Women Mean Business
This week was the National Women’s Bicycling Forum held by the League of American Bicyclists. While I wasn’t able to make it to Washington, DC, I tried to follow as much as I could online. The theme was “Woman Mean Business” and there’s a pretty serious video presentation of just how much business.
But it doesn’t take statistics to tell us women there is some serious untapped market potential out there.
But beyond simple market potential, we’re a force to be reckoned with. And I reckon there’s going to be some change coming.
I’m a dude and I’ve been ignored plenty of times walking into a bike shop. It just seems par for the course. But I guess if a woman is being ignored, it must be something that’s inflicted on her, it couldn’t just be that, for once, she’s as invisible as every other dude.
I’m really late to this and this is completely archive stalking. But you should try being a female sales associate in a bike shop.
Male customers are just as bad! And to think no one would hire anyone to work in a bike shop if they didn’t know about the products, but regularly I would try to help men and they would either completely ignore me and run to the closest male associate or refuse to look me in the eye the entire time I was helping them or make really strange comments about the length of my legs. Which was awkward.
My best revenge was one day I was training a new male employee, and a guy came in and wouldn’t let me help him. Ran straight to the male employee. However, he was interested in an entry level mountain bike. The male employee was a triathlete – really well versed in all things triathlon and road but knew nothing about mountain bikes. The whole time the customer was talking to him, the male employee looked at me terrified begging me to step in. I eventually did, and helped the guy find the right mountain bike – but nothing felt better than when I was able to step in and say Oh he’s not trained on the mountain bikes yet, but I know exactly what kind of bike you are looking for.
Really, though having a couple female employees seems to really fix the no one will help women mentality in shops. I’ve noticed that shops with female employees 1) if the female employees are there they aren’t going to ignore you, and they know how you think 2) the male employees learn by working with women that ride, that women can be serious about riding.