How AI Is Changing Local Bike Shops — For Owners and Customers

Mark Still and Alex Slocum, Workstand's Director of Product, discuss the current state of AI and its effect on consumer behavior, shopping, and the continued (growing even) advantage of local retail.Most people hear or even say ‘AI’ daily - what is AI now and what is it not?LLMs definedLLMs as a business levelerThe opportunity for the bike industry Product discovery has always changed and evolvedVisibility in LLMs - SEO/AEO/GEO, structured data, robots.txt/llms.txtBrick and Mortar Expertise is even more valuableDiscerning what is valuable from the mass of information generated by LLMsUsing LLMs to drive shoppers to the store, where staff expertise can convertHow Workstand is supporting LLM discoveryHow/where might bike shop owners and managers leverage AI in their day to day?Repetitive tasks - bookkeeping, communication, scheduling?LLMs like OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and others aren't magic, and they aren't creative. They certainly don't produce unique content or answers. In fact, they are the opposite of 'unique'. More like a cover band than an original artist, but they can help answer complicated questions, and they are very good at dealing with large amounts of data and predicting the responses we're all looking for. Even if they often produce AI slop and wrong answers while still hallucinating as often as not, when you know what you want but not how to produce the answer, they can seem magical. They can help create decent marketing content such as brand-specific landing pages for your website, which can be very beneficial given the landscape of product discovery these days. Remember bike magazines? Mountain Bike Action, Velonews, that's how we used to learn about new products. Then came blogs and Google search. Well, now it's AI and LLMs, and the more relevant content bike shops have on their website, the more likely they are to be referenced in product discovery. Workstand helps more than 1,200 bike shops across North America compete in this way, and sometimes, AI helps a store narrow down what they want while we polish and finalize it for their website, saving time and money and making the store more agile and effective. Are you trying such tactics?Be sure to email your questions to [email protected]. We read all emails sent, and we look forward to hearing from you.If you're a Workstand client with questions about your subscription, email [email protected] or call 303-527-0676 x 1. If you are not currently a Workstand client with questions about how our programs work, email [email protected] Us on LinkedInMark Still, Senior Business DevelopmentDavid Martinez, Key Accounts AdvisorWe also publish Around the Workstand on our YouTube channel if you'd like to watch while you listen. Here is our Around the Workstand playlist.If you have any questions about the topics discussed in this episode of Around the Workstand or if you have ideas for new topics we can cover, schedule a time to meet with Mark Still here or email [email protected].