Alex Coffin is serious about running a business; in fact, the Saint John, New Brunswick resident is serious about running-period. The fleet-footed 38-year-old boasts a top-300 finish in the Boston Marathon - a real feat given some 20,000 people enter annually-and consistently wins marathons, half-marathons and 10-kilometre races in his home province. Now he is set to go head-to-head against a different kind of competition.
Alex Coffin's Fitness Shop opened in the Saint John bedroom community of Rothesay last October. While a Running Room franchise has dominated the footwear and clothing market among the speedy Saint John set since 2004, affluent Rothesay and neighbouring Quispamsis have lacked a similar store, despite the high number of runners in the area.
But can a locally-owned, independent business hold its own in a race for customers' hearts-and feet-against the more established chains? In particular, the Running Room-a successful chain started in Edmonton in 1984-has built on its program of learn to run clinics and free group runs to dominate the niche with stores coast to coast. Nonetheless, Coffin believes business will be, well, healthy, especially since the runner takes extra effort to volunteer with race organization and other local events . "We work very hard on being connected in the community and I have no doubt that's going to pay off."
Coffin didn't actually intend to open a running store. His original plan was to purchase the inventory and name of a local soccer shop, concentrating on that fast-growing market. When the deal fell through in August 2006, Coffin switched plans in mid-stride, leasing a 1,000 sq. ft. space along Rothesay's main street. Concerned that customers would vanish, the lean marathoner says he didn't want to halt his momentum lest "people sense blood. Everybody wants to support a winner. Let's say you get things together a year later. I don't think you're able to build up the same excitement level."
Certainly, Coffin's shop has displayed a strong starting kick. Solid Christmas sales helped him weather the mid-winter doldrums and have left Coffin in good shape for spring, the industry's big season. With approximately $100,000 tied up in inventory, Coffin is ready to sell socks, shirts and the other accessories that actually carry a higher margin than the shoes and that end up being the most profitable. Coffin's inventory is one of the ways he's able to distinguish himself from the Running Room. The latter tends to push its own private line of clothing, leaving him able to carry name brands which many runners want.
Nor did Coffin spend the winter waiting for customers to wander in the door. He nabbed sponsorship of the provincial run series, meaning the store will be featured in the race calendar distributed to hundreds of runners as well as its web address on all the race bibs. Coffin also pushes out an e-mail newsletter to some 100 subscribers, offers an online store through his website Marathoncanada.com, and, yes, hosts those all-important twice-weekly free runs and numerous how-to clinics. Coffin is quick to distance his program from the Running Room's though. "We don't do clinics as much as we try promote a local running club,'' he says.
You say club. I say clinic. No matter how you pronounce it, retail marketing consultant Len Kubas says getting a lot of people in fluorescent gear outside your store twice weekly isn't enough. The president of Toronto-based Kubas Consultants says a good business plan is paramount. Such a plan should include a realistic assessment of the size of the market and the share Coffin might attract, as well as how the Rothesay store might make its products and services stand out, Kubas says. With those fundamentals in place, Coffin will likely do well against his competition, Kubas suggests, noting that enough distance exists between Saint John and Rothesay to maintain both the Running Room and Coffin's shop. "What you can't do is end up selling 100 pairs of shoes and then have a club of 100, of which 30 people go out for a run twice a week. That is not going to do it. You really have to develop that critical mass."
That doesn't mean Coffin's business launch is a walk in the park. Kubas says based on $100,000 of inventory, the runner probably needs to turn his stock over four times a year to earn $400,000 in sales annually. That's a lot of shoes - not to mention socks and shirts. The latter technical products with their ability to wick moisture away from a runner's skin, for example, are where the real money awaits. "Possibly what he's going to be looking for is adding on to the basic sale of runners,'' Kubas says, "because that's a pretty cut-throat business and doesn't have the same kind of margins."
Coffin's not slowing down, though. That soccer shop? He's opened it on the west side of Saint John, transferring his assistant manager from Rothesay over to run the show. A former business student at Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, he gravitated to the West Coast in the 1990s, where he managed a Running Room in Victoria. Ironically, after returning home, Coffin helped lobby for a Saint John Running Room, and subsequently managed that store for nearly two years. The marathoner recalls that as a child if he wanted racing flats, he'd have to travel to Boston to buy them before the Running Room opened locally. Stock investments, along with refinancing a Victoria house he still owns, supplied Coffin with his necessary start-up capital.
Coffin's ready to go the distance now: he vows the two New Brunswick shops represent the start of a running empire expansion across the Maritimes and the North-eastern United States. Rather than entering markets where the Running Room has already established its approximately 90 stores, he talks about eyeing smaller communities In the meantime Coffin offers just the sort of advice you'd expect to hear in a marathon clinic: "Everyone wants to know how well you're doing, so you might as well keep your expectations low, so you can honestly tell people you're ahead of schedule."