In 1991, David Bole\u2019s dad faced a choice. The investment company where he worked had been sold, and he had to either move with the company, or do something different. That\u2019s when Dave Bole \u201990, his father, and his brother decided to open Bicycle Chain, a bike shop in Roseville, Minn. An economics major, Dave had worked at a bike shop during college. The Bole family worked together at Bicycle Chain for several years, before Dave took it on himself. He\u2019s now been its owner and manager for twenty-seven years. On a typical day, he spends his time ordering products, paying bills, and helping customers. \u201cThere are a lot of different skills you need to learn, and there\u2019s no instruction manual,\u201d he says. Bole shared some of the work lessons he\u2019s learned over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had a Dutch commuter bike from the 1940s in our repair shop. It had skirts around the wheels because women used to ride their bikes to work wearing dresses, and the skirts kept their dresses from getting caught in the spokes. We had to un-sew the skirts and then sew them back on after we were done fixing the bike. That bike was in one work stand, and in the neighboring work stand we had a bike that was hooked up to a laptop getting a software update\u2014two ends of the spectrum. Being interested helps keep your knowledge base high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a lot of pressure to have a social media presence these days and nobody that works in our store full-time really engages with social media, which makes it difficult. We rely on other strategies for connecting with customers such as word of mouth, getting involved in the cycling community, and volunteering at charity events such as the MS Society bike rides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are plenty of templates for doing cash flow projections and market analysis. The harder part of it is defining success. What brings you happiness or satisfaction in the job? Over the years, I\u2019ve had lots of opportunities to expand, and I have been tempted. But I\u2019ve always said no because I really value the lifestyle that I have. If I had multiple stores, I wouldn\u2019t be able to ride my bike to work. Trying to define that and work toward that goal keeps you in the game longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you\u2019re writing a business plan, you don\u2019t really address time management. Your time gets so divided among customers, and employees, and vendors, and phone calls. When we opened Bicycle Chain there was no email. The only way you could get ahold of us was the store\u2019s phone number. Now you have multiple email accounts, messaging, social media. It\u2019s really hard to tune out sometimes. Biking and other exercise is a big part of relieving that stress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been more changes in the past year in how you do business than probably the past twenty-five years. Our vendors have become our competition because they are all transforming to a model where they sell bikes direct to customer. We\u2019ve invested a lot more money in our website so people can see our inventory. We also get orders now direct from our vendors where customers shop on the vendor\u2019s site and we facilitate the sale. We\u2019ve been open to working with them, but you wonder, is this good for the long term? The way people shop and the way they interact has changed dramatically over the past three years. The hard part is that it\u2019s so out of your control. So far, it\u2019s worked out for us. I try not to think about it too far into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of the reason people are buying bikes online is that a lot of bike shops haven\u2019t made it fun for customers to shop. It\u2019s a very young and a very male world. Sometimes shops don\u2019t understand that not everyone wants to dress or bike a certain way. There are as many different ways to use a bike as there are people. It\u2019s important to have a shop with diverse people and an atmosphere that\u2019s welcoming.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bike shop owner and manager’s tips for work success: stay interested, honor your lifestyle, ride a bike, adapt, and be welcoming.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":20015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20003"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30243,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20003\/revisions\/30243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}