Pic: BruceTurner
We’ve written here before about how smart retailers can move beyond price-driven retail and become community hubs. In doing so they market themselves, diversify their revenue streams, improve market share, keep their fingers on the pulse and have a helluva lot of fun in the process.
Based in Austin TX, Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop is Lance Armstrong’s spot. Calling it a bike shop doesn’t really cover it though.
More than a retail box, Lance and his friends aim to make the shop a hub of cycling life, commuting, social activity, fitness, and a temple of two-wheeled living….To serve the bike community is our job, but to convert people to a bike life is our mission.
In practice that means a retail store, a coffee shop, storage lockers for biking commuters, a regular schedule of events and classes on everything from maintenance to traffic skills, a “state of the art training and testing facility led by 6-Time Tour de France rider Kevin Livingston” and even something of an art gallery downstairs, housing photographic exhibitions.
This is retail as shopping destination, service provider, educational organisation, community hub and general fun place to hang out. It’s a movement.
How could you create this same kind of effect in your industry and scaled to your local market?
Site: mellowjohnnys.com
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