We miss out on a lot of sales because potential clients think that we can’t possibly supply pro quality kit at such reasonable prices, so how do we do it?
Our business was set up in 2001 and from the start we were determined to keep our costs down to an absolute minimum. Now that we sell half a million euros of kit a year, the rules are still the same. That means:
* no advertising (word-of-mouth is free!)
* no brochures (the internet is almost free!)
* no free sponsored clothing for high profile teams
* no buying stock on credit and no offering of credit to clients
* no company cars (or company bikes!)
* distributing directly from our factory in Portugal (rather than through agents taking a 30% cut)
* cycling to meetings where possible and videoconferencing even better to avoid travel costs
* setting up long terms deals with suppliers where we guarantee them business if they can guarantee rock bottom prices
Then we have an obsession with 2 things to keep clients coming back:
* First the quality of the kit, so that we can be confident that our kit will sit quite happily next to anything pro athletes use (no cost cutting when it comes to quality!)
* Second a devotion to customer service so that we can be confident no competitor will look after clients better than us (we aim to anwswer emails within two hours of receiving them, but never let them go unanswered more than 24 hours for example).
So that is the secret! We run a business in one of Europe’s lowest cost economies and obsess with keeping our costs down. Then we obsess with delivering pro quality and unbeatable customer service. No secrets there….
