What makes your LBS tops?

I agree with the above...for me it's not about what the bike shop carries - it's about the competence and availability of good service. Focus on making anyone who walks through the door feel like their transaction is the most important and you will get return business. If you don't have what they want, and the customer has faith that you can order the item and are looking out for their best interest - they will go to you before another shop. At least I would.

Service, service, service.

Yep - service is king.  I had a broken spoke nipple that I noticed the week before a race this year.  It was broken in such a way that I could not get it off to replace it. Went to the LBS hoping to just get it removed.  Even though it looked like tremendously busy, one of the guys took my wheel to check it out.  He got my OK to cut the spoke to get the nipple off, then put a new spoke and nipple on.  While trueing the wheel, he noticed another cracked nipple, that he pointed out.  He ended up basically rebuilt and trued the wheel up, all for about $45-50 and an hour of time.  I would have been happy to just get the new spoke and nipple to replace myself (even though I would have spent at least twice as long to finish the job.  And I was more confident in his work than what I would have gotten done.

What you propose is an altruistic notion indeed, but not necessarily the route to a successful business. Stocking every item in every size for every purchase is a sure route to business failure. You lay out TONS of cash hoping that 6'7" guy comes in wanting a $3500 tri bike; not likely.

LBS are successful with the entry level market. The $500 Trek hybrid is what makes the profitable (stay open). Accessories and service are profit engines as well.

You might wish such a store existed, but it doesn't exist for good and souns business reasons. Sure some unobtainium is necessary in any shop, just go easy on it.

If you could open up within walking distance of my house that would be awesome.    I only care about customer service and competency.  I want to be able to bring my bike there even though I didn't buy it there and not get hassled.  Especially important in Tucson I would think.  If I was a business person though I am not sure I'd open here in Tucson.  Tough competition.

The owner and staff.

A very liberal saddle-return policy, and tester saddles.

What makes my shop the best is that they let me work as little as one weekend per quarter and still get an employee discount.

I know this won't help you any though.

awesome group rides

good bar or coffee shop nearby for post-rides

cute biking clothes

service with a smile

more than one line of bikes (i hate trek concept stores - not because i hate trek bikes but because i like many kinds of bikes!!)

so i have on LBS for item 1
luckily 2 miles away is an LBS with 2 - 5

Service and price are key. I live (a) in NY and (b) in a nice neighborhood in NY, so I’m used to a certain amount of price inflation, but there’s no need to charge an absurd amount of money for a tune-up simply because there are people who will pay it.

If I’m a regular customer, recognize me as such. I’m not looking for a freebie; a simple “Hey, welcome back,” or “Nice to see you again” goes a long way. If your staff can’t be bothered to remember who the regulars are, hire people who can.

If you sell gear with your own logo on it, how about selling it for slightly less than the cost of the equivalent gear with no logo? I get the cool Pear Izumi bike jersey for a good price, and you get free advertising—it’s win-win.

You don’t need to stock endless every conceivable price range for every item, but you should have at least two, and ideally three options for most common items (bottle cages, lights, computers, helmets). Nothing’s worse than going to buy a bottle cage and having to choose between the $70 carbon model and the $11 cheap aluminum one. Selection at my LBS is what will keep me off of Nashbar.com.

#1--CUSTOMER SERVICE.  Seriously, if you don't have that you have nothing.

If I was a shop owner I would want to have a mechanic able to drop what he's doing to help a walk in with any "short" service (defined as under a half hour).  Obviously need to leave the bike for the big stuff, tune-ups, etc.  But 75% of what I might need done could literally be done while I wait (and browse in the store!).  It would even be worth hiring a mechanic to work before/after normal shop hours to do the dropped off stuff to make up for the fact that they won't get as much done during the day while the shop is open.  Nothing makes me happier with an LBS then when they hook me up with the easy fixes.  Twice in the last month I've been able to walk into my LBS with my bike and have them help me out RIGHT THEN (the first time was to put the Zipp on my bike for IMFL and make sure it wasn't skipping and the second time was to take it back off and help me with my "horizontal dropout impairment").  Could they have told me to leave the bike and pick it up tomorrow?  Yep.  But that would have been silly, so they just did the fix on the spot.

I think another GREAT idea is to have bike mechanic classes.  Obviously the basics of changing a tire and stuff for the beginners, but why not another year-round class for the more serious stuff?  Have a class every two weeks on SOMETHING--tune-ups, changing out bottom brackets, etc..  And try to make each class stand independently so that people could join up any time of year.  And by the end of the year they could fix 75% of the problems that arise on their bike.  The "cost" could be as simple as requiring folks to buy one of the tools they need for that session from your shop.  You might lose a little repair income, but I guarantee even if you didn't require people to buy the tools they probably would so that they could wrench on their own bike.  And any time you have people coming to the shop regularly they are going to buy more stuff.

Those are the two biggest things I can think of.  Little nice things would be free coffee (keeps people hanging around), organized group rides...maybe sponsor a team/club, maybe a monthly social hour type thing, etc.

******Edited to add one more idea and I give the credit to my coach and a little to Yanti because reading her posts about saddle testing reminded me.  Have a bench setup with a bunch of different aerobar combinations and even some saddles...so that people can actually SIT on the saddles and put their arms in the aerobars!  I was trying to buy aerobars online and I would have given anything to be able to see the bars set up, do some measuring, and put my arms on them.  Really.  2x4 construction would be sufficient!  Just have them set up for people to TOUCH and SEE.

Edited by jldicarlo 2010-12-13 10:26 AM

I have to agree that you and your staff's attitude and and the way you handle customers is number one. But variety of inventory and ability to order different brands is nice too.

There is only one Cervelo dealer in Idaho so I had to go there to get my P2C. They are not bad by any means but I am not the biggest fan of them either. Their staff have a know it all attitude while also trying to dumb everything down to the simplest things to consider. "Oh that shoe will work fine, it is stiff and it comes in blue and yellow". I would rather look on my own than have someone follow me around and tell me nonsense like that but they seem to get offended when you don't want to talk to them. I took my dad in to get outfitted and they were peeved that I was trying to give him advice, same thing when I bought my wife's bike, I finally told them to get lost.

They do however have the largest inventory around so if you want to touch and try something out they are the place to go. However if you treated me better and where able to order me a Cervelo, I would buy it from you any day rather than those guys.