Time to step it up, or getting ready for the coming economic recovery…

I’ve read some posts from other dealers stating now is the time to re-energize your bike shop, update your marketing plan, refocus your efforts, invest in yourself… I think, if you have the resources, this is a great time for a makeover. I mean, what can go wrong, the economy already sucks (but don’t tell that to people who are still buying bikes).

With that in mind, I want to go into spring with a new focus on the touring and adventure bike segments. I also want to take this time to step up my marketing efforts and spruce up the shop a bit. When I opened the shop, I pretty much did just the bare minimum. Got bike racks up to display bikes. Found some display fixtures and slatwall through craigslist. Just enough. Well, now it’s time to put the frosting on the cake, so to speak.

Step one is painting the walls of the shop. Okay, not all the walls, but the ones that can make the biggest impact by not being white. So, that’s how I spent my day off yesterday, painting. It was raining and I didn’t feel like ridig (actually, I did ride my commuter to all my errands – bank, post office, tax person, coffee shop, hardware store), so it was off to the hardware store to pick up paint. I selected a shade of green – it had some cute name, but I forgot.

First, move all the bikes out of the way. Not as easy as I thought. There was a lot of bikes to move. Before.

From Shop Photos

Bikes moved.

From Shop Photos

Where did I get all this stuff!?!

From Shop Photos

The shade of green ended up pretty close to the Fun Guy Green on the Salsa Fargo.

From Shop Photos

I probably should have removed the wheel trays as it would have been faster in the long-run. However, I thought I could just use the wheel trays to stand on to paint the wall. As it was, standing on the trays put my head in the ceiling so I had to crouch to paint – nothing a beer and handful of Advil won’t fix.

From Shop Photos

How I left it yesterday. Time to get the bikes back this morning and get the other wall ready to paint.

From Shop Photos

I’m pretty stoked how it turned out. It sure makes the shop have a much warmer feel and maybe, just maybe, the color or green brings out the buyers in folks!

The second part of the makeover is rewriting some of my website to emphasize the touring, cross, and adventure bikes. The site needs an update anyway and I need to finish the text for the vintage bike photo album page too.

(and yes, the economic recovery will happen sooner than later if we all let it happen)

(What’s playing: Dean Elliot & His Big Band Lonesome Road)