I recently had the pleasure to sit down and spend some time talking with Dave Guettler, owner and founder of one of my favorite bicycle retailers in the country: River City Bicycles in Portland, OR. The full interview appears below and has some great takeaways for any retailer.
A huge thanks to Dave for giving generously of his time!
Winged Wheel: Can you give an overview of River City Bicycles for anyone who has not had the pleasure of seeing your store in person? Dave Guettler: River City Bicycles has been in business for 22 years. Same location the whole time, which is a high profile spot on a busy street. About 70,000 cars per day go by. It’s a free standing building with parking that has good accessibility and is centrally located in Portland. I came from a multi-store operation in the bay area. Portland was much smaller at the time and a single, large store in center of the city seemed to be an effective way to execute on the destination concept I had in mind. We’ve grown since, adding another location about two blocks away.
WW: Tell me more about that second location: DG: It’s worked well for us because efforts aren’t duplicated there. Originally, it was just an outlet store to take advantage of closeouts and deals w/in industry. We opened it around 2008 when economy was tough. The goal was to broaden what we do without diluting what we do…to complement the River City Bicycles offerings. It has continued to be that, though it does more than just closeouts now.
WW: Where do you feel bullish for the future? DG: The market is changing, the way people buy is changing and we’re transitioning, too. What they’re buying is changing too and e-bikes are a good example. We now have high-rises in our neighborhood with five to seven stories of condos above retail on the ground floor. That’s affecting our clientele and also the services we offer. We do lots of rentals (which we never did before) and e-bikes are coming up strong for us. That outlet location is changing as well, with more in-season product, rentals and e-bikes there. Plus a Surly “concept store” in that location. The closeouts worked to some extent, but that has leveled off for us. We tried doing e-bikes at the original RCB location, but we couldn’t do effectively—too much to change and still preserve the store’s function. E-bikes are tough! You’ve got extra space, extra weight, plus the challenges in maneuvering them, charging them and all that. These are all needs that current store didn’t handle easily. What is cool is that people are approaching e-bikes as viable alternative to an automobile. They make sense for the terrain in Portland, you can come into the city from Beaverton or another suburb over the western hills and not be sweaty and nasty when you get into the office.
WW: Would you elaborate on Surly concept store? DG: Sure. Our Surly numbers are pretty strong—we were the #1 in world a few years back. Got a bottle of whisky and a care package from them which was kind of awesome! For a long time, Surly was a ‘we-also-have’ type of thing. It wasn’t marketed or promoted. We would keep some unique models in stock and, while you can get them anywhere, so few people had a full size run in stock that we built momentum. As you know, if you have it in stock, you’ll sell it. They don’t fluctuate prices/models much, so they can hold their value. They might change color here and there, but that’s about it. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the bikes, but that doesn’t matter. They have models that are well thought out and do great for our customers so we kind of fell into the Surly concept store.
WW: What else helped you fall into that? DG: They’re popular with our staff and customers, we built inventory respective to sales. I think one year they had some closeouts that we hopped on. Either way, the staff were passionate and educated. The service guys buy them, they build confidence in the product and speak highly of them. Then sales guys feel good about the product and the story.
WW: When you look at the future of your service department, what do you see? DG: The hardest part is keeping up with demand for service in-season. It’s really tough. We don’t have room to store and no-one wants to leave their bike for extended period of time. So we’ve set our service area up to do as many ‘on-the-spot’ services as possible. We always want to deliver what the customer asks for. But that means a big investment in replacement parts, and working hard to anticipate needs. Then, you have to be sure to have staff who are knowledgeable enough in service capacity to get the service right the first time. Plus the ability special order quickly and effectively. You have to set up systems that don’t let things don’t slip through cracks, otherwise you wind up with egg on your face.
WW: Many retailers struggle when it comes to finding staff. How do you keep up in that regard? DG: I’ve always believed the same kinds of things that attract customers will attract staff. If you have positive, supportive atmosphere and you set your business up for great service, then staff will love it as much as customers. We don’t head-hunt and we don’t advertise for staff.
WW: How are you handling your teams, finding great people and retaining them? Is it a specific regimen? Is it organic? DG: We really don’t have lots of turnover and we tend to promote from within. I have a firm belief in adapting to situation and figuring it out. When I encounter something unusual, I may not know how to address it today, but I’ll try to figure it out. I encourage that in my staff, because if you keep trying, then sooner or later you’ll get better! Very few bike industry folks get proper management training. Man, when I got my first management job, I didn’t know shit about shit! But I kept at it, and I got better. I figured out how to communicate better, what styles landed with my team and I would get better each time. Now there are many places that do management training options that are bike specific and it’s great. There is common sense involved, but the real key is to learn from your mistakes and try to do it different next time.
WW: When it comes to serving your customers, what did you do this season that you’re proud of? DG: I think we have finally committed to e-bikes. This is our 4th or 5th time trying it! That commitment has helped a lot, it’s a full category commitment from us: purchasing, service, customer communication. That completeness is critical—clothing, mountain bikes, any category. Commitment is big, you want to do it as well or better than anyone else. It’s an investment. The service set-up for e-bikes—stands that can lift the extra weight, the special tools, training, even just finding the channels for communicating with suppliers. Plus purchasing: you have to pick your products in way that you have a good chance of success. When you get the high-quality and then the confidence of the staff is built. Cheap stuff can erode that confidence. On the other hand, it has to be an obtainable category and it has to be balanced.
WW: Talk to me about engaging your community. What has (or hasn’t) worked for you? DG: I’m a big fan of marketing. I love it. But it’s something that our industry struggles with. Which is unfortunate, because it should be easy! On an emotional level, bicycles have so much working in our favor, but the suppliers often fall flat when marketing to the masses. That top 1-5% is taken care of, but the rest of it has been tough for suppliers. Here’s a fun story. I work the sales floor on Saturdays. I had customer who I greeted, a young lady with special needs child. They were interested in a tandem. I got our flat-bar, easy to ride tandem down, set it up and before the kid even made it across the street, he’s yelling “I’m doing it! I’m riding a bike!” It was just fantastic to see the joy. So I made a FaceBook post about it. And it was the most liked and shared post we’ve had! I think the Facebook post had some like 1100 likes and shares, etc. Plus it was the weekend of the Vegas shooting…so the timing of something people could feel good about was nice.
WW: What’s the ‘one thing’ that you are aiming for this off-season to prepare for 2018? DG: Staff Training. Erik from Erik’s was talking about graph that he keeps with all of the staff’s names. At that time, it was about 150 people, and that graph had all of the staff, plus all these training bits about what they had learned or hadn’t been trained on yet…and he could track it! I always thought that was great. It takes a lot of training to stay sharp. And not just for products, but also for internal stuff too.
WW: Any last thoughts you’d want other retailers to hear from you? DG: I would just say to keep it simple. The easiest way to run a successful business is to be there. There is no substitute for being on the floor, learning and listening. I always keep that as an open invitation to my suppliers. Come to RCB and work a day one summer weekend…you’ll learn a lot about your customers and your own product.
Thanks for reading and again, thanks to Dave at River City Bicycles for his time.