Immediately. If I don't have an immediate answer, I will write and tell them that I'll let them know, and when I will let them know.

I check for messages twice a day minimum, but more like four or five times a day. I don't think most people expect an immediate answer. E-mail is not instant; it is much quicker to talk on the phone. You don't know when somebody is going to read an e-mail.

But if a customer inquires about a product, they're expecting an immediate answer, aren't they?

Usually, yes. I find that most people thank me for quick responses if I answer the same day. At first, I'd send all my replies in the morning; now I try to do them as often as possible.

It has become a major consumer of time. This is not an automated business, this is a personal business, even though we don't sit down face-to-face.

How many people at your company respond to questions?

Just me. I want to do them all. It takes knowing the product to answer these questions. I can't have automated answers, though I have some answers pre-done. I get 50 of the same question-usually it's, "Do you sell other bikes that aren't on your site?"-and I have a set explanation of why we don't. Was there any issue with Bell on putting the helmets on the site?

Other than price, no. We do a lot of closeouts, something that we can put a real good price on, since they want to control it. A lot of these companies, their biggest worry is undercutting them. They want to keep their prices up, they don't want their dealers getting angry-because basically I'm in competition with every dealer in the country.

With some helmets that are close-outs and some that are priced the same as dealer retail, is that a problem for you?

Sometimes it's a matter of convenience. In Hooterville, there's probably not many bike shops. For people who don't have several shops nearby, well, we're there.

Do you have a price structure from Bell?

We have a very loose agreement with Bell to begin with. Basically, selling Bell helmets, or Bell products in general I guess, I don't think they're too concerned with who sells them as long as you sell them with professionalism or whatever. Sticking to the prices and being able to supply the product. You know, Bell has an agreement with rei. If you go to the Bell site and you want to buy a helmet and click on "buy this," it goes to an rei order. That infuriated a lot of people. It doesn't matter to me. I see selling the helmets as a convenience to the customer, more than a profit center. We think that everyone should wear a helmet, we push helmets hard. If they don't buy 'em from us and they buy 'em from their local shop, that's fine. If they take a bike that we've sold them into their local shop and they buy things there that they wouldn't buy if they didn't have a bike, I think that everybody wins.

How did you work out the agreement with Motobecane to carry their bikes?

Well, we sell them in our retail stores, and they don't have strong distribution in the U.S. anymore. They're comfortable with us selling their product. We don't ship their bikes unassembled. We make sure the bike has been assembled to the same standard as the bikes we put on the sales floor, and then we do the minimum disassembly to put the bike in a box. Handlebars, pedals, as little as possible to put it in the box safely. And then we send an instruction pamphlet, a walk-through, to put it together. But we encourage them to take it to a shop to have it assembled. I think it's easy enough that they can do it at home, but a lot of people just aren't comfortable doing that. And the bike has been shipped through ups and might need some wheel-truing or something like that. If they take it into their local shop, No. 1 it will be a safe bike, and No. 2 they will probably buy some stuff at that shop. They'll pay them to assemble it, and they'll probably buy their helmet there, or lights and a lock and a bottle cage.

But the shop didn't get the bike sale. Doesn't that cause problems?

Well, I'm sure it does, unfortunately. But if the customer bought a Trek down the street, they would have gone down the street to buy their lock and cable and all their other stuff. So at least this is giving that shop the ability to have a loyal customer. And let's face it, shops make a higher percentage on accessories than they do on bicycles. It may upset some of them, but it may upset them if a customer buys a bike at another shop, too.

Have you heard of any cases of customers buying a bike from you and being turned down by a shop for assembly?

No. I have not yet. What a dumb thing that would be to do anyway. Who would alienate a customer like that? Mail-order catalogues are not going out of business, and this is basically the same thing. Since I am not in competition with a lot of the things they sell, they don't have a whole lot of reason to get upset with me.

How do you handle sizing issues?

Well, when you've been in the business for a long time, sizing is pretty easy. In the ideal world, sure, you'd like to see everyone, but we can't. We can make some really good guesses. I will bet you we don't size any worse than most bike shops. There can be mistakes. I had a woman who called and gave me her inseam and everything, and then she called back and it was the wrong size. So we sent her another bike.

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