John Thomson, former Store Manager at Clarence Street Cyclery in Sydney, is starting this Friday in a new role at 99 Bikes.
“I was most recently at Clarence St for five years and nine months, but I’ve had a long history with the company,” John recalled. “I’m 43 years old now and I started doing part time work at the weekends when I was 16 years old. After I left school I worked for a couple of years there. There was about 15 years in between drinks before I went back again.
“In that time I worked in tourism, scuba diving, scuba wholesale. I worked with Orca in Australia when it came to the market. I was National Sales and Marketing Manager. Then I worked at Pearl Izumi with Wally Lancaster, as National Sales Manager and then I went to Scody.”
John said that his move from Clarence St was simply prompted by the need for a new challenge.
“I leave on really good terms with Tony (Cook, Clarence St founder). We go back a long way. There’s lots of respect there.
99 Bikes have been going for about seven years and they’ve got 20 shops. Their plan is to open 8-10 shops per year so that they have about 70 shops by 2020. And with the backing of Flight Centre, I was really looking to plug into a larger company with established systems, to add value to the company but also to learn a lot about their systems and processes.
“I’ll join as a Team Leader. I’ll be starting at their Brookvale store as the store manager. There’s three stores in Sydney at the moment: Bondi Junction, Artarmon and Brookvale.
“Brookvale would be the least well performing of those three. I was asked what I wanted to do. I definitely wanted to start in operations, to be on the ground and get a feel for the business.
“I’ll be looking to go in and really transform Brookvale. I want to get it firing, doing really well. They haven’t had the stability in staff. Also being able to plug into the local community.
“I think the position of the store is ok, but the layout of the shop… it’s hard to buy something in there. I think some clear strategies will really help. We should be able to make a good impact.
“There’s a lot of opportunities with 99 Bikes. Their head office is in Brisbane. I’m not looking to move to Brisbane at the moment but you never know what could happen.
“With the Flight Centre model, they get enough outlets in an area, then they have an Area Manager looking after that. So the more 99 Bike shops that come on board, the more potential.
“Beyond Brookvale, I might get a new store started for them and be heavily involved in their expansion plans.”