Book Review: Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers
Author: Chris Zane, Founder and President of Zane’s Cycles Publisher: Ben Bella Books – 206 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram Chris Zane started in business as a pre-teenager, registering a business and getting a state ID at age 12. He bough his first bike shop at age 16, and built Zane’s Cycles into the biggest bike shop in Connecticut by age 30. Today, it is one of the largest bicycle stores in the United States. Zane was 46 when this book was published in 2011. In 1985, when he was 20 years old, he started receiving various awards. Among them was the Better Business Bureau Award of Recognition for Customer Service and Outstanding Business Practices. North American Bicyclist Magazine has named him “North America’s Best Bicycle Retailer” and Fast Company Magazine awarded him the 2006 Customer First Award. Zane’s Cycles also holds the distinction of being the largest dealer in the world of Trek Bicycle Company. When this book was published in 2011, Chris Zane wrote that the total sales of his chain of bike stores were over $15 million. But what is more remarkable is that the bike stores’ sales revenues have been growing briskly at 23.5 percent annually. What is really noteworthy is that Zane’s creative marketing techniques have been used as business case studies in more than a dozen college textbooks. They have also been...
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