FEATURE
FEATURE Tim and colleagues during training
Decathlon cycling ecosystem thrive. When you bring everyone together from around the globe, there’s always a little bit of banter, as you’d expect, which is great.
Here I’ll say ‘Thanks to all product managers, engineers, trainers, and more’. The sessions really do feel like a good representation of my time with Decathlon.
Your visit to Btwin Village means you now deliver training for stores UK-wide delivering in-store training? How does that work? Collectively, we go to the Btwin village to receive training, then come back to the UK to plan and deliver training to our store teams. Training is something I’ve been part of, informally or formally, since 2016, when I was in the Lakeside store. I’m now one of five trainers who’ve all got different specialities, including hybrid, cargo, e-bike, gravel, road, and mountain. As a training coordinator, there are two areas in which
I have responsibilities The first one is product training. The second is ensuring our in-store teams follow best practices in bike preparation and safety through the PDI process: By aligning these two touch points with the bike and customer, we create a better experience for both our teammates and customers.
On the product training side of things, last year, we hosted our main spring/summer season from our Northampton warehouse because you’ve got the Northampton bike park just literally around the corner, so it’s a really good site to host. There are also woodland and non-tarmac footpaths nearby - the variety makes it possible to ride hybrid, gravel, and MTB in the area. For bike-focused product training, we want to deliver a variety of experiences, keeping firmly in mind how our customers will use these bikes. In the second session, we switch to road bikes and explore the area, getting a feel for the bikes and making notes on points that customers will be interested in.
I’m from a mountain bike background, so
getting to ride with people who are road-focused is valuable, just as is for road riders exploring other bike types - we need to be able to speak our customer’s language and understand their needs, wants, and expectations.
This session hosted approximately 30 teammates - a good spread covering at least 75% of our stores. We’ll be doing similar this year. In terms of the autumn/winter, we hosted it at Surrey
Quays - the Van Rysel store, the first of its kind for the brand. It’s a good location from which to connect with our urban users, exploring everything you would need in terms of visibility, locks, security, etc., but also a day dedicated to the Van Rysel side of things. In 2025, we are planning to expand the training content
for teammates to maximise the reach - a 10-teammate session for the London region, as an example, worked for us in the past. Expanding this training to the North region represents significant growth. Internally, we can see that having Surrey Quays and Stockport as regional hubs makes sense.
With all that’s happening, there’s plenty to be excited about as I look at 2025: New products - part of the reason for my Btwin Village visit - and new colleagues to share the experience with.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen big, bold moves across brands and products from Decathlon. Providing uniforms for volunteers at our home Olympics,
followed by a global rebrand that was extremely well received and the launch of a start-up incubator: Decathlon Pulse. The rebrand was about much more than a successful visual refresh. Over the past 24 months, the French sporting goods retailer has also made a significant impact on the cycling sector, with the business and its flagship bike brands now seen in a very different light, winning new fans and customers alike.
8 | March 2025
www.bikebiz.com
www.bikebiz.com August 2022 | 8
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