Context
Aggieland Cycling is a full-service bike shop in College Station, Texas, a short drive from the Texas A&M University campus. It sells bikes, stocks parts and accessories, and runs a repair service, serving students, university staff, and local riders in a town whose population turns over every August and May. The shop is independent and locally run, with a small full-time staff alongside part-time employees who are themselves students and move on as they graduate.
By Spring 2023 students had returned to campus in full after the pandemic years and were choosing among buses, scooter rentals, cars, and bikes to get to class. Bikes were also sold in town by large chain retailers and, increasingly, bought online and shipped. In that setting a local shop's reach depended less on advertising spend than on being visible to the students who were genuinely looking, and its day-to-day accuracy depended on a point-of-sale system that a rotating part-time staff had to learn quickly.
Challenge
Aggieland Cycling is a full-service bike shop near the Texas A&M campus that sells bikes, stocks parts, and repairs what students already own. The shop wanted to reach more students, and it had a point-of-sale system that tracked inventory but was not being used to its full extent. The storefront sits some distance from campus, its marketing budget is small next to the chain retailers that also sell bikes in town, and its part-time staff turns over as students graduate. The shop asked TASK for two things: a clearer read on which students are actually in the market for a bike and how to reach them cheaply, and a practical guide to the system its employees use every day, together with an answer on whether that system was worth keeping.
How the team worked
The team split the project into two workstreams from the start: campus reach and point of sale. For campus reach, they approached students in a central campus building and ran short, semi-structured in-person interviews with a mix of local and international students, graduate and undergraduate, living on and off campus and commuting by car, bus, scooter rental, and bike. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and read for patterns in how students decide whether to buy, rent, or bring a bike from home, and what stops them from riding once they have one.
The pattern that emerged was that local students usually already owned a bike, while students new to the area, particularly international students, had the hardest time finding one locally and often ended up buying online. The team tested that read against a SWOT analysis weighing what an independent local shop can do that a large chain cannot. Because the shop sits some distance from campus and had a limited marketing budget, the recommendations were framed around low-cost, targeted channels: flyers at international student events and bus stops, student organization group chats and online marketplaces, and outreach near housing where international students tend to live, with delivery and on-campus showings as the shop's edge.
For point of sale, the team reviewed how the shop was actually using its system day to day, where inventory entry and hardware were creating manual work, and what the shop wanted the system to do. That review became a training pamphlet written for new part-time hires, covering inventory entry in bulk and one item at a time, order scanning, customer notes and profiles, and the vendor's own support and tutorial resources, alongside a comparison sheet of alternative systems and their features in case the shop later chooses to change platforms.
Both halves were written into one document and presented at the end of the term. The recommendations were staged rather than delivered all at once: start with the campaign aimed at students new to the area, watch what comes back, and adjust before spending further. The point-of-sale action points were ordered the same way, with training and hardware first because they remove daily friction, and a change of platform last because it only earns its cost if the earlier fixes do not hold.
Workstreams
- Interviewed students on campus about how they commute, when they buy or rent bikes, and what keeps them from riding.
- Analyzed the interviews for trends, including where students new to the area go to find a bike and why campus bike parking limits day-to-day use.
- Ran a SWOT analysis of the shop's position against large chain retailers and identified international students as an underserved segment.
- Recommended low-cost marketing channels, partnerships with international student organizations, and delivery and campus showings as differentiators.
- Assessed how the shop was using its existing point-of-sale system and mapped the gaps between its daily workflow and the features the system offered.
- Wrote a training pamphlet covering bulk and single-item inventory entry, order scanning, basic hardware troubleshooting, and customer notes, and compiled a comparison of alternative systems.
What the team found
- Local students who wanted a bike usually already had one at home and brought it with them, so the shop's demand came less from arrival on campus than from students moving off campus.
- Students who did own bikes often left them parked, because campus bike parking made a bike more useful for the ride to class than for moving between classes once there.
- Students new to the area, particularly international students, had the hardest time finding a bike locally and often defaulted to ordering one online without seeing it first.
- International students leaned toward transit and biking rather than driving, and clustered in a small number of housing areas, which made them reachable through a few well-chosen channels.
- Against large chain retailers, the shop's advantages were local knowledge, flexibility, and a willingness to bring a bike to the customer, none of which a chain format matches easily.
- The shop's daily workflow and the features already available in its point-of-sale system had drifted apart, so work was being repeated by hand that the system was built to absorb.
What the client received
- Written final deliverable covering campus reach initiatives and point-of-sale recommendations
- Student interview findings and campus trends analysis
- SWOT analysis of the shop's position in the college town bike market
- Campus reach action plan naming marketing channels, venues, and partnership targets
- Point-of-sale training pamphlet for new part-time hires, with vendor support and tutorial resources
- Point-of-sale action points on training, hardware, customer records, and periodic review
- Comparison sheet of alternative point-of-sale systems and their features
- Shark Tank presentation of the semester's findings and recommendations
Outcome
Aggieland Cycling now has a clear picture of which students are in the market for a bike, which of them are hardest to reach through ordinary channels, and how to reach them without a large advertising spend. It has a training pamphlet it can hand to each new part-time hire, a set of action points on training, hardware, customer records, and periodic review, and a comparison of alternative point-of-sale systems to consult if it ever decides to switch. It can also weigh delivery and on-campus showings as a difference students would notice rather than as an extra service.
Recommendations
- Build a marketing plan that pairs low-cost digital channels with traditional ones, anchored on the shop's existing search presence rather than starting from a paid campaign.
- Put flyers where students new to the area actually pass: international student events early in the fall semester, and bus stops around campus.
- Share graphical versions of those flyers through student organization channels and online marketplaces, where a smaller audience keeps the cost of a placement low.
- Lead with delivery and on-campus showings, since a chain format is unlikely to bring a bike to a student who has no car and no easy way to the store.
- Train each new part-time hire on the system's inventory tools using the pamphlet, so bulk orders and single items are entered the same way by everyone.
- Review the hardware attached to the register and the customer note fields already in the system before considering a different platform, and revisit system use on a set schedule.
Next steps
- The client was handed a campus reach action plan naming the venues, events, and online channels to try first, in the order the team recommended starting them.
- The client was handed a training pamphlet for the point-of-sale system, written so a new part-time hire can follow it without prior instruction.
- The client was handed a set of action points covering training, hardware, customer records, and a periodic review of how the system is being used.
- The client was handed a comparison sheet of alternative point-of-sale systems to keep on file in case the shop later decides to change platforms.