BECOMING A BIKE SHOP MEMBER

The Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition welcomes bike shops as business members of the Coalition. We seek to we can work together to make things better for bicycling in Vermont, which in turn helps your business. Your customers are our customers, and vice versa.

This outline describes our vision for collaboration. Within this framework, we are happy to determine how we can best work with you as an individual shop owner.

Here’s what we can give you:

1. A highlighted listing on our website and link to your website or full contact information for shops that do not have your own website.
2. Listing in our newsletter.
3. Educational materials for your shop to distribute. We particularly recommend tucking a basic safety information card into the owner's manual for a new bicycle.
4. Access to Bicycle Safety Instructors if your shop wishes to offer adult bicycle safety education classes.
5. “Share the Road” bumper stickers for your customers.
   • Each member bike shop receives 10 “Share the Road“ bumper stickers
   • Additional stickers may be purchased at 75¢ each.
   • We recommend that you sell the stickers to your customers for $1.50.
   • We do not recommend that you give them away, because many free stickers do not make it onto customer’s cars.
   • Some shops chose instead to ask their customers to donate $1 or $1.50 for a sticker and donate the proceeds to the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition. (put out stickers with a donation jar on your counter?)
6. Access to our advocacy network. We know that bicycling issues are important to you. If you like, we can strategically include you in our education and outreach with government officials. We could include you in a call list of people willing to testify before relevant committees in the legislature, or potentially bringing you into important decisions with state agencies/governor. It is important to have the business voice of bicycling heard.
7. Long term—stronger bicycling culture in Vermont, which is good for business!
8. “We Support“ sticker for your door or cash register, to show your affiliation to your customers.

What we ask you to give us:

1. Business membership contribution at the appropriate level. We have a sliding scale based on your gross business sales:
   • Sales up to $500,000: $50
   • Sales $500,000 to $1 million: $100
   • Sales $1 million to $2 million: $250
2. Display space for our membership brochures at your bike shop. We can provide a display rack if you want one.
3. If you are willing, occasional use of your customer mailing list for membership recruitment (no more than once a year, and likely less frequently).
4. Occasional access to your customer email list for advocacy alerts—we would send you an alert which we would like to ask you to turn around and send to your customers. That way you maintain the primary contact with the customer, and we get our message out.
5. A clipboard or sign-up sheet to collect names of customers who want receive information about the Coalition. Mail or fax us the list 2-3 times a year.
   • A specific ask “would you like to get information about the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition?” for customers who buy a new bicycle.
6. The opportunity to educate your customers about safe bicycling, through educational materials and possibly classes.
7. Publicity, by displaying a “We Support” sticker and/or bumper sticker on the shop door.

A few additional notes:

Our newsletter does not accept display ads, in case you were wondering, but we are very happy to list member bike shops with name, town, and phone number.

In 2003, our website will list the name, town and county of non-member shops. We want to support bicycle shops! In a year or so, as our membership grows, we will probably stop listing non-member shops, so that we can devote the space to singing the praises of our supporting bicycle shops!

For more information please contact us.