The Bicycle Saddle

To say Dave Tomsky ~ Founding Partner and Director of Public Relations here at JDM Strategies ~ is a cycling enthusiast, is like saying  the Puerto Rico Trench is pretty deep. Let's just say he really loves his bicycle and the sport in general.   This week, Dave and I were talking about the new bike he just purchased. It's in the office right now and to be honest I think just one of my wheels from my old 10 speed bike might weigh more than his new bike. It's a beautiful piece of engineering. During the conversation, the story of the bicycle saddle came up. The saddle on his previous bike was black....which didn't quite match the color scheme for his new two-wheeled acquisition.  Dave needed a white saddle.

Dave contacted the company who sold him the black saddle, Cobb Cycling (www.cobbcycling.com) located in Tyler Texas. Dave's request was simple, he wanted to send back the black saddle and exchange it for the same model, but in white.  Dave expected to be charged, since the black saddle had been used for about 3 months. On the other end of the e-mail was Ginger Cobb, daughter of the owner  and a customer service rep. Ginger's response was that she would send a white saddle (see picture above) with a return UPS slip for Dave to send back the black saddle....NO CHARGE! Seriously, no charge! Ginger didn't even want the black saddle sent first. Plus, the shipping for both saddles was free.

Zappos (www.zappos.com)  is well known for their Free 365 Day Return Policy. It's a great policy and economies of scale certainly help. Without having any empirical evidence, I would bet my next lunch that  the shoe industry has a much larger customer base than the specialty racing bike saddle industry...just a guess. That's the interesting part of this. Cobb Cycling is relatively small but their exceptional approach to customer service has made Dave a loyal customer for life and more importantly a brand evangelist. He knows other cyclists and you can be sure he will tell the Cobb Cycling saddle story. Is there a better way of marketing than to have your customers spreading enthusiastic and sincere testimonials to their circle about your brand? I think not.

Have you got other stories like this? Let me know.

BTW, if you should see Dave (#944) on May 24th  riding his Bianchi 928 SL during the Assault on Mt. Mitchell (his 10th time) http://tinyurl.com/2ekb94k  give him a cheer.

Splitting Wood

Our home has a wood fireplace which gets a lot of use during the winter months. Prior to this winter I used to chop and split wood by hand. We had a lot of wood around and I was never in a rush. This past Fall however, we had to have a 140' white oak tree taken down very close to the house.  The tree service left it ~ as per my instructions ~ in large pieces, that I would have to clean up. There was a lot of wood and I knew that it would be foolish to try and split that much wood by hand.

So, a friend of mine came over  on a Saturday morning with his gas powered hydraulic log splitter and we went to work. The quantity of wood we were able to split was amazing. He got a truck load of wood and I got enough wood for a couple of winters...all in a day.

Splitting wood by hand vs a gas powered log splitter - This got me thinking about marketing.

There are companies out there that implement their own marketing plans, some better than others. They're splitting wood by hand.

There are companies that have a gas powered log splitter in house.

There are other companies that split wood by hand on occasion, but bring in the gas powered log splitter for efficiencies and a competitive advantage.

What kind of company are you?