Want To Be A Bike Mechanic? You Might Want To Avoid This State.

People don't usually work in bike shops for the money, but this is ridiculous. Here are the highest and lowest paying states for bike mechanics. 

According to Salary.com the median annual salary for a bike technician in the United States is $22,337 (The website refers to bike technicians as "bicycle repairers". I know, it’s horrible.) Compare the bike technicians’ salary to $24,274, the median salary for someone who repairs shoes, $25,188 for janitors, or $29,962 for a groundskeeper or gardener. While I do not intend to demean those other professions I do want to point out that a bike technician’s skill set is just as varied, if not more so.

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When breaking down the median salary by state, California was the leader, followed by New York and New Jersey. Alabama, West Virginia, and Mississippi take the last three spots respectively. 

1. California: $26,983 (San Francisco)
2. New York: $26,045 (New York)
3. New Jersey: $25,509 (Trenton)
4. Alaska: $25,285 (Anchorage)
5. Hawaii: $24,548 (Honolulu)
6. Delaware: $24,436 (Wilmington)
7. Massachusetts: $24,392 (Boston)
8. Washington: $24,101 (Seattle)
9. Connecticut: $23,856 (Hartford)
10. New Hampshire: $23,565 (Nashua)
11. Illinois: $23,431 (Chicago)
12. Michigan: $23,409 (Ann Arbor)
13. Rhode Island: $23,186 (Providence)
14. Maryland: $23,074 (Baltimore)
15. Pennsylvania: $23,007 (Philadelphia)
16. Oregon: $22,828 (Portland)
17. Maine: $22,806 (Portland)
18. Ohio: $22,694 (Cleveland)
19. Louisiana: $22,627 (New Orleans)
20. Colorado: $22,381 (Boulder)
21. Minnesota: $22,337 (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
22. Virginia: $22,314 (Richmond)
23. Georgia: $22,158 (Atlanta)
24. Arizona: $22,158 (Phoenix)
25. Florida: $21,912 (Miami)
26. Nevada: $21,912 (Las Vegas)
27. Indiana: $21,823 (Indianapolis)
28. Missouri: $21,756 (Kansas City)
29. Texas: $21,644 (Austin)
30. Idaho: $21,622 (Boise)
31. Kansas: $21,510 (Wichita)
32. Vermont: $21,399 (Burlington)
33. Utah: $21,332 (Salt Lake City)
34. Kentucky: $21,265 (Lexington)
35. Iowa: $21,198 (Des Moines)
36. Oklahoma: $21,153 (Tulsa)
37. Nebraska: $20,907 (Omaha)
38. North Carolina: $20,863 (Fayetteville)
39. New Mexico: $20,684 (Albuquerque)
40. Wisconsin: $20,550 (Madison)
41. South Carolina: $20,527 (Columbia)
42. North Dakota: $20,103 (Bismarck)
43. South Dakota: $20,014 (Rapid City)
44. Tennessee: $19,924 (Chattanooga)
45. Arkansas: $19,880 (Little Rock)
46. Montana: $19,768 (Billings)
47. Wyoming: $19,701 (Casper)
48. Alabama: $19,634 (Montgomery)
49. West Virginia: $19,433 (Charleston)
50. Mississippi: $18,450 (Jackson)

The sample city I researched is in parenthesis.

Where do you stand on the list? Do these numbers seem right or is Salary.com way off the mark? 

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. If you found value in this piece would you please consider sharing it on social? Thanks again. Donny

Bike Shop's Customer Care Can Be Measured In Floor Pumps

I often find that the simplest metrics will tell me more about a bike retailer’s business than any profit and loss statement. Total sales and margins can provide an estimate of the overall health of a business, individual sales will tell me who the top performers are, and measuring turns will show which products are moving. Conversion rate will show the proportion of customers that purchase. However, none of these metrics will tell me if the retailer is doing right by their customer. Most people believe that the only way to do this is by conducting customer review surveys or by measuring impressions on social channels.  However, I can get a clear understand of how a bike retail business treats their customers simply by looking at some simple metrics.

I will preface that these metrics are based on some foundational assumptions, and where the true data geeks in the world may scoff at this, I have still found these metrics to be helpful and telling.

The Floor Pump Metric. The number of new bikes sold compared to the number of floor pumps sold. There is a collection of bike models that are almost always sold to people who are buying their first bike in a very long time. Some of the bikes in this category are kids bikes, adult bikes under $1000, flat bar road bikes, base model mountain bikes, and comfort or hybrid bikes. For these new bike buyers chances are very good they need some basic instruction on the maintenance and operation of the bike. They will have to be taught how to shift, how to lube their chain, and how to inflate their tires. If the person working on the retail floor didn't take the time to show them how to use a floor pump to inflate their tires, then chances are really good that 3-5 days later this person will be riding on tires that are near flat. Control will be compromised and they will be susceptible to a pinch flat.

How many of these bikes were sold? Compare that to the number of floor pumps sold. If there a discrepancy it is likely the customers were set up for a horrible cycling experience.

Tune Ups To Bike Sales. How many bikes sold in a year compared to the number of bikes return for a tune-up in the next year.  Many will agree that a bicycle should have at least one tune up every year. This tune-up will help keep the bike shifting and braking properly plus will give the technician the chance to replace a tire before it becomes too worn to ride safely. If we can agree that a bike should have a minimum of one tune up a year then comparing bike sales to tune up sales will be a sign of how often people who buy from the store and return for service.

If a retailer sold one thousand bikes in 2011, we should see one thousand tune ups in 2012. Ideally more because they’re capturing some new market from competitors. If they sold another thousand bike in 2012, then they should see 2000 tune ups in 2013. Since a tune up is a recurring service it is easy to see how a bike retailer that has been open for 5-10 years should be doing far more services than the number of bikes they are selling.

In 2012 I tested this assumption with 25 retailers in the US and asked them to give me the number of bikes they sold and the number of services that they would classify to have needed annual service. The result was a dismal 4/10. For every bike sold they were seeing only 40% of them return for a tune-up.

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. If you found value in this piece would you please consider sharing it on social? Thanks again. Donny

Could Google Succeed At Running A Bike Shop?

I’m a big fan of heist movies, and one of my favorite heist movies was from 2001 and appropriately named, Heist. It starred Gene Hackman, Danny Devito, and Delroy Lindo. The writing in Heist is worth any movie ticket price and one of the best lines comes from Hackman’s character after being asked how he solved a problem. Hackman said, “I tried to imagine a fella smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, ‘what would he do?’.” The line is playful and a bit silly but I’ve often referred to it when trying to predict an outcome or solve a problem I felt was beyond me.

When looking at the future of bike retail I pull the Hackman Heist line pretty quick. When trying to think of a person or business smarter than me I landed on one of the smartest companies operating today; Google. Then I ask myself, “How would Google run a bike shop?” Here is my conclusion.

1. Relevance rules. Whenever you use Google your results, docs, and mail are all relevant to you. You are the center of the Google universe and everyone who interacts with Google feels the exact same way. If Google ran a bike shop the customer would be at the absolute center of everything and every experience in the store would revolve around the customer experience.

2. Keep it simple. Google has been known for one of the cleanest and most minimal home pages on the web. When Yahoo and AOL were in their heyday they were covered in stories, links, and photos. Google came in and changed the game with a simple and clean format focused on one goal, search. In 2008 Marissa Mayer wrote a blog asking the question, “What comes next in the series? 13, 33, 53, 61, 37, 28…?” She was referring to the number of words on the Google homepage and their constant strive to make it fewer and fewer. In Google’s hypothetical bike shop they would have a very focused offering, dedicating their time and energy to what they do best. If Google saw themselves as the bike shop for mountain bikers, there would be nothing that didn’t relate to mountain bikes.

3. Test everything. Google exhaustively tests everything they put online. Product teams, service teams, and engineers are all committed to testing and recording the their findings. No software application makes it to the customer without a thorough vetting internally. In a Google bike shop this mentality for testing would carry through to the product selection, merchandising, pricing, and services offered. Nothing would make it to the customer without a strict testing process first.

4. Track everything. When you perform a Google search for “Books by Donny Perry” Google will record your preferences and remember your search. Next time you pluck away the word “Books” you will see you past search for books that I’ve written. This would work in their bike shop as well. Google would keep detailed data on their customers in hopes to help them predict their needs in the future. When someone at a Google bike shop buys a tire, Google would know when the tire needs to be replaced.

5. Competition is broader than you think. Google’s competition includes Bing, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and even Adobe. But their competition goes even further than that, Google is also competing with AT&T for directory assistance, Kodak for photo sharing, and much more. Google would recognize that competition for a bike shop is more than other bike shops and online retailers. A bike shop’s competition will encompass any business or activity that can take the attention of potential customers. It may not appear as immediate competition but a bike shop is at odds against the yoga studio, the movie theater, and even staying at home and reading a book.

6. Future-Proofing. Google deeply understands the three Vs of data: velocity, volume, and variety. Velocity is a measure of how fast the data comes in, volume measures how much data, and variety is a metric gauging how many different sources this data comes from. To demonstrate how well they understand these three metrics, a search for “Bike Shop” yields over 200 million results in less than a half second. But Google a step further and adds two more Vs to the equation: viability and value. Nearly any bike shop can tell you the velocity, volume, and variety of their business but very few will be able to tell you the viability and value. Google’s bike shop would demonstrate great viability by showing the potential for positive growth in the community and value by being one step ahead of their customers in predicting their needs.

Google has built a great framework to their business and there are many more businesses like them. All with an idea, strategy, and execution we can learn from. We just have to think about someone smarter than us and ask, “What would they do?”

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. If you found value in this piece would you please consider sharing it on social? Thanks again. Donny