A Bike Industry To-Do List #4 (Marketing to customers, not pushing product)

Note: This is the third in an ignorant eight-part suggestion of some measures the bike brands could take to better appeal to the majority of Americans, who have little or no interest in cycling.

Part 1 described the situation, the challenges, and some important caveats.

Part 2 examined the importance of cosmetics, and our lack of visual differentiation.

Part 3 suggested that bike development should depend on end-customer research

In this part, I will suggest a few ways the bike brands can adjust their marketing tactics to better target all these new customers.

So, in the last part, I tried to make the case that the bikes we try to sell to casual cyclists pay little attention to what these cyclists want. Rather, they largely reflect the input of experienced cyclists in the industry, who design a bike that reflects our ideal of what such a customer should have. And a quick review of the bikes ridden by our staff shows that our tastes definitely tickle the outer boundaries of mainstream tastes.

Now let's say a big bike brand goes out and does all the market research. They design a line of great bikes, say in the $500-600 range, that are really attractive, or useful, or whatever really has the potential to get people excited about a bicycle who never even had them on their radar screen. The Model T of bicycles. How are you going to publicize it? And who are you targeting?

This is an area where real change has already been made. More and more, we are seeing obviously-planted mainstream media attention paid to particular bicycles, whether it is in the latest buy-this article in Men's Journal, the full-on PR blitz Shimano put on for their Coasting bikes, or the many celeb riding sightings lately. Paid ad placement is also flowing to the outlets where non-cyclists congregate, as it should. The old intuition held that someone looking for a bike would pick up a bicycling magazine. Logical. The reality is that non-cyclists are not actually looking for a bicycle, and those that are more apt to simply pick up the cheapest bike they can find. Thus, the only opportunity to differentiate a particular bicycle or brand is putting it out in the mainstream, and creating demand. Again, Coasting (and the Trek Lime in particular), and the paid media placements in targeted non-cycling publications last summer, provides a great case study on the value of taking this approach to appealing to non-cyclists. What might the next step in end-user marketing be? I would propose that more deliberate targeting of particular customer populations is necessary. The vast sea of non-cyclists are not a homogeneous population. My retired parents, my early-thirties city-dwelling friends, and Larry the Cable Guy are all non-cyclists. They don't read the same magazines, don't go to the same websites, and don't have the same tastes ("git 'r done!"). Should any of them decide to pick up a bike and start riding, each would probably be compelled to do so for different reasons, and would be attracted to different bikes or brands.

In this brave new world of bicycle development, we have done some research into our customer's tastes, and designed bicycles that will appeal to groups of non-cyclists. Maybe those groups are defined by demographics, or psychographics, or whatever. It is logical to then follow through, and target the marketing to particular groups.

Further, this marketing must go beyond the simple tactics described earlier. Marketing particular bicycles to particular groups must involve the dealer network, who would carry out and reinforce the targeted tactics on a local level, tailor their staffing and sales training to effectively carry out the marketing messages, and be allowed to choose to stock or not stock line items that do not appeal to their customer base.

The bike industry has done a great job of designing particular bicycles for every conceivable use. BikesnobNYC says this has gone overboard. And folks within the industry are starting to agree (scroll to bottom). But somewhere within the lineup, line items need to be devoted to appealing to tastes of large populations, rather than focusing on every possible whim of small ones.

Too corporate? Too cynical? Too much marketing mumbo-jumbo? Well, bypass the next post, when we'll discuss branding, and... I dunno, go take a refresher course on the Sheldon Brown gospel. And remember that this discussion is meant to just address how to appeal to the 170 million people in the US who could bike, but do so rarely or never. Developing, marketing, and selling the cool bikes the 13 million of us enjoy today can and should continue and thrive. But it shouldn't be to the exclusion of everybody else.

A Bike Industry To-Do List #3 (Talk to Your Targets)

Note: This is the third in an ignorant eight-part suggestion of some measures the bike brands could take to better appeal to the majority of Americans, who have little or no interest in cycling.

Part 1 described the situation, the challenges, and some important caveats.

Part 2 examined the importance of cosmetics, and our lack of visual differentiation.

In this part, we will discuss approaches to designing bikes with broader appeal.

In the last installment, I tried to demonstrate how appearances matter, and how scarily undifferentiated the bicycles we sell in bicycle stores are from the ones available at the Jumbo Mart. These effects are amplified among the folks we are talking about, the vast crowds of Americans who aren't cyclists. So, how do we lend some zazz to our products? What will get these people buzzing about our bikes? Ask them what they like.

Oh, market research, blech. Lock a 15-person cross-section of America in a one-way mirror room, all anxiously awaiting $25 and free Subway sandwiches, and show them some paint chips. That will solve everything, right?

Well, what are we doing now, and how well is it working? We design and sell bicycles that we (those who have opted into a cycling lifestyle) think are wicked awesome. And the net result is a bunch of bikes that we really like. But in general, we're a different sort of crowd. Demographically, behaviorally, politically, we don't always resemble the rest of the country.

If we want to invite everybody else to join our little crowd, perhaps it is time to step a little bit further outside of our comfort zone, and thus open ourselves up to some new ideas. And by 'new ideas,' I mean ideas that we might offensive to our notions of what makes a good bicycle, or what we think a new cyclists should want or need. The cautionary tale for us should be the longstanding reticence of automakers to install good cupholders in our cars.

Research by the bike brands only seems to target their own dealers, as far as I can tell. This is just fine for the enthusiast bikes, those existing segments of the market that we all club ourselves silly fighting over. And it is great that they ask us what dealers think, it is flattering. It allows us to relay what our customers are saying, though that input is obviously getting filtered. And pride probably makes us better salespeople, if we are selling products we had a small hand in developing.

But the result is a series of FUBU bicycles -- for us, by us. Few of us know a lot about people who don't bike. We don't know what they think is cool, we don't know what scares them, we don't know what is keeping them off a bike, we don't know what will make them feel comfortable. And these points are proven by where we find ourselves, fighting over a shrinking market, in market conditions where our sales should be skyrocketing.

A Bike Industry To-Do List #2 (Looks Matter)

Note: This is the second in an ignorant eight-part suggestion of some measures the bike brands could take to better appeal to the majority of Americans, who have little or no interest in cycling.

Part 1 described the situation, the challenges, and some important caveats.
In this part, we will examine cosmetics and visual differentiation.

If you've ever browsed the listings at match.com (and yes, you have, quit lying), there were probably quite a few perfectly dateworthy men or women you passed over in 7 milliseconds. Entirely because of appearances, of course.

Is it any different with bicycles? Yes. But no.

Those of us who have been riding our bikes for a long time, whether for commuting, racing, touring, or whatever, probably take a good long look at a spec sheet, or take a good long test ride, when making our bicycle purchase. We think practically, because we know what works for us. Cosmetics still matter, but they face stiff competition from fit, features, and function.

When somebody comes into the store who is new to cycling, we tell them about the warrantees on our bikes. The quality and serviceability of the running gear. The relative merits of different frame materials and geometries. The luxury of having multiple sizes to choose from. But, for somebody who may still be in the "dabbling" phase of their cycling journey, is any of this compelling? Do they come through our door seeking these things, recognizing their merit?

I think style will hold greater sway over the novice cyclist's purchase decision. It hurts to say that. We want every new cyclist to immediately adopt our practical, utilitarian view of how to pick a bike. It validates our expertise, borne out of our many hours in the saddle. But a pretty face goes a long way, longer than we would prefer.

To test this crackpot notion, I sent the picture below to a bunch of friends and family who don't care a lick about bicycles, and have so demonstrated by making fun of my bike collection, and occasionally, my vocation. Two of these bicycles are sold in big-box discount retailers, retail in the $150-200 range, are only available in one size, are built by somebody wielding a plumber's wrench and a hammer, and feature the finest in craptacular breakomatic parts. One of these bicycles is sold in our shop, retails for over $350, features nice serviceable components, a frame warranty, is built up by a pro who builds safe bicycles for a living, and is available in a range of sizes.
I offered my guinea pigs a few options -- If they were throwing down for a bike like the three pictured this weekend, they could select one of these bikes based on what they see in the picture, or some other non-visual criteria they would find important ("the cheapest one", "best warranty", "most comfortable", "the one sold by my favorite local bike store," etc).

I got 24 responses. ALL (100%) made selections based on aesthetics. Commence attacking my research methodology, but I'm ready to conclude that style matters. A lot.

So, since I am concerned with getting people onto a correctly-fitted, reliable, quality bike-store bicycle that they will enjoy riding for years to come, did my sample end up on the "right" bike? Well, 17 out of 24 (71%, eek!!!) liked Bike #1, the one all the way on the left. And you guessed it, Bike #1 is sold in a big box retailer whose name rhymes with Malwart, and was the cheapest one of the three.

That's a huge problem for the bike store, and the bike brands who produce our offerings. If we want to appeal to non-cyclists, this little experiment convinced me that we have to do it with a greater helping of style. We shouldn't dispense with all those practical things that make a bike-store bike the best option. But we'd better start recognizing that while some will pay twice as much (and more) for all those necessary things on a cosmetically-similar (or cosmetically-deficient, if you believe my 24 jurors) bicycle, there are a bunch more that will look at some pictures online, see our visually-undifferentiated bike, and never come in our shop doors to listen to our compelling and rational argument.

People will even pay a premium for style. And pretty needn't cost a lot more than homely. So, I vote for pretty. But, what is pretty? We'll hash through that in the next installment.

A Bike Industry To-Do List #1 (Intro)

Within the walled city of the bike industry, the term "industry veteran" precedes the name of every person with a hand on a lever. It is a term of endearment, and after a scant three years here at the shop, I haven't earned it. I'm still an industry outsider, and I'm on my way back out. So, no better time to tell the industry how I think it could improve, right?

Anyway, here's the backdrop. In the past few years, the industry veteranati have come around to the hard truth that our little corner of the world (bicycle retail manufacturers selling through independent bicycle dealers) is eating it's own tail. Besides our steady/falling sales, and sharp declines in the number of bike storefronts, a big call-to-action was the market research project undertaken by Shimano for their Coasting project. That research told the sad tale that very few Americans were cycling even occasionally, and laid out many of the reasons that people just are not interested.

A further study, commissioned by the BPSA, described how the industry has focused too hard on the enthusiast cycling culture, which makes up a ridiculously small proportion of the total US population. We spend most of our resources clubbing each other trying to bag a bigger share of the static population of longtime hardcore enthusiast cyclists, who are also the most apt to go online to do their bike shopping.

The flipside of this is the opportunity, especially amid our obesity epidemic and the rising cost of energy, to take a fresh approach to the business of bicycle retail, and put a whole lot of new people on bicycles. A lot of folks are taking the message to heart, even within the industry Cosa Nostra, and are committed to knocking down some of the barriers that turn away the casual or potential cyclists.

IMPORTANT qualifier -- One of the most compelling barriers cited in these studies was the shoddy in-store experience. Bicycle shops are considered intimidating places, full of unfamiliar merchandise and sullen unwelcoming employees. I'm not going to delve into this aspect, because it's both obvious, and well-covered. Every bikeshop who is serious about this new mission knows what they need to do. City Bikes decided a few years ago that creating a more welcoming instore experience was a necessity, and while there's still a lot of ground to cover, hopefully progress has been made, and real action is definitely underway.

But what if a whole bunch of bikeshops embrace this challenge, like the folks at Bike Gallery in Portland, Oregon have? They invest in signage, they train on customer service, they hire employees who smile, they stress a welcoming inclusive atmosphere. What if they do all that, the customers come beating down the doors, and what they get from the bike brands to sell are the same bikes we sell now, at the same price, same conditions, same everything?

I see a lot of product coming down the pike that strives for this broad appeal. And I see a lot of marketing and PR muscle being applied to the chore at hand. But I wonder how much of this represents real structural change in the industry, and how much is bringing to bear the same old approaches to pursuing new market niches?

So, in the next seven (7!) subsequent installments of excruciating insider bore-fodder, I will suggest some ways that the industry -- or at least those in the industry serious about broadening their appeal -- can approach this new mission. I am truly sorry to any/all regular readers, as this blog was conceived to get people excited about cycling. This business-case dissection of the industry will probably read like a cue-sheet to Sleepyland. But I'll try to sprinkle in some lighter fare from time to time.

Credit where credit is due -- many of my opinions on this were formed (consciously or unconsciously) by talking to Jay Townley and Elliot Gluskin of the appropriately-named Gluskin-Townley Group. Ironic that a true industry veteran like Jay has very much been the canary in the mineshaft on this whole situation. More clarity came through a rather intense email brainstorming session with our ex-merchandise guy Mike. He was approached by one of our vendors, who (motivated by our falling orders, of course) wanted to know what they could do better. Rather than providing the usual feedback ("deliver faster," "better availability data," "bigger margins"), we started reeling off all the big things that any and every bike brand could undertake to better align with our desire to broaden the appeal of cycling.

So, with all due apologies and qualifiers out of the way, I'll start later today by looking at the products themselves....