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I agree with basically all of this. I think there’s a market for being a shop with a ‘curated’ selection of goods, plus your own. Narrow focus on excellence where customer knows they can’t buy a bad/ lame product. Lifestyle aspirational. Don’t just have the standard copy add something of value to the experience. No shaming for wanting the shiny fancy thing. A destination shop, ideally easy to get to. Advertise repeatedly every thing and service available on social media - any reason for someone to come in to check it out and leave with goodies. Lean into shopping as an experience.
Outsiders store does this well I think. It’s an offshoot of Ellis Bingham/ Cotswolds but has its own identity and puts a lot of their own ‘fit’ pictures of clothes on Instagram and sells the lifestyle.
I’d add - being open early (like 7:30) and/ or late (like 7pm) is a boon for people working elsewhere and/ or solidly between 9-5:30. Again it makes it easy to go and buy more than you came in for.
I’d think it would have to be authentic to your mate though. I can’t imagine chasing an idea of cool that doesn’t occur to them naturally is going to work, and if they were studied enough to do it they would already know it.
Obviously don’t know how big this market is. I think I’m mainly just agreeing with Maj here
My only real disagreement is that everyone knows oi polloi’s measurements are absurdist comedy
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stelfox
if i was opening up a new bike shop, in the uk looking to shift product vs services, i would adopt the American outdoors model of very expensive outdoors lifestyle gear and boutique parts.
yeti, snow peak, paul components, open, hope, Patagonia, jet boil et al, hoka,
i simply would not sell "BIKE" parts, the customers are annoying and tight at the wallet, i'd sell people a trinkets, cnc, a nice seatpost, brakes, to "people looking to enjoy the outdoors" with sales people who can talk the talk when it comes to "their lovely time off spent in the peak district" and pictures of the "team getaway weekend" dressed in product i wanted to sell
i would market my brand as a destination store which was a lifestyle brand in and of itself, similar to "artisanal lifestyle stores"
good hood, liquor store, oi polloi
i'd focus on ecommerce as my primary sales route and brick and morter as suplimentry, focusing on making myself look "cool" and make the store a show room destination and nice for locals filled with custom bikes
i'd have a selection of lifestyle goods a consumer could buy as a souvenir
stickers, bottles, badges, patches, custom bags
i would have a welcoming atmosphere, but one which is not pandering, even if the customer doesn't know what they want, they're treated like they do, as if they knew about all the nice shiney bits your hawking, get them in on the joke
in my online presence i'd have a similar experience, weights, sizes, exact measurements listed for every single product, the specifications and overwhelming detail would be the copy, not the spiel from the makers marketing person. the pictures would be detailed and large, non stock, taken in the shop with my house product around them, ideally some of the staff too
we'd offer bike mechanic work, it would be more than most places, but "nerdy", people could trust us to give them back an excellent looking bike "like the ones on the internet", or "the cute ones in the window" for a budget which suits them
there would be a lot of talk of "buying it for life" and "once in a life time trips" and how "this could finally be the trip them and their family needed to really get to know each other now they're all a bit older", bikes would be barely be mentioned
for the time they're in the shop they're in a parasocial, platonic ideal of the person/lifestyle friends they wished they had/were doing instead of coding on a trading estate outside of town/ browsing our site from at 4pm on a wednesday waiting for 530 to come