Pros
Experience in the industry. A good way to judge your area's demographic and approach customers in a sales environment. Great opportunities to network with local businesses and make contacts within the industry for both personal and career gains. Wonderful way to meet like minded individuals in an otherwise fractured and hostile community (bikers). Many members of upper management are surprising amicable and realistic. With certain individuals there is a very casual atmosphere.
Cons
Poor starting pay and poor raises for the amount of knowledge and experience required to be truly successful. Individuals with no experience in the industry will serve to only anger customers and cause problems for more experienced associates and managers. Training modules are amateur with poor wording, spelling, and misinformation. Lack of resources at the store level to satisfy the needs of passionate enthusiasts and high dollar customers. Lack of individuality at the store level. Essentially corporate wants each store to be uniform even though many locations have different demographics than the corporation's perceived image. This results in a disinterest or outright hostility from many customers. This alienates customer bases and only serves to make individual stores seem like they are not doing their jobs. Sales oriented performance does not take into account riding seasons in certain areas or economic demographics. Certain members of upper management are down right hostile and unreasonable. Some treat associates like peasants, to them many people are only numbers. There is no reciprocity with respect. Store locations are chosen poorly, many stores are either out of the way of main roads or completely obscured and not visible from the road. Stores that can be seen easily and clearly from the road have significantly better performance and more meaningful traffic, this is of course attributed to associates and management for better or worse. The company completely refuses to spend money on proper advertisement. Successful companies spend MILLIONS on advertisement. Cycle Gear spends less on advertisement than competitors with single locations, less profit margins, high pay, and better incentives for employees. For a national chain this is 100% unacceptable. The company expects those at the store level to do their jobs for pennies on the dollar; while those in advertising making double or more than the average store manager are either grossly incompetent or stifled by the bean counters. I have not even touched on the exclusive brands... This stuff is safety gear, safety gear is expensive for a reason. Certain items can be made cheaply (textile and mesh apparel, even boots), others simply cannot (leather, helmets, gloves). These are items people are depending on to save their lives. Cost cutting techniques are unacceptable on many of these items. The exclusive brands suffer from over saturation and redundancy (multiple products that do the exact same thing at the same price point) and serve only to confuse the customer AND the associate. Some of these items are a danger to those who wear them and should not even be an option for purchase. Many of the waterproof items are consistently not waterproof and only makes it harder for the associate to instill trust in the customer. The final straw is the unrealistic pricing of non-exclusive brands and the refusal to stock stores with a variety of product. With the amount of options for helmets and gear, and Cycle Gear's buying power and size, there is an astonishing lack of variety for the customer. I can say that as a consumer, Cycle Gear does not anything that I would buy aside from casual apparel.
