Episode 6: The Data Behind the Fit
What happens during a footwear fitting that traditional sales reports never capture?
Greg Koch and Mark Jimenez introduce the Fit App, a tool built specifically for run specialty retailers. The idea began with Greg’s analog fit scorecard—a system for recording the shoes customers tried, how each model felt, and what ultimately earned the sale. Mark took that concept and worked to turn it into a digital platform connected to the store’s point-of-sale system.
The resulting data goes far beyond what sold. It shows which products employees are presenting, which shoes customers prefer, how often fitting sessions end without a purchase, and where additional staff training may be needed. Greg and Mark also explain how stores can use this information to strengthen vendor relationships, support inventory swaps, coach employees, follow up with customers, and make better purchasing decisions.
More than a conversation about software, this episode explores data ownership, continuous improvement, and the responsibility independent retailers have to understand what is really happening at the fit bench. The Fit App is another tool—but its value depends on a store’s willingness to do the work.
Running Specialty Cooperative Podcast
Episode 6 The Data Behind the Fit
Hosts Greg Koch and Mark Jimenez
Topic The Fit App and data-driven run specialty retail
Length 43 minutes 3 seconds
Editorial note This transcript has been lightly edited for punctuation, clarity, repeated words, and corrected names and industry terminology while preserving the conversational character of the recording.
00:00 GREG
You are listening to the Running Specialty Cooperative podcast with your host, Greg Koch and Mark Jimenez. Welcome, Mark. I think you're pretty excited for this week. I have a strong feeling I know what you're going to talk about, but before we dive into all of those things, how you been?
00:15 MARK
I'm good. I'm curious what you think I'm going to talk about. It's been a busy week. I'm going to New York in a couple days to run my last major marathon, the New York City Marathon, and of course, TRE is right around the corner, but I think we could have a TRE preview episode
00:31 GREG
for the next podcast. We're getting pretty legit. Yeah. Yeah, New York. I'm assuming you've been to New
00:38 MARK
York. I've been to New York when I was a little kid, three years old. I lived on Long Island and we went to a Yankees game once. That's about all I remember. And I bet that was awesome. Old Yankee Stadium, not the not the new Yankee Stadium. Yes. And but Reggie Jackson was playing. This was later in his career. He was playing for the angels at the time. So I did get to see Reggie Jackson play baseball when I was three years old. That is those are core memories right there.
01:06 GREG
I love that. Yeah. So I got to go to New York last year for the first time and my daughter Violet calls New York her special place. And so I don't feel like my visits are going to stop going to New York. It's a pretty cool place. I thought Violet loved the zoo. She does love the zoo, but she also loves the Ninja Turtles. And they are headquartered in New York City. And so every corner, she was spotting the Ninja Turtles as we were in New York City. And so she also is a big fan of the Statue of Liberty. And so yeah, it's her special place. You know, we were in Central Park and she found the Statue of Balto. So then we had to read the book Balto and learn all about the sled dog. So you never know what's going to what she's going to get into. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool.
01:55 MARK
Balto is Balto the one that stealing all the credit from the one that actually did most of the running. Balto was just the lead dog for the last. There's another dog. I'm not sure which one that was the lead dog for most of it. And then Balto is a last lead dog and stole the glory from
02:13 GREG
the whole movie about it. Yeah. Well, there's there's a good lesson in that. It's a parallel or something that can apply to business. I'm sure. Yeah. The parable of sled dogs. Yeah. Well, I think the world is full of technology. And there's a lot of buzz on all sorts of different types of technology. But Mark, I feel like you want to talk about a certain piece of technology this week. Am I wrong in that? Or are you pretty excited to talk about this little app that you've been
02:39 MARK
working on? Are you talking about the Fit App, Greg? I am talking about the Fit App. Yes. I mean, yeah, I didn't come here planning to talk about I did that, but we certainly can. Yeah.
02:50 GREG
I did. I think it's a great piece of technology. And I hope that other running specialties
02:56 MARK
store owners appreciate it for what it is. So what is it, Mark? Well, I mean, realistically, there's a backstory here. We Greg and I and some other store owners meet once or twice a year. if you count TRE as one of those meetings and then we try to go to a host like Greg has hosted in Sioux Falls, I hosted in Vegas. We've been to Manhattan, Kansas and the Black Hills as well. So South Dakota twice. But during that time, we always bounce ideas off each other. And one of the things that Greg was doing that I was like, this is really cool. Is Greg was doing a fit scorecard. So I mean, why don't you tell everybody about the fit scorecard
03:38 GREG
and then I could continue with the Fit App? Yeah. Fit scorecard came from Runchella. I said in, I think it was Tortoise & Hare was talking about their medical programs. And having a conversation about doctors charting after you visit. And I thought we should keep better records of when our customers visit. Like we could chart, we could write down notes and apply that to a profile of our customers so that we know them better. Obviously, run specialty is all about relationships and knowing your customers is a huge part of what makes us special. It's truly the one differentiator that we have is how well do you know your customer base and how many times do they come and visit you? And I wanted to keep better data. But then a lot of the Runchella conversation was also about maintaining better rep relations. And so when I was thinking about charting, I was and it would be really cool if we could really speak to how often we're pulling shoes because every single one of my reps comes in with a report of everything that I purchased from them. But that doesn't always translate to the best data of how is it performing in the store? And so I wanted to keep records of yes, I actually am pulling your shoes. They're just not winning at the Fit Bench. Or boy, we should probably order more shoes because they keep selling when we actually do pull them or how can we dig into training our staff better. There's just a lot of thoughts that we're going into it and got overwhelmed pretty fast because I am very much an analog thinker. And so I love the, I love a paper and pen. I love sitting down and reading physical books, those types of things. And so our system was pretty analog. We had a Google form that we were punching everything in. But our staff literally were handwriting all of our notes and entering all of these things into a Google spreadsheet. And for busy days or busier times, that just wasn't going to work realistically. But it was a really cool idea. And we've had a ton of fun doing it charting and keeping those records customers love it. They get to have a record of what they've tried on. And it's a cool deal. But it ran out of steam pretty fast just because of our capacity to be able to keep track of it.
05:57 MARK
Fair. Yeah. Customers coming in, you're writing stuff analog. You got to input it. So the way my brain works is, I mean, and this was years ago. Congress was what maybe four years ago. And by the way, thanks for mentioning Tortoise & Hare. Those guys are really smart. I need to reach out to they are Nathan and touch base with them because I love bouncing ideas off them. Rebecca and Nathan gave you this idea and then you talked about it at one of our meetings. And it's just stuck in my head and it bounced around. And some of you probably remember a few years ago, I had a big meeting and I stood in front and I was like, I invited everybody around special. It was like something's got to change. Our data is being taken from us. I can still get fired up about that. Our data is valuable. Our sell-through data is valuable. And it's basically being taken from us. And then in some cases, we're actually paying the people who are taking it from us. And then they're saying, hey, look, we stole your data and now pay us. Anyway, don't get me started. We can give you some pretty
06:52 GREG
reports of what your data looks like. Yeah, yeah. For the low price of anyway,
06:57 MARK
all of your money. Yes. And my perspective is like, hey, this is ours. You should be paying us, not the other way around. Anyway, Greg's idea bounced around in my head. And I quickly realized that it's a, the sell-through data is a crowded space. There's a lot of places that do that, you know, bricks, uh, as, you know, if you're on the ricks POS, they're taking yoursell-through data. It's in the contract, you signed on page 57 subparagraph B12 or something. It's in there upper quadrants, another one that deals with data. Fleet feet has their own data. And this is all sell-through data. So brands know about sell-through data. They know what's selling in the store. We know what's selling in the store. Greg knows what's selling in his store. I know what's selling in my store. But I kept thinking like there's, there's value in what Greg's doing. And I thought, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. I'm going to create, I'm going to digitize what Greg did. Now, I taught high school for 23 years. I was also a dissertation advisor. So I have a doctorate and for a while, I spent some time doing a dissertation advisor and plagiarism is like a big no-no in academia. But in the rest of the world, it's like a huge compliment. So I totally stole Greg's idea. And I hope he's not mad at me. But I digitized it. And I started, you know, with chat, GPT, like I want to code this app. It can't be that hard. Because I mean, realistically, I want to tie it to the POS. So I want to scan UPCs. I want to give customers an ability to rank the shoes. And then I want to tie sales from the fit session to the UPC. I want customers to be able to come back in three, four, five, 10 weeks later and go, Hey, last time I was here, I tried these shoes on. I bought a ghost, but I really tried something else on. I don't know what it was. Can you help me? Now we can. So I started coding and ChatGPT, which was really just time consuming because it ended up being like, Oh, here's what you want to do. Here's a code copy and paste it here. Oh, this didn't work. Okay, change this. So this, it was about this time last year, I started doing this and I just spent hours in front of my computer. And I got the basic layout going, but I couldn't get the API link to Lightspeed working. So I had to end up bringing in a partner on the project, Peter, who is, you know, does a lot of this stuff with Circana. That's the name of the other big company. Circana. Anyway, that does data. Peter does a lot of this kind of stuff with bike shops around the country. So he was the right guy to go. He got the Lightspeed connection working in about 0.5 seconds. And we started testing it in my store. Yeah.
09:39 GREG
And then I think what's happened is you've created an incredible tool and you can kind of pick any segment of the run specialty store experience and talk about how this tool impacts that process. So you can dig into fit process. What's your customer interface experience look like? Well, one of the first things that I'm going to do is, you know, we always talk about when I'm training my staff, it says running on the side of our door. And that's really scary thing for a lot of the population like, oh, running. I don't know how I feel about that. And so you got to turn the temperature down and you got to humanize the experience. And so one of the easiest ways to do that is to introduce yourself. I'm Greg. What's your, let's, let's, let's enter you in here. Welcome you into the store. And part of the app is automatically I'm building this profile because I care about who you are and the human level. I want to get to know you first before we do anything. What is your name? And it's so effective to incorporate that into your fit process. I've always trained staff to introduce themselves and to learn the name of what they're working with. But it's, it seems so rudimentary and so basic. But the app gives your staff a tool to make that seem really natural and normal. And you can go down any path with this thing and talk about how it's a
10:58 MARK
game changer. Well, that's one of the first things we discovered right off the bat is that customers are leaving our store and we were never getting their data because we always get their name, email, phone number at the POS at the end of the sale, the cash register. Yeah. Yeah. When they're buying something. But if they go through the fit process and walk out, we might, we don't even know who they are. And so one of the very first things we realized is like, I'm getting this information from you, right? As you're walking in. So, hey, it starts the conversation like great was just talking about, Hey, how are you? I'm going to, I'm going to try, we're going to build a profile for you so that if you ever come back, you know what shoes you tried on. But we get their first name, last name, email and phone number right off the bat. And it's it's perfect. So even if that customer walks out, they've got a profile and Lightspeed and now we could send them, you know, our emails. If we have text messaging, we could send them that.
11:47 GREG
That's that's like one of the first wins we discovered. Yeah. And it's, you know, capturing it at the point of sale, you know, is inherently much more transactional than getting to know you right away and explaining. All right, everything that we're going to do today, we want to keep a record of because we want, we're doing this really in your best interest. And the reason why is we want to keep a record of what you tried on so that you're going to be able to get the best piece of gear because you're going to get your sizing. You're going to understand, you know, what you like and what you don't like. And it's more relationship driven than transactional driven when the first thing you're doing is saying, I'm Greg. How are you? What's your name? Let's get you, let's get a profile started so that what you're doing here matters. I don't want to just push you through this to make a sale. I want to make sure that you get the best possible experience, the right gear for what you came in here for today. And I think that mindset is, I mean, it's run specialty at its core. And
12:44 MARK
I'm a huge fan of just that very first start with the app. Yeah, it guides, it guides you through the fit process. It guides the conversation for the sales associate. You know, it's literally right there in the app. You just tried on a shoe. Tell me how it felt. Like, what are you feeling right now? You could take notes, you could put it in there. And we've got a Likert scale. We originally started one through four on the on the scale. And I should have known better because Likert scales are usually one through five, but some of the first feedback we got was, can you add one through five? Because we really want to put that three. Like we want that three to be right in the middle. So we changed it to one through five and you know, you get to rate the shoes you try on. And you know, from that data, the customer, you know, first customer facing, like Greg said, it's it's perfect. The customer can come back. We've had customers call the store with it. I try on. We could tell them it's safe to their Lightspeed profile. It also saves in the Fit App. So it's in two places. And then of course, as we do this over time, we started this in one store. Once we got the software, it's all good enough. I opened it to all four of my stores. And then we brought in a couple beta testers, Greg being one of them, to really work out some kinks. And there's still some kinks that are in there. But the bugs are less and less. But as time goes on, you start recognizing patterns with what your associates are pulling with the sale through rate without shoes are rated. So there's there's just nuggets of gold in there that every time we get together, there's a group of beta testers or we get an excited text message from Eric or Trey waking up in the middle of the night with something he's discovered in the best way. But there's just so much. It's like it's I literally feel that
14:24 GREG
every day I learned something new. That's valuable. Yeah, it's it's a very cool tool. You talked about going to the first things that you learned from this, being capturing the customer's name and info. What are some of the other things that you learned that you weren't expecting, Mark?
14:40 MARK
I so along with the customer info, we pulled along those lines as we knew. One of the topics of conversation in our meetings has always been like, who's walking out? You know, what percentage of your customers are actually leading to sales? And we talked about door counters. And we could have door counters that, you know, count people. But then, but then, you know, what about families? What about people that come in as friends? Like, how does how do you really know? So one of the first things Peter put in there and I didn't even realize he was going to do this was, you know, non sale percentage. So these are the people who went through the Fit App, went through the fit process, but didn't end up purchasing anything. And for us, that floats between 20 and 25%. So one in four to one in five customers goes through our fit process, but doesn't buy anything. And that is extremely valuable for us to know. We had no idea what that percentage was. If I had to guess, I would have said maybe 15%, 20 to 25% is something that we can work on. We're also able to now retarget those customers because we know who they are. So we could say, you know, if you're listening to this and you want to try the Fit App, call Trey over at Manhattan Running Company and let him tell you about the magic he's done with this part, you know, of contacting the customers who've walked out, he will, and you could just hear the excitement in his voice. You won't get resting, bitch voice mark, you'll get excited Trey. I got, I got an excited Trey call last night, but you probably got a similar one. I did not know. He's got another thing that is just every lady special-order related. Even but I love Trey. I love is enthusiasm and isn't enthusiasm for sharing. But so you asked about, you know, the customers, you know, just knowing who walks out and being able to send them an email afterwards or give them a call and say, Hey, you know, you tried this on. You know, we'd love to help you out. This is what you rated the highest, etc. etc. And then we also get to see employee bias. So we always knew employees had bias based on sell through data because again, we know very well what we sold. But now we have, we know employee bias based on what's being pulled. If you carry nine shoe brands in your store, but your employees are only pulling regularly, three of them. Well, there's a problem. You've got six brands that you're spending money on that aren't being presented to the customer. And as a store owner, you've got to make, I mean, our margins stay the same, but the cost of everything is going up. So we've got to squeeze every penny out everywhere we can. And that's an area where you're like, wait a minute, like some of the nuggets I'm finding here are that. I'll take a brand, let's say, I'm going to say Altra had a very low pull percentage. So they weren't being presented to the customer. But when they were being presented to the customer, they had a high selection rate, meaning this shoe wasn't presented to the customer a lot. But when it was presented, it was winning. So as a store owner, you go, that's maybe that's something that we could pay attention to.
17:49 GREG
Yeah, it's that's the fun part, right? As store owners, you look at your stock room and you go, well, that's just a giant pile of cash there on fire. And I sure would like to turn that back into cash. That would be fantastic. And so I mentioned Trey's excited about special orders, but that's something you can coach on that special order process. Why are we special ordering a shoe when I have nice? Yeah, that is what you're reminding me of when you said it's on fire. Yeah. For listeners, it's a statue that says this is on fire. But that special order process, I've got inventory. I've got something for everyone in my stock room. How do I coach my staff to focus on what are the customer needs? What are they looking for? And why are they special ordering a shoe for me today? He and I sell them something in my stock room versus going through the rigamarole and putting the transaction in someone else's hands in the special order process. Being a warehouse or a robot or a mail carrier, whatever that might be, it's infinitely better to sell the stuff back there in the stock room than it is to do a special order for so many reasons. And the app gives you a tool to be able to coach to that. And then coaching to data is always better than coaching to personal feelings, right? Talk to me about that mark.
19:12 MARK
Feelings are great. They're qualitative, but the yeah, butts that you get from staff. And I thought we'd get a lot of pushback from staff because ultimately this app is only as good as your staff's ability to use it. So if you're listening in your store owner and you're thinking, well, my staff will never do that. My question to you is why are they your staff? I was talking about pushback. I was a little worried my employees wouldn't want to do this. And there was some pushback, the biggest one being, oh, it takes too much time. Like what about a busy Saturday if I'm working with three customers? And we worked through that. And look guys, you're young. This is a device open in your tab being bang boom, you've got it. But yes, you want to coach to the data for what you know to be true. Statistics work a certain way. And the outliers, while they do happen are rare and do not affect the general data. They're an outlier. So you can't coach to that outlier. You have to coach to what you're seeing. So if you're seeing that a brand isn't being pulled, but it sells and that brand gives you a great discount, you don't have that conversation with employees. Like, hey, right now and runs best the product is great across the board. Every brand is putting out really good quality shoes. So in that world, why aren't you presenting a shoe to a customer that might be a win for that customer? And also by the way, there's things that benefit you as the associate as well. Like if I'm able to pay you more, if we can shave some extra sense here and there. Absolutely. That's
20:51 GREG
great stuff. You talked about, you know, pushback of a busy day, talked to me about your technology implementation. What sort of investment did you have to make in your stores? I'll let you go first when I can talk about for us and how we've done it because it's two different scales. And I think that's generally why people like listening to us. Mark is we look at things in different ways and we come up with different solutions. So tell me your technology and implementation and the solutions you came up with making the app function on the sales floor.
21:21 MARK
Yeah. Well, because Red Rock Running Company has infinite amounts of money. I actually have one right here. We went out and bought these little rugged tablets five per store. And you could see it's got a little scanner on the back of it. I have this one because it stopped working. I have to send it back. We've had two out of 20 that have the scanner, the tablet works, but the scanner stopped working. So they replaced one and I'm in the process of sending this one back. It also, this one broke, but they have a hand strap on the back so you can carry it around and you know, it's just got this screen. This one's a, I think it's an eight inch screen, which for an old guy like me that wears reading glasses might not be the best, but for, you know, your younger people, they're able to enter the information. And they just carry it around. It's like when you walk into the Verizon store, the AT&T store, they have the tablet, you can scan the shoes right from this. It's very quick. The app also does scan from camera, scan the cute, the barcode from camera. This is a little slower and sometimes it's hard to get that to line up the barcode in there. So I really like these. They scan super fast. And it inputs that shoe and it's, it's like, you know, if you scan a rebel, the UPC, it pops up the rebel, the color size, the width, everything's there. So that's our technology implementation. We made an investment to get this technology. We already had iPads in the store that I couldn't find a good scanner. I want them to only use one hand, not two. So that's why we went with these guys, but I think
22:48 GREG
you did something different, Greg. I did. Yeah, so we have iPads in the store as well. And I found this little scanner at Walmart for 45 bucks. And it's spring loaded and it just fixed onto the iPad. We use the iPads for checkout. And so we can do the whole thing sort of from the bench if we want to, which is great. But then also at our point of sale, we'll chart shoes there too, because you can open it on a web browser. So we've got a computer, like a desktop point of sale system, but then we have our iPads all that sort of linked together. So my overall investment for my two stores was $2, $45 scanner, some $90 bucks to just fix those onto the iPads we were already using and made it happen. No, just a bootstrapper. That's what it is. Is that a Bluetooth connection to your iPad or is it plugged? It is. It's Bluetooth. And they work, they work pretty great. But it is, yeah, two hands are sort of required for it. It's just got a little button like right here. And then you just point it and shoot it similar to what you've got going on. But it's a bigger screen. I'm also an older guy with fat fingers. So bigger screens nice for me to be able to type and do stuff. But it gives staff the flexibility they can use the iPads or they can chart at the point of sale. Either way, we're capturing all the shoes coming out of the stock room, which is really my priority. Because then it just creates a conversation point with your reps. Talk to me about some of those experiences you've had as far as conversation points with brands or
24:21 MARK
reps and how the Fit App has impacted those relationships. Yeah, if you've owned a running store or any business long enough, you see the wave of product popularity up and down. And sometimes a brand will be very popular. And then it starts on the way down. And you might not know the reason for that, but you know that you've got a lot of them in the back room that you can't move. So we have, you know, future orders and we slashed a particular brand. We cut way back on a future order. And the rep, you know, doing the reps jobs and to email and said, hey, like, this is like the second month in a row, you guys have really cut these orders. Like, what's going on? And I was able to pull data from the Fit App and give like exact numbers. We presented this model 827 times in the last two months of those 827 times. It sold 56 times. That is not a great percentage. We are presenting your product, but your product isn't moving. And from that conversation, you know, the rep, we're like, Oh, wow, like this is great data. I've never seen this before. And we were able to, you know, negotiate a swap where we're taking that whole model. Everything we got sent in it back and bringing in a new model that's been doing great at other stores. And that's the kind of stuff. And by the way, you know, we were also able to not pay for that swap, except for a dollar value on inventory. That was different. So in other words, if one cost 50 bucks in the other cost 60 bucks, we paid the $10 difference for those of you who were like, what is he talking about?
25:58 GREG
Well, and to that point going to places like the running event or Runchella or whatever industry events, you always, as especially as a smaller store, you hear about, well, just do swaps and do this and then that and the other. And if you're in a rural spot where you might not have the best rep coverage or those types of experiences, it might be more challenging or might feel like you have more barriers to make those things happen. But if you work on those relationships and build that, it can happen. And so for us, I've used our Fit App data and tied it with inventory on hand and our cell through data, put them all together for reports that I give my reps. And so there really is no ambiguity between what's happening in the store versus what we have on hand and what's going on. And so last month with two of our brands, we were able to really focus on cleaning up our inventory with swaps. It's so much easier to have that conversation when you have really good data to present of this is either it's dusty inventory, it's not moving, it's not selling through, we're presenting it. When you can answer all those yeah-buts with your reps, it makes that conversation pretty easy to happen. And it's not like a hard negotiation experience. Let's look at the data points. Again, we talk coaching staff to data. It's the same thing when you're having these rep relations. And your reps want you to be successful. That's the biggest thing is your reps will work with you if you can work with them. And the Fit App gives you so much opportunity to create a good dialogue with
27:30 MARK
your rep. That's valuable, right? Even that information, what we're pulling in our stores is valuable because even in 2026 when a customer can get a running shoe anywhere, they could go online, they could go to Nordstrom, they could go to DSW. Even in all that, the brands know that run specialty still drives the market. And we have countless examples of brands that started and run specialty that just blew up and got huge. And so we still lead the way. We're still early adopters. You know, Hoka before Hoka was anything and run specialty store somewhere, I picked up Hoka. And then another store was like, oh man, they're selling a lot of Hoka. Maybe I should try this moon boot brand. And then other stores were like, well, they're thick and they look weird, but they're selling. So maybe we should try it. And then that leads the trend and that turns, that turns the needle. And the reason I'm saying this is because if we still have that influence, then what we're presenting to customers is very important. And if we're completely ignoring a brand no matter how good their quality is, that's a disservice to that brand. But also, that's an opportunity to talk to that brand and say, hey, we'd love to present you. Let's work out some kind of, some kind of deal. You go to the grocery store. Lots of businesses do this. You go to the grocery store and where project is placed in the grocery store, brands paid for that. Right. I level a brand paid to have their product at eye level. That doesn't happen and run especially with the exception of, I believe, Road Runner Sports has I've heard has some kind of deal like this where they have a presentation. I'm not sure how it works. I've just heard rumors. So I could be way off. Sorry road runner. If I'm way off. But we also have a tool that's that's a show me. It's not just take my word for a wink, wink, I'm going to present, I'm going to present your brand to every customer. Now give me a good deal. Like, no, I can actually show you the number of times we presented every model, every color, every different skew, men, women, I can show you this and say, this is what's working. This is what's not. And we did a case study to prove that this is right with a brand that had 7% of our market share. And we said, we're going to pull your brand for every customer. Now, the Red Rock Running Company way is we try to pull four shoes customer. Doesn't always work. But we try to pull four shoes for customer. And what I told my associates is one of those shoes has to be this brand. Don't push it. Just present it. And what we found is their market share in our store almost doubled over a quarter from 7% to 13.7%. That's market share. Growth rate was something. It's an email I sent. So like 56% growth rate. That's incredible. So this is valuable to the brands. It's got to be valuable.
30:29 GREG
Absolutely. And the converse. First of all, if you don't have a rep that doesn't get excited about getting data from you, that's when you get to have a conversation with their boss of like, hey, I've got this great data and we don't get to talk about it at all. Reps that are worth their salt are really excited when you send them a report that says, hey, we're pulling your shoes this amount of time. And because they're again, they want to coach to that as well. You know, they want to set up. I've gotten so much from our tech reps of we really need to get back into your store. We need to have a tech night with your staff. We really want to build out the learning opportunity. What can we do to highlight the value of this and of this product or this specific model, whatever it might be, it drives those conversations. It is so much fun. I really hope people understand how incredible this tool is in so many different directions. But the rep relations, I'm pretty passionate about that. I've spoken on it quite a few times, but just because we're a small store and we're sort of bound by having a lot of distance to our rep force. And I got to tell you can't tell anymore in our stores that we're a small store that we're bound by distance because our reps are excited to talk to us because we've opened up these avenues of communication and given them a reason to have to acknowledge us.
31:54 MARK
Yeah, that rep relationship is important. And if you're listening to this and you're like, my rep, never ask about this stuff and start sending it. Yeah, start sending them some important data about their brand. It doesn't have to be about everybody. Just about their brand. And if you don't get a reaction, yeah, talk to their boss, don't be shy. Like, you deserve it. You're buying their product. Like, speak with your dollars. Capitalism, like say, Hey, I'm spending money with you guys. And in return, I would like to have a meaningful conversation with my rep.
32:24 GREG
And yeah, come prepared to sell. And if you're going to TRE, this isn't our TRE preview, but if that's when you get to meet with them, come prepared. Don't just let them tell you how you're doing with their brand. You know it better than they do. Like, show them. Here's what we're seeing. here's what our experiences and this is where we would like to go. Yeah. Yeah. So have you
32:48 MARK
found any other gems in the Fit App over there at 605?
32:52 GREG
You know, where for me, it's what I like about it is, you know, you and I both are really big on continuous learning. And so as a leader, it's really challenged me to coach better and to really kind of dig back into fit process and coach the staff of what does our standard of excellence look like? What does professionalism look like? And how are we going to implement this on the floor? We call our set fit advisors really focusing in on that job and making it a professional job. And that's that's been the fun part. I would say the app has led the charge on me developing that and being just a better leader and a better coach. And so we've had more productive meetings. And we've had just a really good time. I've had a good time of working with our younger staff and getting them to understand the importance of this. You know, all the conversations we're having. Again, I'm able to speak to it more from a data perspective. This allows them to get sort of that peek behind the curtain of understanding how the business operates in a better way. And it's just it's just been really good to challenge me as a leader that way.
34:01 MARK
I love it. I love being challenged as a leader.
34:05 GREG
What's it? Yeah. So obviously one of the questions I had for you is once you set it out into the world with myself and with Trey at Manhattan Running Company and Eric at Run Around, what surprised you the most about how each store sort of grabbed it and took it in maybe a
34:23 MARK
different direction? Yeah, I was I was worried to do it. I have a big mouth. I think a lot of people in the industry. They see me coming like, oh, there's Mark. Let me put his soap box down, some Mark and stand on it and preach about something. And that, you know, that does kind of way on me a little bit. But you guys are friends and I wanted to share this with you. And I remember you know, we got on a Google Meet and I started showing you this stuff. And I remember seeing Eric like Eric was like right into the screen, looking at everything and he's smiling. And I'm like, either this guy's like making fun of me or he's really engaged. And I think I straight up asked when I was like, Eric, what's that smile about? He's like, this is the missing link. This is the customer resource management tool we need. where has this been? I'm so excited to use it. And the three of you have taken it different ways. You've kind of been, I want to say slow and it's oddical, but that's not right. Like you've been an analytical in your process to it. Eric almost redesigned his whole story, set up fit stations around his store with tablets and scanners set up. So where you can take a customer to them, Trey's brain works a million miles a minute. And is I think he tries something new every day. But he's the one who early on, I had to slow trade down. I had to be like, he'd be like, well, what about this? We should do this. What can the app do this? And Peter and I like, yes, Trey, the app can do these things. But like, let's make sure it works functionally with what we have right now before we start breaking it with new toys on me. He's like, okay, okay. But every brand manager has felt that from Trey. Yes. But they're great ideas. And we're starting to add some of them like one of the things you might have noticed in the report section is how many shoes were presented in a sell-in session, like, was only one shoe presented were two, five plus. So you can see if you have a goal, like I want to present four shoes per customer. Now you can see this percent of people who went through my fit process were presented for shoes. This percent was only presented one shoe. And we still think there's value in recording that even if somebody comes in and says, I've been wearing the GEL-KAYANOs since it was GEL-KAYANO one and it's GEL-KAYANO 33. And I'm not going to change now. Just give me the next GEL-KAYANO. Like we still record the fit session and record that data. So it's been fun to see how three different store owners took this and made it their own. I think they've really learned from it and used it to benefit their business.
36:44 GREG
Yeah, it's it's been really cool to see independence still thrive. You know, it's like you created a tool mark and you send it to us, but it wasn't like you have to use it exactly this way. It was here's this tool. How's it going to work in your store and then that independence and that creative freedom to put it to work for us. I think has been really quite unique and it meets you where you're at and you're able to have that sort of open end in this about it in terms of, okay, this is a tool, you know, I'm either going to build a house or I'm going to build a boat. How am I going to put it to work? That's how I think we've gone leaps and bounds with the capabilities is going into that beta testing period of having opening it up to other stores. Hocked me, Mark, about the next phase, kind of where we're at right now, launching FID app and sort of opening it up a little bit more
37:40 MARK
broadly has where we at with that. Yeah, it's it's famously taken off like a Led Zeppelin. It's been slow. I presented it, but you know, store owners are busy. I send out an email and they just kind of wait and how come my email is not dinging with replies? You're going to say something. I feel what you're talking about very much. Yeah. So, you know, I've gotten some responses. I've been posting our store on our Facebook group. And honestly, I just want to keep getting the word out there. Sometimes in our busy lives, we miss things. And it's very easy. Like I do it, like emails. I'm like, okay, this was great. I'll get to it in a minute. And then do do do do do do it. It gets pushed down. And next thing you know, it's on the next page of your email that you never go to. So, you know, slow and steady, we're going to keep spreading the word. I'm presenting this to a lot of brands at TRE. And I think a lot of the brands are going to be good messengers because they're going to want to get this out there. So, if there are good reps within those brands, why wouldn't they be selling the Fit App and saying, I want this data, you guys should use this Fit App. And by the way, it's very affordable. We're not charging an arm and a leg for this thing. It's going to be your least expensive add on. And honestly, we just want to cover our costs like storing this data cost money and Peter who designs the thing in every time. For instance, I'm an email just kidding tray. Every time, every time somebody sends a message, this is broke like he's got to do work. And I've got to, I've got to pay Peter to do this. So we just want to cover our costs. But I do think that after TRE, we're going to get some momentum. I think that some brands are going to be great messengers. And why shouldn't they be? Why shouldn't they want this data to learn more? Head to head is another great comparison that we
39:26 GREG
learned. Yeah, we didn't even talk about head to head. But speak to that. If you want to learn more about the Fit App, what steps should you take? What sort of investment are you looking at? We talked about how we spent different amounts of dollars on implementing equipment in our stores. But yeah, to extent you're comfortable walking through that process.
39:46 MARK
Yeah, if you're interested in it, shoot me an email. Most of you have my email address. If you're not in run, especially some reason you don't have my email address, email the store that will get to me info at rrc.run is the email address. And what are we charging? We're charging $50 a month through your first store. And then 25 a month for each store after that. I think that's pretty affordable. As I presented to one person who has quite a few stores, I asked him, I was like, how does this price and structure land with you? And he goes, I convert two sales and I made my money back. Like this is this is a no brainer. So yeah, he was pretty excited about it. He's I hope he's still excited. He's starting to get them going in his stores. And I'm excited to see just what we get
40:32 GREG
from that. Yeah, it's an incredible tool. I am so thankful for you, Mark. And I've sent you these messages one off. But this is what advocacy looks like. I mean, you are an advocate for other running, especially owners and working to create a tool like this. Now, whether other owners use it or not, that's up to them. But the fact that you developed this and then wanted to share it, you know, you talk about Trey wanting to share. But like the methodology of your approach to it and how you really continue to just want the best for guys like us, guys and gals like us that are in this industry, trying to make a living, trying to be successful with run specialty. I thank you because I know how much effort and time you're putting into these things when you have your own stores to run. And I know how hard of this to run stores. And so I'll praise you, man. It's
41:26 MARK
incredible. And I appreciate you. Stop it. You're making me blush. I'm not doing anything special. I stole your idea, man. I should be thanking you. And this is just something that I think is good for store owners. I'm passionate about the little guy. And you know, the people who don't have the same opportunities. I just want a level playing field for all store owners that are all doing
41:47 GREG
the work. That's that's what I want. Yeah. And that's that's the key thing is doing the work is I think the most important part. So let's get after it. Yes, sir. Your final takeaway, Mark, I'll let you land it. One thing you want everyone to know about the run, the Fit App,
42:04 MARK
it just makes things better. As I told kids when I was coaching cross country, running is a metaphor for life. Running is like the only sport where it, the more work you put in, the better you get. All right. And so taking that metaphor into business, the more you put in, the more you know, the better yet. And this is another tool to learn more, to have better data, to be more analytical with the dollars that you spend, to make your store more successful. And it's, it's another tool in the toolbox. And I think it's a great one. We've been using it a lot. My buyer loves it. I sent her a report, Slack. I was like, oh, you got to check out this data guy, check out this data guy, check out this data. And then one day I get a message, this data is awesome. Like my work here is
42:50 GREG
done. I love it. You have been listening to the Running Specialty Cooperative podcast with Mark Jimenez and Greg Koch. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day and go sell some shoes.
43:02 MARK
We'll sell some shoes.
RUNNING SPECIALTY COOPERATIVE • EPISODE 6 TRANSCRIPT