There was substantial discussion at the Bicycle Leadership Conference about the women's market potential for the specialty bicycle retail channel of trade. There was general agreement that selling more bikes to women is vital to the future growth of our business, and that just putting a women's department in stores is not working.
Why all this interest in attracting and selling more to women? Because, according to Mary Lou Quinlan, author of Just Ask a Woman, "... women buy or influence the purchase of eighty-five percent of all products and services sold nationwide." Women are the most important shoppers and dominant consumers in the U.S. market today.
From 1990 forward our channels most loyal customers have been white males. Males shop differently than women, and according to Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping: "Males just want places that allow them to find what they need with a minimum of looking and then get out fast." We have designed our retail space, and created our stores over the last fifteen years almost exclusively for men! Our challenge begins with making our male retail environments appealing to female shoppers, and providing a totally satisfying retail shopping experience.
Are women really that different from men in the way they buy? Mary Lou Quinlan reports that: "Women demand many of the things that men do (value, service, quality), but as shoppers, they notice more, expect more and get annoyed more when retailers don't put them first." In practical terms this means women demand much more of the shopping experience and of shopping environments than men do.
Our channel of trade has too few retailers providing totally satisfying shopping experiences, and shopping is and always will be mostly for women. Women are, as Paco Underhill warns us: "... capable of consigning entire species of retailer or product to Darwin's dustbin if that retailer or product is unable to adapt to what women need and want. It's like watching dinosaurs die out." The total number of specialty bicycle retail storefronts has steadily dropped from a high of 6,259 in 2001 to 4,600 in January 2006 - a decline of 26.5% over the last five years.
Women don't like to shop at the typical bike shop! I have talked to women both inside and outside our channel of trade, and have gotten pretty much the same story. Women are either totally ignored, or talked down to by staff in the typical bike shop. I could go on, but I hope you have gotten the point. Mystery-shop your store or stores if you don't believe me ... the results might surprise you.
Marketing and Selling To Women Seminar. We need rapid progress if we are going to make any headway in attracting more women as customers to our channel of trade. I suggest that the NBDA present a "Marketing and Selling To Women" seminar for their regional education events and for the 2006 Interbike Show ... that is created, produced and presented totally by women! We can all make suggestions about how to market and sell to women, but to make real progress we need to really listen to and act on what women tell us will actually work.
