Why (I Think) We Were Voted #1 Bike Shop in Nashville
Every year the Nashville Scene, a local publication, prints their “Best of Nashville” issue where readers vote for their favorite businesses in categories ranging from “Best Pet Sitter” to “Best Chicken On A Stick”. Historically the bike shop where I work either hasn’t made the cut at all or places 2nd or 3rd in the “Best Bike Shop” category. I haven’t been around too long to know all the juicy details, but from what I’ve gathered the shop has a storied past full of the usual suspects found in your typical bike shop, which may have something to do with our past rankings. However I don’t believe the store’s past shortcomings are unique to our business. I’d even venture to say the reasons we’ve lost in the past are more indicative of widespread issues in the bike industry as a whole. That’s not to say every bike shop has fallen victim to the same perils, but I’ve been into quite a few and they mostly all seem about the same. This year however, we were able to eek out out a victory in the number one spot (without any election fraud that I’m aware of) and I think I have some insight as to why.
I was hired into the bike shop during a rather tumultuous time. We were in the middle of the busy season and half of our staff, myself included, were very inexperienced. The other half, the ones who knew what they were doing, we’d later find out didn’t have plans to stick around much longer. Our bike shop is part of a larger outdoor retailer, and there was a rather tense disconnect between us and the rest of the store. Our owner would later admit to me that he didn’t even like the bike shop and would usually avoid the department all together. It was a bit like the wild west, and every Indian was chief of his own tribe of one. The lone mechanic was in a world all his own and would scoff at fellow employees for their perceived ineptitude. He was one of the best mechanics in town, knew it, and wasn’t afraid to let you know it either. The rest of us were stuck somewhere between sales and service with no real training in either. We’d often bumble about with simple tasks and call our competence into question. The shop also had a propensity for chewing up managers and spitting them out. We’d been through nearly five of them in as many years, each with their own ideas and the best intentions, and each leaving their mark, for better or worse, on the landscape of the shop. Perhaps worst of all, our shop had no identity; no je ne sais quoi so to speak. It was clear that somewhere in our 50 year history, we had lost our way. To outsiders we looked like any other bike shop, but under the surface was a mess that no one seemed to want to clean up. Let me back up a step though.
I came from a background in woodworking and owned my own business for a number of years in South Carolina. After moving to Tennessee though I needed to find work and was ready for a change of pace, so I applied at the bike shop as a stopgap till I could find what I thought was “more meaningful” work as a photographer. I didn’t really consider bikes to be a viable career path at the time, but had an interest in them and did ride one from time to time, and I thought it would be a fun way to make a little money on the side. Little did I know that this industry would consume me.
The first few weeks of employment were trial by fire. I did more harm than good it seemed and I quickly learned that although bikes are relatively simple machines, it’s easy to screw them up. I was trying my best but our head mechanic had little patience for my constant barrage of questions. Oddly enough, within two weeks of my arrival, he had put in his two weeks notice, although I don’t think they were related… I don’t think. Never the less, the shop had problems. We constantly had bikes coming back into the shop after repair because something was missed, or we had failed to remove the object that caused the flat tire before changing the tube and all manner of simple oversights like that. Bad reviews were coming in on the regular and it seemed that no one had control of the situation. Then the big bomb dropped, our manager, the one who had hired me, was leaving. He said that it was for a better paying job in the corporate world, which I’m sure is true, but deep down I know the job wore him down. After much effort to reign in the troops to no avail, he had just had enough.
The departure of yet another manager left a vacuum that our owner was hesitant to fill, and who could blame him. Given his disdain for the bike shop and the turmoil within the department, he could have just shut it down, but bikes made up a significant percentage of the store’s revenue. The path forward was unclear and us guys in the shop were starting to lose faith that the situation would get resolved at all. I had put my name in the hat for the management position early on. I didn’t know if I really wanted the job, but I needed the extra income. My experience with bikes was lacking, but I was picking it up quickly and figured my experience running my own business couldn’t hurt. After several weeks of deliberation between the owner and his partners, they begrudgingly offered me the job. To this day I believe it was more of a lack of options than a sincere desire to have me at the helm. But in their eyes I guess it couldn’t get much worse and they might even get lucky with a guy that wasn’t already jaded from years in the bike industry.
The first couple of months were rough. The guys that I was once in the trenches with had a hard time accepting me as the new boss, and had little faith that I could turn the ship around. Even I had little faith and would often come home at night lamenting to my wife that I had no idea what I was doing. But the shop continued to press on, and we started making small changes that sure enough led to improvement in sales, service and moral. Just as I was starting to feel good about our trajectory, BANG, the biggest bomb of them all, COVID-19. Almost overnight all of our staff was laid off and it was just the owner and myself trying to finagle something that resembles curbside service. Everything was reduced back to zero, which in a lot of ways ended up being a blessing.
There was a lot of baggage and bad habits that had accumulated in the bike shop over the years that kept getting passed down to each new employee. I fought diligently to erase these things but Covid did it for me in one fell swoop. Suddenly the bike shop was empty, devoid of all past transgressions, and I had the unprecedented (yes, I used that word) opportunity to start from scratch and make the shop something new. All but one of the bike shop employees took the pandemic as their cue to leave permanently, so now I had to find an all new staff as the store began to reopen after the shut down. First I recruited a solid employee from another department in the store. Then, being in Nashville, a lot of music industry guys were out of work and three of them ended up joining the team. As the new crew all got to know each other I was honest about where the shop had been and where I wanted it to go. We all began to gel and the new and improved bike shop was coming together with the addition of several stand up guys who were willing and able to put in the work to make the shop great. Even the owner said that for the first time in his 15 year tenure, '“there’s not a single person in the bike shop that I don’t like”.
As we gained momentum as a new shop, customers started to take notice. The reviews were getting better and the tip jar was filling up. Customers were receiving better service than ever, and were making sure to let us know. Shop morale was at an all time high and the rest of the store took notice. By making small but notable changes to our policies and procedures and using a little common sense and decency, we were seeing major results. Looking back I don’t believe we were doing anything groundbreaking at all, but by implementing a few guiding principles, some spoken and some assumed, the entire landscape of our shop had changed. Sure, we were making mistakes on a daily basis and do to this day, but they became less frequent and were handled better.
When writing this article I knew it would be easier to break this down into some sort of top five list. This list isn’t exhaustive, it’s not posted on the wall of our shop or anything, and the principles aren’t something that we even really verbalize, though maybe they should be. But everyone just kinda understands that this how we run our shop. It’s part of our culture. And a lot of that comes from hiring quality people and making sure they want to stick around. Without further ado, here are the top five reasons (I think) we were voted #1 bike shop in Nashville for 2020:
Just be Nice. Seems like a simple thing, but you’d be surprised how often it gets overlooked. Just the simple act of greeting someone kindly and treating them with respect will often put you ahead of the crowd. Bike shops can tend to have an elitist attitude towards customers who don’t look the part of a cyclist or who own bikes purchased from department stores, among other cardinal sins. I’ve lost count of the stories I’ve been told by customers who were treated poorly at other shops. We’ve gained many lifelong customers just by being nice and respectful. And that goes for the bike too! Never, ever speak ill of someone’s bike or treat it disrespectfully! You don’t know if it was found in a dumpster or passed down by a dear relative. Always assume the latter. Always be nice.
Always Tell the Truth. We all screw up, often in fact, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is lying to people about it and/or making someone else look bad (i.e. fellow employees) to cover your own butt. Most of the time the one on the receiving end will see right through the lies and the one you threw under the bus will find out, and the results usually aren’t pretty. Remember, the truth will set you free. I’ve made it a personal mission of mine to always be honest with customers when I’ve messed up. True, it’s much easier to lie, but usually one lie leads to another, and then another. We all know this. What I’ve found though is that most people are very forgiving and even appreciative of the honesty. We live in a world where the bar for customer satisfaction has been set very low, and a few tweaks to your tactics can bring overwhelming results. So just tell the truth, apologize, and do better next time. You’ll be glad you did and you may even sleep better at night.
Over Communicate and Over Deliver. I was recently on the receiving end of poor communication with a company who had one of my cameras in their possession for repair. To no fault of their own, they had to keep my camera for much longer than anticipated because of backordered parts (something all too common in the bike industry now because of Covid-19). This wasn’t a problem except that they didn’t proactively communicate with me about the delays, but instead waited for me to call them, already fuming and wondering what was going on. The experience taught me the importance of communication when you have someone else’s valued possessions in your care. It taught me to always communicate with my customers when there is a delay in their service. When someone comes into your store for service, always be generous in the time you think it will take, because inevitably something will happen and it will always take longer than expected. If you think it will take one week, tell them two and surprise them when you get it done early. And for heaven’s sake let them know if a delay comes up! Always over communicate and over deliver.
Give Away the Small Stuff. Everyone loves a good win during their day, and what better way to win than to get something for free, no strings attached. We often get customers in our shop looking for random small parts, nuts and bolts, used parts and all manner of other items we have laying around in droves that cost us a little bit of nothing. And while the logical action might be to charge for these items, why not give them away? The cost to you is very little, if anything, but the value of the experience to the customer is often immeasurable. The worst thing you can do is nickel and dime someone to death over the small stuff. But giving a little away is a great way to give your customer a win and guarantee that they’ll come back to you when they need that bigger item. Always give away the small stuff.
Always Wash the Bike. When a customer brings in their bike for service, they expect to get it back with its ailments resolved. But the thing they usually get excited about is seeing their once dingy old bike looking like new again. Washing the bike is a simple and easy way to drastically improve your customer’s experience and add value to your service, and in some cases, the bike. It cost nothing but a few minutes of your time, some soap and water, and maybe some elbow grease for the worst offenders. We wash almost every bike that comes though our shop, and we always get comments like, “It’s never looked so good!” or “Its like a new bike!”. So always wash the bike. Your customers will love you for it.
These things may seem trivial, and even like something called common sense, but they really make the difference. You can cover a lot of sins with a little courtesy and honesty. Just do what you say you’re going to do, and don’t be afraid to add some sprinkles on top. I’ll be the first to admit that in a lot of ways we are NOT the best bike shop in Nashville. We’re not the most experienced, we don’t have the most elite mechanics and we don’t even have the most knowledge about bikes. But we have what matters; great employees who care, and we’re freaking nice to people and treat them with respect. And you’re always sure to leave with your bike cleaner than it came in. My sincere hope is that all bike shops would strive to be better. Even the ones that are already great should strive to be better. Never settle for the status quo. Bikes are a wonderful thing that bring people together and set people free, and we could all stand to see more togetherness and freedom in the world.