Retailer Profile: X Double, Innsbruck, Austria

Best Seller/Core Store

Shop Name – Xdouble

Location – Innsbruck/Austria

Website – https://www.facebook.com/xdouble

What particular product has been the best seller? What’s working and what isn’t?

We had a very good sell through with Snowboard Boots this Winter. We saw that mid range to higher priced Boots were really good – especially limited models. Outerwear was really bad in general. Now in Summer we have a good sell through on skate shoes and sneakers as well as on skateboards and t-shirts.

What percentage of your sales are from online business compared to your brick-and-mortar sales?

Currently we do not run a webshop.

What are five products you couldn’t live without right now?

Skateshoes, T-Shirts, Skateboards, Boots, Pants

Did your store’s sales increase or decrease over last year? To what do you attribute your gain or loss in sales? What will you do to either maintain your growth or to reverse the decline?

Decrease, because the winter sales went down and we sold less outerwear which is a higher priced product and so this is a higher loss of turnover. I’m sure we also lose turnover to the growing online market. We will have an even bigger focus on brands which fit in with us as a core store. We look out for limited, core only products and will keep on investing in the local scene with team riders, local events and pushing local skate- and snowboard crews with their projects.

If you could go back five years what would you do differently?

I think looking back and thinking what we should have changed makes no sense to me. We live now and have to deal with the current situation. So looking forward and making on plans how we can survive a tough market is where we have to invest our energy into. But to be honest sometimes I think we should have invested in an online business. But when I see the battle in online and the big competitors online, I’m not sure about that either…..

What are the benefits of having a physical shop over simply having an online store?

We are able to talk and listen to our customers. Our customers have the possibility to touch and try the product and buy it with a personal expert’s advice from people who love to Skate and Snowboard. We saw that with snowboard boots this year – the good sell through is to do with this for sure – buying a boot for €350 online is not as easy as buying a t-shirt there. I think a physical store is also much more sustainable than an online store.

What trends do you see upcoming?

We see more tech in skate shoes coming as well as pants are getting wider again.

What are you doing to pull people into your store?

We carry products and brands, which no other store around has and some of them are even not sold via the internet. We give local brands a chance to start up. We try to be in the middle of the scene and not just watch it from the outside. We have strong a Facebook site and we are also investing in Facebook Ads, Sponsoring Events and have a cooperation with the local media.

Please tell us of any upcoming initiatives your shop has planned?

We plan to organize a skate contest in the Tivoli skate park and we are a partner of the WUB Open in Innsbruck’s fantastic indoor skate park. We will have some tour stops of Skate crews in front of our store – for example the LRG Letting The Kids Play Tour. In Winter we are a partner of several Snowboard contests, we have a Brand Village at the Air&Style and are organizing Snowboard- and Skateboard video premieres.

How do you stay in touch with the wants and needs of your customers?

Talk, talk, talk to them  – the advantage of a physical store 😉  

How confident are you for the coming summer?

As the weather here is not really showing more than a few days of summer at the moment – it could be better. The problem is that products like shorts, boardshorts, sandals etc… are just sold if its really warm and the summer sale is so early that customers are just waiting for it if the weather is bad… To sell a pair of boardshorts is not easy anymore….

What kind of advice can you give other independent retailers who are trying to compete against the big box megastores?

Try to focus on your strength, which is for sure the knowledge about the scene and the possibility to get limited lines. Stay true to what you are and show people that a local scene has a lot of benefits from a local shop with team riders and events.