Business Evaluation	Personal and business evaluation exercise to help you develop a transition plan to becoming a consumer-centric retailer and create a customer-centric store.	79
15. Suggested Reading	A list of the books and briefs that will help you, your business advisors and employees educate yourselves about all aspects of becoming an independent consumer-centric retailer and creating a customer-centric store and the preeminent brand in your market.	110
Appendix A	Jay Townley’s history in the bicycle industry	113
Appendix B	Ray Burch’s 1966 letter to dealers	114

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.