MANCHESTER, NH (BRAIN)—The Bike Cooperative recently completed its first-ever national promotion for its member retailers.
The Great American Bike Sale, which ran over the course of a month from April to early May, was designed to provide the co-op’s dealers with a strong kickoff to their season, and promote its supplier partners’ brands to a highly targeted audience, according to a press release. With 15 manufacturers providing special offers exclusive to co-op members, participating dealers sent out mailers and emails to over 300,000 customers across more than twenty states, with excellent results.
“This event was remarkable. Sales were more then triple the prior weekends and we had over 540 customers on Saturday alone,” said Steffen Root, owner of Berkshire Bike & Boards in Great Barrington, MA. “We experienced record sales despite the rain, but more importantly we bought much of the sale product at TBC special event pricing allowing us to retain normal margins on aggressively discounted product.”
Dealers who participated in the Great American Bike Sale promotion were able to pick from a wide assortment of aggressive offers from the co-op’s supplier partners, and feature those items along with their own offers in a discounted mailer that was fully customizable. “By getting commitments from a large number of dealers, we were able to negotiate a significantly discounted rate from our direct mail vendor and pass those savings along to our members,” said Tim Leaver, director of marketing for the co-op. “In addition to the product and direct mail discounts, we included some other exclusive offerings to make it very advantageous for dealers to be part of this event. During the promotion, participants had access to a special 12-month consumer financing rate of less than 2 percent, and were able to send out as many emails as they’d like through our email program free of charge.”
The co-op’s preferred suppliers were also pleased with results. “The Bike Cooperative has allowed us to target a great group of retailers that have not been exposed to our brand,” said Ryders Eyewear national sales manager Gareth Richards. “The co-op’s knowledge, experience and support has resulted in a 61 percent increase in sales year-to-date.”
“We were very excited by the level of participation from both our membership and our supplier partners,” added Kevin Wren, co-op director of supplier relations. “Based on what we’re hearing from the dealers and brands, the promotion did what we set out to accomplish—drive sales for our retailers and purchases to our suppliers. And having now gone through this once, we’ll be able to take what we’ve learned and make next year’s event bigger and better.”
