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Walked into a 900 sq ft bike shop in Portland and the owner showed me his whole growth plan on a napkin
I was in Portland for a wedding a couple weeks ago and stopped into this tiny shop on SE Division just to kill an hour. Owner was maybe 28, and when I asked how business was going he pulled out a napkin with three numbers on it: rent, cost per repair, and how many fixes he needs a day to break even. He said he stopped chasing new customers and started texting past ones when their tune-up was due, and his repeat business went from a third of sales to over half in five months. No ads, no website redesign, just a spreadsheet and his phone. Anyone else seen a small shop grow like that off repeat customers instead of new ones?
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anthony4241mo ago
The "just a spreadsheet and his phone" part is doing a lot of work in that story and I'm not sure it holds up. Texting past customers only works if you already have a few hundred names in that spreadsheet, and a shop that tiny in its first couple years usually doesn't. I ran a repair counter for six years and the hard part was never the texting, it was building the list in the first place. Also repeat customers are great until they move, sell the bike, or quit riding, then your whole base dries up and you have no new people coming in the door. Going from a third to over half repeat sales in five months can just mean new sales fell off, not that repeat sales grew. I'd want to see his total revenue before I call that a growth plan instead of a slow leak.
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