Latest / Spokes & Strategy: Marketing the Bicycle / EP 13: Where Service Gets Rebuilt
Transcript
- Brandon Morphew AI: Welcome to Spokes and Strategy, Marketing the Bicycle with Brandon Morphew and Chris Melman of MISO Partners. Brandon Morphew: Welcome back to Spokes and Strategy, the business of bikes and joy of riding. Today's guest made a move that a lot of shops think about and almost nobody actually commits to. They stopped taking service appointments intentionally and replaced it with a fast upfront assessment so customers know when they're leaving the store exactly what works getting done, what it'll cost, and when they'll get their bite back. And the wild part is labor didn't dip. it actually grew. So we're gonna unpack how it works, what it fixes, what it breaks, and what you need in place if you ever wanna try it. I'm your host, Brandon Morphew, flying solo today. Chris might still be recovering from that Atlas race in Morocco. ⁓ Today I'm joined by Colin McKenna, GM and partner at Colonial Bicycle Company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Colin, good to have you on. Before we nerd out on service flows and ⁓ what's happening in the business. I'd love to talk about bikes and ⁓ joy, a quick little warmup. ⁓ What are you riding right Colin McKenna: Yeah. Well, first, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, right now, February of 2026, I'm not doing too much bike riding in New England. ⁓ But I'm you know, I've got two bikes that I really love right now. I'm riding a Trek Imanda aluminum, so ALR ⁓ that I built up with Dura-Ace. And it's just, you know, for me, it's just become just a that allows me to ride the road bike ⁓ And the aluminum definitely gives me that. little bit more visceral of a ride feel, lately has just been something I've been enjoying. So that bike is definitely one of my favorites right now. ⁓ But then in the fall, right before the winter, I picked up ⁓ a pivot switch blade that has just really blown me away. mean, that thing, it climbs just as well as it descends for being a, you know, an all mountain enduro bike and it pedals through everything. And if you don't want to think about it you just want to point and shoot, it does that as well. So That's been a lot of fun. looking forward. Once we get out of this winter and back into some proper riding conditions, I'm looking forward to taking that switchblade back out. So those are the two I'm bouncing between right now. Brandon Morphew: ⁓ I have a pivot myself. So ⁓ I have ⁓ the 429SL, the XC bike and I love it. And I'm a big Dave Weigel fan in general. love ⁓ split pivot, DW link. These are fantastic ⁓ suspension systems. Wonderful. ⁓ Yeah, it is. I agree. Yeah. So ⁓ let's say it's not. ⁓ Colin McKenna: Nice. Yeah. They ride really well. It's hard to argue with that. Yeah. Brandon Morphew: the middle of winter and there's not four feet of snow on the ground, imagine that scenario. ⁓ You have to send someone out on one ride in Portsmouth ⁓ to make them or help them to fall in love with bikes. Where are you sending them? Colin McKenna: I mean, I think the easy lever there is from Portsmouth, you head up ⁓ right around Newcastle Island and then ride down coastal route 1A, kind of through Rye Beach down into Hampton even. It's just such a, you know, from Newcastle all the way down to Hampton, that stretch is, it's pretty magical to be right along the ocean. ⁓ The views are nice. The air is nice. The landscape is nice. It's not a challenging ride. It's flat. but the road is winding, mean, you're right up against the ocean and just kind of being in that space is, it's pretty magical, you know, it's, that's the go-to around here. If there's one route to choose, that's the route I'm choosing for sure. Yeah. Brandon Morphew: Nice. Yeah, I agree with you and I think you could keep going up or down along that coast in either direction, up into Maine or down into Massachusetts and you're going to have an epic adventure. That's wonderful. Some of my favorite riding, right on. Okay, so let's rewind. Let's get back to ⁓ bikes and your childhood. ⁓ 13 years old, you do a 51 mile charity ride on a diamond back outlook, which I'm assuming is Colin McKenna: ⁓ yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Easily. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Brandon Morphew: Is a mountain bike? that a road bike? Yeah, mountain bike, right? Colin McKenna: Yeah, no, it's a mountain bike. So think of 26 inch. To be honest with you, it probably was an aluminum frame because I don't remember it being that heavy. ⁓ But 26 inch fully rigid, like the original gravel bike, if you will. ⁓ But it had knobby tires on it and probably Shimano 3x7 speed, whatever, Alivio, Torney. ⁓ That was the Brandon Morphew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Colin McKenna: That was the bike that started it all for sure. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, what did it unlock for you? Colin McKenna: I think it unlocked this. I think that was like the first time I probably had a real connection with what I would call like fitness. think it was, I think I was so young, I didn't really understand what fitness was or what being in shape really was. I was 13 years old, but I think what it created was a relationship with kind of pushing the body a little bit and also having some freedom and independence. And I think for me, you know, fast forward 20 some years later, That to me is really what endurance sport has become for me. Kind of this connection, this personal freedom combined with sort of a personal push. ⁓ And those two together kind of create something pretty magical, especially when you're out on a bike. The ability to push, but also the ability to be completely free. I think that was really what started it all. Brandon Morphew: know that feeling. Yeah, that's a major unlock. ⁓ I have several of those memories myself. So ⁓ you get a Trek 1000 2004. I had ⁓ that bike as well. ⁓ Maybe a little bit older, but in that range and ⁓ yeah, you get into racing. So ⁓ what do you think you learned? Colin McKenna: Yeah. Yes. Brandon Morphew: from racing that still kind of shows up in your day-to-day in the shop. Colin McKenna: I think the first thing I learned with racing a bike is it's not like running. ⁓ I had been a runner. when you're running, you go out and you know your pace and you set your pace and you hold your pace as long as you kind of possibly can. You can kind of flatline a little bit. But cycling is much more about recovery. And there's much more intelligence and there's much more ⁓ finesse and logistics and tactics and actually kind of doing the opposite. You kind of want to pedal as little as possible until you need to. And then you kind of go. And so when I think what that translates to me, of, whether it's in life or in work or anything like that, which is this need to be adaptable. think bike racing is one of these corners of the sport where you have to be flexible and you constantly have to read the room and you really, you can prepare for a race or you can prepare for an event by training, but ultimately the race is gonna unfold how the race unfolds, right? There's so many things in bike racing that are out of your control. And I think what that really instilled in me is this idea. of being flexible, being able to change, being able to adapt, rolling with the punches, but at the same time, of respecting that even if you train for something and you have really good fitness and really good form and really good numbers and you lose the race, that doesn't really define who you are. And so on that side of the thing, it's like, I think bike racing in a way also it's demonstrated to me that the result doesn't define the individual all the time. ⁓ You know, winning bike races, I think to this day, winning a bike race, any bike race, is one of the most difficult sporting endeavors, period, because the fastest guy doesn't always win. ⁓ And so I think for me, it's resilience, it's head on a swivel, it's being able to roll with the punches as they come in real time. I think that's what bike racing really, really taught me. Brandon Morphew: And do you, how does that show up in the shop? Like if you, is there something that you think about where it's like, that's a pretty clear, you know, either direct line or dotted line to that, you know, that sort of day-to-day activity. Colin McKenna: I think that retail, I'm sure bike retail isn't alone in this, there's an isolated in this, but I think retail in general is like bike racing in that you never know what the day is gonna bring. You don't know who's gonna show up. You don't know what problems, challenges are gonna happen. You don't know what supplier is gonna raise their prices, lower their prices, delay a shipment, change a product. There's so many unknowns, but. that doesn't stop us from preparing. We're still gonna prepare. We still have a plan. We still have a lot of internal dialogues about how to do things better. So we continue to plan, but at the same time, we don't look at individual day performance and go, ⁓ that defines us, right? No, it's bigger than that. It's how do we treat our customers and communities over longer periods of time? How do we make sure that the planning and preparation that we're doing is actually driving the business in the direction that we want to go? ⁓ And so again, it's thinking bigger picture, not being so narrow and not being so focused. I think that's the parallel between bike racing and bike retail. ⁓ Long-term success is predicated on having a process in place that manifests long-term success. And so if Tadej Pagache doesn't win the Tour de France this year, people are probably still going to consider him the best cyclist of all time. ⁓ And I think that's realized because he has a process and a recipe for success. Certainly you want to chalk up wins. ⁓ But again, I think you still have a plan. You still got to react day to day. ⁓ And one single event or result doesn't necessarily define anyone or anything or any retailer. Brandon Morphew: Agreed. Yeah, a good point. Process is really interesting. SOPs are really interesting to me, like having these standardized. I'm at a point in my career where I think I recognize, I've shot from the hip quite a bit and I recognize how impactful that can be to a business to have repeatable processes in place. That's a really good point. So you're in engineering, ⁓ Baltimore. ⁓ Colin McKenna: Mm-hmm. Yep. Brandon Morphew: you clearly derive some value and some life experience in there. ⁓ But when do you realize, nope, it's bikes. Colin McKenna: Probably, you know, I was an engineer for ⁓ a little over four years and probably the last 18 months, what I realized was I was not able to be my genuine self. I had to kind of put on a show and a face every day to do my job because The space I was in, was working, our biggest customer was the Department of Defense. And so it's just in a different, it's in a different world. That's a different world with different concerns and different budgets and different applications. And it's, I realized that I was having to basically be an actor rather than myself to fit into that space and be successful. For me, I wanted to be successful. In order to be successful, you have to push. If I was going to push, I needed to adapt my personality and adapt my skills to be successful in that space. So that, I wasn't able to reconcile those two things. ⁓ And so I just realized that I needed to get to a space where could be myself. ⁓ And that's always been bikes. think bikes have always been very core. Even before that diamond back, I had bikes that I rode and loved those bikes. And I kind of stumbled into running and then biking and then bike racing. And I realized that when I'm in that endurance sphere, that's when I'm able to be my most genuine self. ⁓ I kind of stumbled around looking for jobs, looking for jobs, looking for jobs, and then, ⁓ you know, like everything in the world, right place, right time, ⁓ ended up getting an offer to work at a bike shop that I had worked at part-time in college. ⁓ The owner there was looking for someone to manage his business while he took steps away, so it was kind of the perfect opportunity for me ⁓ as a new manager. have, of course, I had retail experience and a bike shop experience, but I was new to being a manager in a retail space. So he was taking steps away and that allowed me to take steps in. ⁓ And so for five years during the pandemic, ⁓ I changed jobs. I took the job as the manager and kind of cut my teeth managing a group of people and a bike shop through one of the most ridiculous time periods I think that this industry maybe has ever seen. ⁓ Certainly I've only been present for this portion. There's a lot more. I respect that. But I would say that the pandemic bike industry bubble was quite a while. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, maybe modern history has seen, not just this industry, but modern ⁓ world. I don't think there's anything, we're fortunate, I think, to be healthy and on the other side. So yeah, it was quite an experience. ⁓ Okay, so passion. And I think you mentioned this, we sent you some questions in advance. Colin McKenna: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: around your retail philosophy and the product ⁓ being the interaction is this idea that, and I love that. think ⁓ we have a couple of tools we use at the agency around like ⁓ thinking about the customer and one is the story brand. I don't know if you've heard of it before, but it's, the customer is the hero. That's kind of the idea. And we go back to that a lot. Colin McKenna: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: I love the idea. so ⁓ what are, you when you think about that, the customer and that interaction, what are ⁓ two to three behaviors that you're coaching your team to help create that sort of world-class feel? And I'll add on my own spin there is like the customer is the hero experience. Colin McKenna: Yeah, I think the number one thing that comes to mind is humility. ⁓ Having a lot of humility and maybe recognize, and in the same vein, like recognizing that we don't have all the answers. No one does. No one person, no one bike shop, no one, no one whoever has all the answers, right? And so right away, recognizing that you need to have humility in order to exist in a retail space. ⁓ think in right along that, but slightly different is, kind of a learn it all mentality. So those two things go hand in hand. And the second anyone walks into our store, think they're off. I believe it. I see it all the time. People are refreshed because we kind of right away just ask some questions to our customers, right? And this might seem obvious at first. Why are you here? What are you looking for? Great. But we go a lot deeper than that. it's us. trying to really understand what our customers want, not not just from a product in that moment, but why are they riding a bike in general? What is it that they're using this for? And I think for a lot of people, the answer is probably pretty simple, and it's just, like riding a bike and I want to ride a bike, and that's great, and we respect that, and we can use that to help that experience piece for them. But I think there's a lot of customers that also don't know what they want, or they want something. but maybe they don't wanna say it out loud or maybe they need some help trying to get to it. And so for us, it's that humility and learn it all mentality allow us to, I think, lower the barrier of engagement with our customers, understand what it is that they want truly and genuinely, and then turn around and provide them with a product or a service or something that helps them achieve that goal. And I don't think this is novel. I mean, this is, I think, kind of fundamental sales process, which is... Ask questions, understand what the consumer is looking for so that you can make that product recommendation. But I think we're doing it, we're taking it to the next level. ⁓ Because as you had mentioned, what I believe is we're a retailer. And what does that mean? It means that we are selling other people's products. We don't manufacture anything. We're putting products in a store. We're... ⁓ consolidating the store so that it's a one-stop shop for all things cycling. And that has a value. But I think the other part of that value is the experience, the knowledge, the emotional side, the culture, the branding that we bring to this space. And I think that starts from those interactions. And those interactions, you have to be humble ⁓ and you have to be a learn it all. We want to know about what our customers are doing, not tell them about products that they don't care about. I know you asked for two to three, but those are the two that really stick out to me in terms of what we're doing. The last piece of it, and I think this is, to me this should be really everyone on planet Earth I think should be striving for this, but it's being a kind, emotional human being. ⁓ And what does that mean? It means just treating people exceptionally well, no matter what, no matter who you are, no matter how much money you have to spend, no matter what question that you bring to us. I don't care if you just purchased a Canyon bike online and you need help pumping up a tire, I'm gonna do that with a smile on my face because we're all human beings living on this earth and I think we all deserve an opportunity to have a good time on this earth. And so that's just the energy that we wanna put out into this world. So those are my three things for you. Brandon Morphew: great. ⁓ I would say sort of like baked into that, ⁓ if you would agree, and if you don't let me know, but baked into that is sort of like the goal of building trust with the customer and sort of like a big part of what you're doing in this process, the questions and sort of like getting at the why is building trust. Is there anything you've seen, ⁓ you know, in your travels that has like really, you Colin McKenna: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: maybe a common ⁓ trust breaking exercise? there anything you've seen you've like people like other shops? I don't like to point the finger, you know, it's not like that. have you in your in your journeys? Have you have you seen something that's like common for breaking trust without maybe people do it without realizing it? Colin McKenna: Sure. Sure. I think it's unintentional, ⁓ to your point. I wouldn't point the finger at anyone. I think what I'm about to say is a very unintentional consequence. I think there's a lot of retailers out there that put products on display and expect people to buy those products. ⁓ And that's not necessarily a wrong assumption. But the reality is consumers don't walk into stores and just pick things up off the shelf and buy them. They have to reconcile the ends. What I see the biggest miss is I don't think that there are empowered retail salespeople out there in numbers who are able to tie consumer needs to products. I think there are retailers that put things out on display and expect consumers to buy them. But the reality is you need empowered, kind, humble salespeople. who can connect those two ends. That's what I see. We skipped over after I was at that bike shop, I was a territory manager for Trek ⁓ for a short period of time. And I had purview of seeing dozens, dozens of retailers. And again, the biggest thing I saw and one of the huge motivating factors for me personally was how many retailers are just putting things on display and crossing their fingers that a consumer's gonna come in and buy them. ⁓ know, SRAM access group sets. People should want those. I'm going to buy them and put them on display. ⁓ carbon fiber bikes. People want those. I'm going to buy them and put them on display. That's like one quarter of the battle. You know, the other three quarters of the battle are then finding the consumers and selling them the product. And I think it's that three quarters of the battle that people just, I don't think people are doing it at all in. in numbers, right? Certainly there are shops out there that are doing that. But I think that's the miss. I think about retail in general in 2026. And I just fear that there aren't enough people that are putting in the energy inside the store to make these connections, because you can't just put things on a shelf and hope that they sell, right? That's it's not those days are over, right? We had that luxury in 2020, 2021 and 2022. And that's that's gone now. Brandon Morphew: I, you know, we're a marketing agency. focus on bike shops for a reason. That's, that's our business. And we, we see it quite a bit. The conversations are around, what do do for marketing? I had a conversation last night. What do you do for marketing? Uh, nothing. So, you know, you need, you need something out there to bring people in, right? That's part of the, that's part of that equation. Like get people in the door and then, and then sell them the thing that it makes sense for them. I love that. Colin McKenna: Yeah. You know, one of the things that really sticks for me from my engineering days is this phrase that will live with me forever. And the phrase is pretty simple. It's, it's hope is not a plan. Hope is not a plan. You know, you can hope that your radio is going to work as it's traveling through space, communicating data back. ⁓ But hope isn't a plan. So you've got to design it, prove it, test it, fly it, test it, manufacture it, test it, and then you can ship it, right? So it's. Every single step of the way has to be curated, intentional, thought out, tried, tested, repeated, tried, tested, repeated, changed, tried, tested, repeated. And if you do that, if you have this process and if you have these, know, a flywheel is another term that a lot of companies like to use, right? If you have your flywheel of how your company spins, it becomes so much easier to start changing the direction that your company is heading and start changing performance. And I think, you know, the last thing I would add while we're on this subject is I, I still think there's so many retailers that aren't trying in this space. ⁓ And so to me, you know, it's when I think about some of the things that maybe have made us successful, it's not that I don't think that my ideas are any better than anyone else's. I really don't. And frankly speaking, I love ideas from everyone, but it's just doing the thing. You got to pick up, you know, some days you got to pick up the screwdriver and you got to do that. You got to the screws. You got to actually do it. ⁓ So that's a big, so you mentioned what are those two or three behaviors that we try here in the store? It's being humble, having humility, ⁓ caring deeply about our customers from an emotional standpoint and being alert at all. And we're gonna try that until we need to do something different. And when we do, we'll try something different. Brandon Morphew: I love that. And we always talk about, ⁓ you know, the learning is in the doing, right? You don't really get better, ⁓ you know. You don't learn to ride a bike at a seminar. I think that's a great, so ⁓ it's a really good segue, because, you know, you moved away from service appointments, you built a process around this. What was broken and sort of like take me through like what you're doing now that's a... Colin McKenna: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. Brandon Morphew: you know, that maybe that flywheel, however you want to position that. Colin McKenna: Sure, so mean, one of the biggest observations I made, and I've been working in bike shops since 2010. I worked at two different bike shops in college, one in Central Pennsylvania and one in State College when I was going to Penn State. I went back and worked at the one in Central Pennsylvania as I mentioned, and now I'm here at Colonial. So I've worked at three bike shops across four different times. One of the data points that I've always seen is the number of people who arrive on time for their bicycle service appointments. I have tracked it over certain periods of time in my most recent tracking last year. We were at less than a 30 % rate of people showing up for their appointments. So I love numbers, I love data. ⁓ And that's not the first time I've seen that sort of phenomenon. Years prior, I hadn't actually tracked it, but my gut tells me it was less than 50%. And so when I took the job here at Colonial and I became the managing partner, one of the very first things I did was said, all right, you know, we're not gonna do service appointments unless we need to. There are certainly there are customers in situations where it's well confined and you just need to help someone out. Fine, we'll do an appointment then. ⁓ But I said, we're not gonna do service appointments. And it was like, whoa, you know, we're gonna miss business. And I said, that's fine. But if we're taking appointments and only 30 % of the people are showing up, are we really missing business or do we actually have no idea what our service business is? ⁓ Now, the hardest part of that is communicating what we are gonna do to our customers because certainly you could read that headline and go, well, how am I gonna do business with you, right? If you don't take appointments, what do I do? And so we've had to fly this flag and make a very simple, effective message of what it is that we are doing so it's very clear to people. And it's quite simple and the message is something like this. We don't take appointments. And the reason we don't take appointments is it actually allows us to have a very clear understanding of what our service schedule is. And so in order to do business with us in the service department, you can come into the store with your bike at any time that's convenient for you. You don't need to call us, you don't need to let us know, you just come in when it's convenient for you. You're come in, tell us that you're here for service or we'll ask you, right, because we have someone that greets people at the door, what brings you in, I'm here for service, awesome. Go to the service counter. Within five minutes, someone is going to look at your bike, talk to you about what's going on with your bike, present you with a detailed quote, price, and time of when you're gonna get that back. So all you need to do is show up at the store when it's convenient for you, and we're gonna get you a price and a time of when it's gonna be back. The after effect of this is because we only ever have work in the store. that is here and ready to be worked on, our turnaround time is 48 hours. So right now, if you bring me a bike today, I could get it done probably by tomorrow afternoon. And I might quote Saturday, depending upon the schedule, but that's 48 hours. In the height of the season, so let's say end of April, beginning of May, we're probably gonna be out to 72 hours, maybe 96 hours, like that four business days. but we know that's coming. And because again, we only ever have a schedule of bikes that are here waiting to be worked on, it's really easy for us to flex up and chew through more work, whether we come in an hour early, we stay an hour late, like, right, but that becomes our operational decision as opposed to having a long line of appointments. They're not here in the store. I can't work ahead if I wanted to. If I need to change anyone's appointment, making phone calls, I'm sliding things forward. But more importantly than that, my research leads me to believe that less than half of the people are showing up for their appointments. And so what's the point of an appointment if they're not showing up? And so what we've realized is this is now, this is my third year in the bike shop. And for three straight years, our labor and year to date so far, we're up by 35%. But this is the third year in a row where we're seeing the past two was greater than 40 % increase in labor. And so, It was a scary step, but we control so much of our destiny. And at the same time, I truly believe the experience is better for our customer. And here's why I say that. They come in whenever they want. Doesn't matter. They don't need to make an appointment. If they want to show up on a Tuesday morning at 10, great. If they want to show up on a Friday evening at six, all the same to us. The second reason I think it's better for the customers because they show up one time, they have one interaction. At the end of that one interaction, they know exactly how much they're going to pay. and they know exactly when it's gonna be done. It couldn't be more clear. So to me, it's one touch point, they get all the answers. That's it. And I think when I put myself in the shoes of a consumer, and case in point, this morning, I dropped my Toyota off at the dealer up the street ⁓ for an oil change. So I scheduled an appointment online. I showed up for my appointment online, ⁓ and they asked me what time I wanted my car done by. and I was thinking to myself, okay, well, I think I selected that online, but that's fine. No problem, I told the guy, I'd love it by 2 p.m., right? Oh, well, could we do it a little bit later? And I'm thinking like, all right, well, so I selected it online and now it's getting changed. Okay, no problem, whatever. Yeah, it can be done later. I don't need it until I go home at six. Okay, and hey, I know that you selected an oil change and a tire rotation. Unfortunately, those prices online were wrong and it's actually gonna be $10 more. Okay, so. I've spent time filling out this form. I show up and everything's different and I'm just like, okay, cool, right? And you talk about this erosion of trust. you know, like, I'm not saying that, right, it's no one's fault that, well, it might be someone's fault that that happened, but it's no one's fault that that happened. But at the same time, that doesn't seem like a great, we're striving to be the best. My experience at Toyota this morning was pretty subpar. So. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, yeah, missed opportunity. Yeah. Colin McKenna: That's how I'm trying to change this time. I know that was a long-winded answer, but that's what we're doing here. That's why we've changed what we've changed. Brandon Morphew: Yeah, I have quick follow up question. So just thinking about your service department, if you're okay sharing, how many like middle of the season you guys are humming, how many full time service folks do you have on? Colin McKenna: We have two full-time year-round mechanics. Yep, two full-time year-round, and then ⁓ I'm very much a flex player, so there are weeks where I will put in full-time minutes for myself in the service department. ⁓ I will come in early, I will stay late, so I'm kind of the flex player there, that's my role. And then I also have a gentleman who helps one day a week, and then I have another gentleman who helps one day a week. So... Brandon Morphew: Two full time, two full time here. All right, that's helpful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So you've got some people you can lean on for service. Okay, that's awesome. I appreciate that. Take me through like ⁓ somebody comes in, ⁓ I come in with my bike. What happens in the first five minutes? Colin McKenna: You know, there's five. Correct. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, so you come in with your bike, the first thing, and I do the service writing here as well. Like that's my day job, is the service writer. So you come in with your bike, first question is, what brings you in today? And you're gonna look at me be like, dude, I'm here with my bike, I need a tune up. And I'm gonna say, great, why do you think you need a tune up, right? What is it, is it just you do this every March, you don't question it, you just come into a bike shop, you give them your bike every March for a tune up, okay. Or is it, oh, well actually, I'm having some issues with my gears, my tires going flat, right? start uncovering what it is that's going on. And then it's after that intake, intake, intake, after that, I put the bike in the stand and I tell the customer, I'm gonna spend the next two minutes looking over your bike. When I'm done with that, I'm gonna write up the work order ticket. Does that sound good? And the customer says, yeah, that sounds great. And then I might say, depending upon the situation, I might say instead of two minutes, maybe it's a complex full suspension bike with lot of problems. I might say I need 10 minutes. Why don't you go have a seat, have a cup of coffee, look around the store, what have you, and I'll come grab you in a few. So then the bike is in the stand. I'm going through it front to back, top to bottom. And then I'm immediately jumping to the computer. We use a send and I'm using a send to build out a work order ticket. So that is all happening again, within two to 10 minutes. I'm looking over the bike, I'm building the work order and I'm taking my notes so I can build this price. ⁓ the customer's still looking around the store. They don't know that I'm doing all three of these things. And then when I'm at a point where I think I've got everything pretty much buttoned up from the work order side and I've made my notes and I know what's going on, I invite the customer back and we go through it line by line. Okay, you mentioned that your tires were going flat. I did an assessment. I see that there is a piece of glass in each of your tires. You mentioned that you were having shifting issues. Your drive train is really dirty. I believe that the best solution here is a cleaner drive train. Et cetera, cetera. Line by line with the customer. And when I'm done, I show them the full price. I also show them when we're gonna have it done. And I say, does that all sound good to you? Did I miss anything? If I miss something, great, they tell me. I make mistakes all the time. ⁓ If not, they've just approved the price. They've approved the timeframe. We've got the bike. Everyone's happy. ⁓ Bike gets checked in. I move on and we're on to the next thing. Brandon Morphew: Yeah. ⁓ Do you have ⁓ any communication strategies you use with the customers beyond that initial? So like many service, something's broken you didn't see. Often the case with, or something's worn, can't see everything on the ⁓ stand. How do you handle, ⁓ I guess a couple of things, how do you handle those non-cot, and then... If someone wanted to adopt this strategy of like, you know, no appointments and just taking in folks, you know, as they come in whenever they want to come by, anything like that needs to be true operationally for that to work. Colin McKenna: Yes, great questions. So certainly we miss things 100%. ⁓ I missed a ⁓ bottom bracket that was a bit notchy once we got the crank out, once we got the chain off, once we felt the bearing drive side bottom bracket bearing needed to be replaced. part of that communication with that customer when we're looking at that receipt and I'm going line by line and I'm saying this is what it's going to cost. Here's when it's going to be done. I always say to the customer, if this price or this date is going to change, I'm going to call you every time. and again, that's to me, it's just you're setting the expectation with the customer, you're telling them the plan. And I think that's the operational piece that I believe is the most valuable. Our plan could differ from the next guy's plan, but as long as everyone's telling the customer the plan, the customer leaves your store with peace of mind that you as the professional bike shop have the problem. well-documented, well-sorted, and you've got a plan to fix it. And so this happened last week. I missed a bottom bracket. ⁓ Jim got the crank out. He said, hey, Colin, this is going to need a bottom bracket. Cool. I pick up the phone. I call the customer. let them know, hey, I missed this. Here's what's going on. The bottom bracket's $25 or whatever. ⁓ And we're going to have that bottom bracket in here next Tuesday. Please let me know if that's a problem. Call me back if that's a problem. ⁓ We wait till the customer calls us back and confirms that they're okay with spending the extra money. ⁓ We kind of keep going on. So certainly that is, but that's the exception, not the norm, right? And again, I think it's how you deliver that message to the customer, which is what we say, or what I say, which is if this dollar amount's gonna change or this time's gonna change, I'm gonna call you. And we just set that expectation. ⁓ So the thing for us, as I mentioned at the beginning, is kind of having an understanding of what our actual workload is. What is our real workload for Because ultimately allows you to have a clear calendar and a clear schedule. ⁓ So I mentioned we use Ascend as our point of sale system. Ascend allows a feature called time-based service. ⁓ So every single labor skew that we have has a time associated with it. So for example, adjusting a rear derailleur, I think we allot 10 minutes to adjust a rear derailleur. So if I give one of my full-time mechanics a bike with a wonky rear derailleur, the expectation is that they can adjust it in 10 minutes, not replace a cable and adjust it, not install a chain and adjust it, just adjust that rear derailleur in 10 minutes. So we went through our database and we put a time associated with every single labor skew. And certainly, Our first pass at that was wrong, and we've had a couple iterations of getting those times dialed in, so I don't want to sugarcoat that, it took some time. And then our service schedule, so if we create a work order for Joe Smith, and I put adjust rear derailleur, right, Joe Smith's work order's gonna take 10 minutes. So I've got two mechanics, they work eight hours a day, they're gonna take some breaks, they're not 100 % efficient, so each day they have a set number of minutes. So let's just case in point, let's say the total minutes available for the day are 600. Well, Joe Smith just came in for his derailleur adjustment. So now I have 590 minutes left in the day. So I can take on another 590 labor minutes this day, and you just go from there. And with that, it allows you to pack your schedule. It allows you to adjust things strategically. It allows the guys, when they get in here in the morning, to look at what's gonna take a lot of time. Brandon Morphew: Totally makes sense. Colin McKenna: Maybe we need to get started on that at 10 a.m. We probably shouldn't leave that project for 2.30. ⁓ Or the other way around, maybe they want to rip out the easy stuff first. But I think it allows for more operational freedom. And like I said, it allows us to make the operational decisions because we have this big queue of work. As opposed to scheduling, you're waiting for customers. We don't want to wait for customers. We want to work when we can work. Brandon Morphew: So services up, you've got 2026 in front of us. What are you seeing as your biggest opportunity in 2026? Is it the service? Is there some sales opportunity that you're looking at? Maybe repeat business with existing customers, bringing in some new business. Where are you guys? you like, hold down the fort, let's maintain course, or do you have goals for growth? What's the plan? Colin McKenna: You know, I, we, it's a loaded question in the best kind of way. I still believe that we have opportunity in every single pillar of our business. ⁓ I've kind of segmented our business into five pillars. So we have sales and service, the most obvious two. We also have inventory, marketing, and employees. ⁓ And so those five segments of the business are kind of how I think about the business. I think our sales and service business is ripe with opportunities simply from customers in the community that don't know we exist. ⁓ I believe that there's a significant number of people that just don't know that we Colonial Bicycle in Portsmouth, New Hampshire is here. So I believe that simply by a basic marketing plan, and for me that's using the Google ad space, ⁓ I believe that that... will generate additional revenue above and beyond the past two calendar years. And we've been trending in that direction. I believe the big opportunities for us as a business are really twofold. Number one, it's inventory management. ⁓ It should be no surprise to anyone who works in retail that inventory can be the ultimate death of a retailer. ⁓ And then the second thing is employees. And what I mean by that is, Do our employees have the tools that they need to be successful? Do they have the skills that they need to be successful? Do they understand what success means? And so I spend a lot of time coaching, role-playing, training employees ⁓ because I want everyone here to be an all-star at their job. I want them to love their job and I want them to feel empowered and professional in their job. So that's a huge thing to me. ⁓ And I think that will only bolster the sales and service once people come in the door, right? It's one thing when people come in the door, but imagine if they come in the door and our employees are all giving them five out of five service. So then the last piece I mentioned, which I think is the real, mean, this is like, if anyone had a, you if anyone could figure out inventory, I think you'd build a machine that lasts forever from a retail standpoint. And what I mean by that is, think not only getting the right inventory, meaning the right dollar amount, that's relatively straightforward. know, there's a lot of, good ⁓ benchmarking that suggests how much inventory a retail store should have. But it's the mix. It's the mix of product within that dollar value that I think is the real problem. And what we're seeing, one of the things that we're seeing a lot of is just the continued, it's not even discounting anymore. It's price fluctuation. ⁓ Last year we had things go up, then we've got major discounts on products and. That ultimately leaves me kind of wondering if inventory has as much value today as it maybe did six, seven, eight years ago before the pandemic. Certainly, we're going to still sell inventory, but why I'm saying this is we probably are better off spending a significant portion of our time making sure that our labor and services business and our customer experience is fantastic because I don't know in a world where margins are compressing and places are fluctuating and vendors are consolidating, I don't want to have all my eggs in the inventory basket. We need to diversify our value such that we can make money across all these different pillars, if you will. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about it. Brandon Morphew: Well, that's a really good point. is there something, if you think about service, demos, rides, bike fit, ⁓ community, anything, is there anything that you're excited about building this year? Colin McKenna: All of that, I mean, we do, we're doing all of that. So I have a FITS studio and it's been quite successful. This winter has been record setting for us. ⁓ I believe that that just comes from that word of mouth advertising. ⁓ There aren't a ton of shops that are doing bike FITS. so strategy and Google combined with word mouth, with good experience, right? You start spinning this business upwards. strategy and Google combined with word mouth, with good experience, right? You start spinning this business upwards. then in terms of, know, then in terms of, know, Community. mean that's like front and center, Community. mean that's like front and center, When I joined this business I ⁓ wrote on a white sheet of paper the vision that I have ⁓ And the vision I have it's ⁓ again. It's not novel. It's nothing ⁓ in in in in short, it's ⁓ we want to enhance Maximize ⁓ increase ⁓ the positive that our community has with the sport cycling Pretty straightforward. But when you really think about how you execute on that, selling bikes from a retail box doesn't really actually solve that vision. Doesn't really get you to that vision. It just gives people equipment. If you want your community to have a better experience with bikes, you need to go create that better experience with bikes. I said this in another interview I did over the summer, which is really our relationship with our customer. starts when they leave the store. That's really, I think, where the magic happens. What do I mean by that? So we do a lot of sponsorship. ⁓ We sponsor NYC. We sponsor the local NYC team. I sponsor a high school mountain bike team. I sponsor a high school road team. We sponsor a development team. And why I sponsor those teams is because it's a way in which colonial bicycle can influence, positively influence our community. I mean, we're talking about giving money to the riders in our community so that they can have access to rides, places to ride, teams to ride with infrastructure to ride. The second thing we do is a lot of clinics ⁓ and our clinics are wide ranging from e-bike technology to fix a flat to bike fitting to training. mean, everything, right? And it's always free and it always will be free because we want to instill that knowledge with our community. ⁓ And then the other side of it too is bike riding and advocacy. So we have all sorts of partners. I've got ambassadors, ride leaders, members of the community who I'm either empowering to ride, joining them on rides, helping them ride. And these rides are wide, wide ranging from charity rides to I just want to ride my road bike or mountain bike to we want a woman's only ride. And so there's really no shortage of ways we're trying to create reasons to ride, create ways to ride, create community to ride, and support our community while they're doing it. And I think if you do that for a couple of years, you become the natural brand in the community that's associated with bike riding. And full circle, we are a retail business, we're a for-profit retail business, and so I wanna create a business that's sustainable, so we need to make sure that we have the revenue and we're generating profit so that we can have a sustainable business. so that we can continue to do these things indefinitely. That to me is why I'm here and that's how we've sort of built this machine to start rolling forward. Brandon Morphew: That's great. Well, I really appreciate you taking time to chat ⁓ Anything you the shop ⁓ Instagram is colonial bicycle company. Is that right? ⁓ they can find you guys at colonial bicycle comm and I guess if you're in New England and you want a shop that's ⁓ excess obsessive about experience and ⁓ And it has a really interesting service philosophy ⁓ Colin McKenna: Yep, yes. Brandon Morphew: stop by right in the Portsmouth area, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So thanks so much, Colin, and we'll look forward to hopefully seeing you here soon. I'd love to get out and ride ⁓ that Route 1 Portsmouth coastline. So thanks so much. You have a great day. Yeah. Great to have you. Bye. Colin McKenna: It's really nice. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate your time. Thank you, you too.