Railside Board Store

NAME – RAILSIDE

LOCATION – FRANKFURT

WEB – http://www.railslide.tv

Please give a brief history of your store, how it started, who started it and when it started?

We are a skate, snow, sneaker and stretwear shop and have been and since 1988 in the heart of Frankfurt

We started with a really small shop and grow every year a little bit more. Now we have two shops in Frankfurt very close togehter. We split it with our core skateshop (100 sqm)with more than 250 skatedecks, a lot of wheels, trucks, longboards etc.

In our other Shop (300sqm) we are focused more on streetwear and boardsports with snowboarding and sneakers.
We are happy that all of our manpower lives for boardsports and they know what they do.

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

Our best seller is defenitly shoes/sneakers. 

And special Vans shoes and Nike sneakers (Air Max & Vortex). For Vans we built an extra big shoe-wall for spring/summer 2013 (most models are authentic, authentic Lo Pro, LPE, Era)

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

We don´t have an online shop right now. We plan to start with online buisness  for autum/winter 13/14.

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

For Summer 2013 (in our Streetwear Shop)                          (in our Skateshop)

     1. Shoes                                                                        1. Shoes

     2. Shirts                                                                         2. Decks

     3. Shorts                                                                        3. Longboards

     4. Pants                                                                       4. Saftey Gear (Helmets, Knee and elbow Pads)

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

Start earlier with the online buisness. 

In our store we would do the same. We would go for capable staff, a good and diverse brand and product selection and a competent customer services approach. And we would still organize events for our customers and support the local scene in the same way.

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

We like this thought, this way we have direct contact with our customers. 

It is our goal to find the right product for every customer, which is only possible through a good personal cutomer service in our shop. 

What are you doing to pull people into your store?

We work a lot with Facebook and Instagram and post limited models or small brands what we sell in our shop. We open our eyes for new an fresh brands. We make art exhibitions in our store with local artists.

In addition you can rent longboards in our shop for testing and cruising wih friends.

We have a store card for our cutomers.

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

This is definetly our online store for the next season.

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

We have a lot of events for our customers. We have a skate school, make snowboard camps, snow and skate contests, longboard testivals & Video premiers etc.

We think that is a good mix to provide information about the needs from our customers and to build a “Railslide Family/Community”

How confident are you for the coming summer?

We will see, we hope the weather will be good and not too cold and rainy.

I think we have a good product mix in our shop, which makes a good buisness.

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

Be focused on your own core capabilities. Look for smaller brands in your brand-mix. Use the posibilty to react faster to changes in competitive conditions, than the bigger companies are able to.