Six Ways To Get Customers Into The Shop
How Do You Get Riders Into The Shop To Tune Their Old Boards?

The prime idea is to get your customers to drag their boards into the store. Once the customer comes through the door, it is up to you to steer them to an inspection bench and sell some service. The dilemma is, how do you get people to dig their board out of the closet and haul it to the shop, when snow may still be down the road a couple of months? Obviously, a lot depends on where you’re located, but here are a few promotions we’ve seen that have merit.

1. Sale. It’s probably the easiest course. Offer 25-percent off full service until Halloween, or something along those lines. Although this type of simple promotion will generally bring out a few of the more frugal types, it tends to be a little bland and is not guaranteed to win the battle of disposable income when pitted against say, a good Friday night out.

2. Clinic. This could be a more action-oriented theme. Offer some reward (like stickers, wax, or T-shirts) to selected patrons who bring boards to be used for the clinic. This promotes tuning and maintenance awareness, which may induce more visits in the future. It also gets your customers involved with servicing their own boards rather than just having them disappear into some misty, invisible back room where the rider has no clue of what goes on.

3. Promotion. Run a promotion for season tune-up passes in the early fall. This also is a good pitch to throw in to close the sale of a new board.

4. Preferred customer card. Whenever a customer spends over a certain dollar amount on any product(s) or service, offer them a substantially discounted board tune. This helps sell service even when selling softgoods, and motivates the customer to bring in their board. If they don’t own a board and are just poseurs trying to look like snowboarders, sell them a new board!

5. A laminated service punch card. With each service or tune-up, the customer’s card gets punched. On the card can be services offered and corresponding prices. Be creative—make them cool, and your riders will want to have them. Word of mouth works great on this one. One of the greatest anxieties of your customer’s primary age group is being left out of something cool. If this type of promo is done well, you can really capitalize on it.

6. Contest. How about running a contest to see who has the most beat-up board from last season? Again, provide some sort of reward or incentive to get the riders to bring in their deck for inspection. Take the most pounded one, and unless broken in half (which amounts to automatic disqualification) and fix it. This is a great way to illustrate the level of service your shop is capable of and can show riders that a board they think is totally shot is actually very repairable and will ride well when finished.

—Chris Doyle