The Bike Shop and the Bike Shop Customer

Sometimes its funny how the customer sees the bike shop. Being the only dealer of recumbents in Boston, I have people come from all over to see one in person.
Its like it was back in the early 80's. The shop I worked at was the first to sell Mountain Bicycles and customers were sent from other shops. You can't buy advertising like that! Have someone in another Bicycle Shop tell a customer that they will have to go somewhere else to spend their money. Nice to be on the receiving end!
Twenty five percent of my Recumbent sales are referred by other shops. People come from other states and other country's to buy. The average distance traveled to purchase a new recumbent at the shop I work at is at least 150 miles. They don't seem to mind having to travel, as long as there will be the selection that we talk about over the phone. I can always tell when the customer walks through the door after traveling a great distance to see what they came for. Wide Eyed and smiling. Its always nice. I Imagine that their taken by the size of the shop and the amount of business were doing as well. No smell of gasoline and no sight of a lawn mower or snow blower. It seem strange that our normal customers that expect to see what is there don't notice anything except how long it takes sometimes to get waited on.
For that reason alone, I love standing at the door and and waiting for the person to walk through the door with a "pick up slip" greet them and get their bike. I love having them at the register and out the door faster then they could ever imagine.
Being the only show in town makes things fun. The frustration of selling a customer on a bike and having them go somewhere else to buy it doesn't happen with recumbents. Of course they could go buy another computer and go read more about riding, but they come back.
I love the ones that come back to test ride 6 months after their first time, "Remember Me?" Hmmmm.. Nope!
The smart ones figure it out and don't ever ask the question.
The ever changing times and the ever changing customers make the job fun. As slow as the change is the word is getting out that recumbents are fun and painless.
Being on the front line of Recumbent sales is exciting and dealing with the happy open minded customer, The Best!