Interview: Evans Cycles' new chief executive Andy King

“I’ve said on a number of occasions that it would be my ideal job,” enthuses King.

He is referring to his new role steering Evans Cycles, the specialist retailer he was geared up to run in November last year.

King has had a diverse career to date, boasting stints at businesses including The Body Shop, Mothercare, WHSmith and, most recently, as boss of Dobbies.

However, King insists that his latest role is his favourite to date.

Difficult conditions

His enthusiasm has not been dampened by the fact that he joined the retailer at a challenging time – the month before he stepped into his role Evans Cycles had completed a financial year in which its EBITDA fell 58% to £2m.

“They’re not good numbers but it’s history now,” says King.

“I don’t think we’ve always been sufficiently customer focused in the past so the whole business is really galvanised around that now in terms of the strategy I’ve put in place,” he maintains.

“King has rolled out a series of initiatives ranging from quick wins to long-term investments”

King’s roadmap to pumping up profits at Evans Cycles comprises three routes: product range authority, customer experience and multichannel expertise.

To drive these three priorities across the business, King has rolled out a series of initiatives ranging from quick wins to long-term investments.

For quick wins, he has rejigged staff rotas based on footfall during peak times and extended opening hours across 14 stores to catch commuters on their way to work – a decision that has seen 10% of daily sales from the retailer’s Birmingham branch occur between 8am and 10am.

Multichannel focus

In the long term, King is focused on more than doubling Evans Cycles’ own-brand clothing range to 25% of its offer, in order to boost margins and has kicked off a refurbishment programme of its 61-strong store estate.

Evans Cycles redesigned its website early last year and King says the investment has paid dividends – 29% of in-store purchases are now click-and-collect, a third of overall sales are made online and the retailer’s ecommerce division has delivered 20% growth over the last seven months.

However, could it be that without the bricks-and-mortar scale of rival Halfords or the lack of property costs for cycling pureplays such as Wiggle, Evans Cycles is up against headwinds in the squeezed middle of the bike market?

“I genuinely don’t think that’s the case,” King says.

“We think our multichannel proposition gives us the opportunity to go out and gain market share and that’s absolutely what’s happening at the moment”

Andy King, Evans Cycles

“We’ve had double-digit like-for-like growth for seven months consecutively, seven months of margin and profits improvement and seven months of improved click and collect. What that says to me is that our customers are responding to what we’re doing.

“We don’t think we’re squeezed at all – on the contrary, we think our multichannel proposition gives us the opportunity to go out and gain market share and that’s absolutely what’s happening at the moment.”

Staff expertise

King’s ambition for Evans Cycles is for it to be “the nation’s first choice for a customer-focused, specialist bike shop,” and he has rolled out a training programme for all of the staff in pursuit of this goal.

“A lot of retailers fall into the mistake of having Saturday boys or girls who aren’t very knowledgeable about their products on the shop floor at peak times, so we’ve gotten more staff in at the weekends and seen an uplift in sales as a result,” he says.

“The retailer now guarantees that it has at least one staff member with specialist knowledge of the women’s market in-store at all times”

 

Women’s cycling is also a growth area for Evans Cycles. To monopolise on this trend the retailer now guarantees that it has at least one staff member with specialist knowledge of the women’s market in-store at all times.

King attributes Evans Cycles declining profits over the last two years to market conditions such as oversupply and roadworks impacting London cyclists, as well as retail’s favourite scapegoat – the weather.

“Weather is an important part of our business, but having been in garden centres of 10 years I’m well-versed with dealing with the vagaries of the weather and its impact on this business is less extreme,” he says.

Store roll-out

King also has ambitions to extend Evans Cycles’ bricks-and-mortar reach beyond its southeast heartland. He says the retailer has “a long pipeline of stores we’re actively pursuing” in locations including Hull, Manchester, Swindon and the West Midlands.

“Virtually all our bikes are sourced from the Far East so we have taken a hit on our sourcing costs there”

Andy King

However, he has also had to confront the impact of Brexit and the subsequent decline of the pound.

“Virtually all our bikes are sourced from the Far East so we have taken a hit on our sourcing costs there – in the bike market that generally means an increase in costs of five to 10%,” says King.

”We have passed the vast majority of that on to the customer line with the rest of the industry, but we’ve remained very competitive with the market as a whole.”

Powering ahead

Cost increases notwithstanding, King is confident that the impact of Team GB’s cycling performance at last year’s Olympic Games, combined with the pipeline of Government investment in UK cycle-lane infrastructure, will mean that cycling sales are set to ascend.

“There are a lot of favourable market conditions and a whole host of self-help initiatives in place that have been powering our business over the last seven months,” says King.

“We’re making constant changes to our website, our staffing and stores that I think stand us in very good stead moving forward.”

It’s still early days for King but he is determined to turn Evans Cycles into a tour de force in the bikes market.