The Business Power of Beginner Bike Rides

How bread-and-butter rides and events can sell more bikes, capture new customers and elevate your shop.

Running a bike shop is controlled chaos – serving customers, stocking sales floors, service appointments, managing staff, marketing and and everything else retail needs to survive devours your time as a shop owner or manager. We all know we should do group rides, but they often fall by the wayside because in the moment priorities are overwhelming. Regardless of whether you rely on staff or volunteer ambassadors to lead rides, these events often tend to be geared toward enthusiasts. The longer miles and more technical routes are probably more fun for your employees or club leaders, but you may be missing adding sales to your till by not running regular beginner group rides.

We visited Global Bikes in Phoenix to learn how they're secrets to success with progressive rides and events. Here's a quick recap:

Organizing beginner group rides doesn’t have to be laborious or stressful. If your shop doesn’t already do group rides that are tailored to newer bikers, no worries. We’ll provide you with the reasons to do C+D group rides, best practices, templates, and more to help you engage new customers and sell more bikes. If you’ve cracked the code of utilizing events like these you can quit reading, grab a coffee and keep doing what you’re doing. Just kidding - stick with us and you’ll pick up new tips and tricks to make these events more profitable, easier, and fun for your staff.

The benefits of organizing rides geared to beginners include:

1. The profit margin is better on beginners – they need all the gear: bike, helmet, shoes, socks, shorts, jerseys, water bottles, service, you name it.

2. Expanding your customer base and selling to new faces.

3. Return on Investment – low investment high reward. For as little as 25 payroll hours, you can add tens of thousands of dollars in revenue over a 4-5 week span.

4. Keeps staff connected and engaged

5. Builds word of mouth and positive community marketing

We’ll be serving up the best practices of bike shops that manage successful beginner focused rides and events, provide you with the tools to follow in their lead, and help you develop methods to see the return on your investment. Brandee Lepak of Global Bikes in Arizona sees up to $30,000 in extra sales when they run their Beginner to Expert Saturday Training (BEST) ride, staffed fully by her employees. The BEST example is the first we’ll cover, and principles here can be applied to any of the other types of beginner rides.

Part 1: Couch to Metric Century – What is it?

Part 2: Couch to Metric Century — Best practices and mechanics of organizing

Part 3: Couch to Metric Century — Using Ride Spot to plan and track your event

Part 4: Couch to Metric Century — Executing the first group ride

Part 5: Couch to Metric Century — Tracking metrics and keeping the momentum rolling

#ClassicRoutes #Events #BeginnerGroupRides