Today we’d like to introduce you to Vincent Capraro and George Sanders.
Vincent and George, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m a drummer for Model Stranger, an anthropologist by education, an animal lover, and a scooter aficionado. My band takes me all over the country, so I have to balance the scooter shop with the band. The scooter shop gives me the flexibility I need to work with the band, and the band knows I have a commitment to the scooter shop. As long as I work out the schedule and let my co-workers at the scooter shop know my schedule, it’s all good.
I’ve worked at Second City Scooters since 2008, so I am coming up on a big anniversary. I run the day to day operation, so I schedule service, order inventory, sell scooters, mop the floor, develop our web site and direct all our social media. I do repairs, paint the walls and floor, merchandise the shop, and strategize with George on long-term and short-term goals for the shop. (Vincent Capraro)
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Pretty much a smooth road. The amount of bureaucracy in setting up a scooter business was daunting. The State of Illinois and City of Chicago don’t really differentiate between scooters and automobiles when it comes to how they treat dealerships, so our little scooter shop has to follow the same steps as a mega auto dealership when it comes to business licenses, fees, and taxes. Each governing body has an interest in our business at some level, from local ordinances to federal taxes. We are very lucky to have a terrific alderman, Patrick O’Connor, who has been very supportive of our business from day one.
Getting consumer financing for our scoots was a bit of a struggle early on because none of the key financial institutions recognized the brands we were selling. Once we switched to only carry SYM scooters (manufacturer), we were able to offer on-the-spot consumer financing. About 10% of our sales are financed. Most of our customers use a credit card. Many pay cash, as the average out-the-door price for a scoot is in the low $2,000 range.
Our shop is small. Basically, our sales and service occupy the same space. The upside is that we can communicate directly with one another without shouting or using walkie-talkies. No waiting to get an update from service on a scooter’s status; we just ask Jorge what’s up because he is working on the scoots ten feet away from us. Some day we will move to a slightly larger place with a real loading dock and a garage door.
Our shop is leased and is part of a condo building, so we do have to be sensitive to the condo owners and condo association. We had to re-zone the part of the building that we occupy for scooter sales and service. We hired an attorney who knew the ins and outs of the City of Chicago Zoning Commission, so we were able to get the zoning designation (B-3) in short order with very few hiccups. We can be a stinky business at times (think a 2-stroke blown engine belching out smoke), so we work as hard as possible to keep the odors associated with scooters to a minimum. We are very lucky to have a great landlord and an understanding condo association, so as long as we are diligent about our smells and messes, all is well.
The key to our success is having a great mechanic. We have been fortunate to have great mechanics over the past 9 years. Our first mechanic, Svelin, was a great problem solver, but he had to overcome some cultural differences regarding customer satisfaction as it is perceived in the United States and in his native country Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, according to Svelin, if something you bought breaks, it’s the consumers problem, not the store’s. So, we had to monitor his exchanges with customers if the customer had an issue with a repair to make sure Svelin didn’t just say “tough shit it’s your problem” or something to that effect. Very funny in retrospect, frightening at the time. We currently employ Jorge, known as the Scooter Whisperer, or Mago de Motos, as our chief mechanic. There is nothing that Jorge cannot fix. Period. He is our life blood. We would close without him. And one of our former mechanics, Dr. Juan Martinez, teaches Sociology at Harold Washington College. Juan would break more things than he fixed, but we love him and are happy that he has found his calling in education. Juan was famous for diagnosing every non-starting scooter with one issue, “just needs the carb cleaned.” He would then proceed to clean the carburetor, and the scooter still wouldn’t start, much to all of our amusement. Juan does an amazing Boy George dance on our Facebook page to test out a newly equipped stereo system on one of our scoots.
We feel the need to do more advertising, but we have no desire to be a mega scooter shop, so we rely on our web site, Twitter, Yelp! and Facebook to spread the word. And we rely on our customer to make referrals. We get that a lot. We initially paid big bucks for a web site designer to build and maintain our website. Luckily Vince has aptitude in that area, so he handles all our social media in addition to his other managerial duties. Having an on-site web developer is huge!
Probably the biggest issue for us is winter, and there is nothing we can do about it other than wait for global warming. As great a place Chicago is for scooters, you can’t ride a scooter in snow or on ice (actually you can, but it is extremely dangerous). So, sales slow to a trickle from December to early March. We basically spend our profits made during the summer months on expenses in the winter. And we can’t close, because the law in Illinois for vehicle dealerships says we have to stay open year-round at least 20 hours per week. So, to deal with the reality of winter, we offer winter storage for scoots in our basement, where we can accommodate about 50 scooters. We do repairs, organize the shop, clean, and occasionally sell a scooter for the holidays or a birthday. Mostly, we dream about opening a scooter shop in Hawaii. (George Sanders)
Please tell us about Second City Scooters.
We opened in 2008 on Chicago Avenue selling mostly low-cost scooters made in China. We spent the first half of the riding season selling the scooters, and then we spent the second half of the riding season repairing the scooters that we just sold. The scooters weren’t terrible, they just weren’t all that reliable. So, we heard a lot of customers our first year saying “My scooter won’t start” or “My brake lights don’t come on” or “My foot peg has come loose” or “There is oil coming out of weird places onto my clothes.” So, the profitability of a low-cost scooter solution for Chicago’s scooter riders was eaten up through constant warranty issues. And being conscious of our customers’ frustration, we would continue to work on the scooters free of charge even after the short 90-day warranty expired.
Luckily, the North American distributor of the Chinese scooters we were selling in 2008 became the North American distributor for SYM scooters, a reputable if less than well-known scooter manufacturer headquartered in Taiwan. We jumped at the chance to become the exclusive dealer of SYM and Lance scooters in Chicago. The wholesale cost of the scooters to us went up, but we felt that a high-quality scooter would pay benefits in lower warranty costs and far higher customer satisfaction.
So fast-forward 9 years and we now have a viable and robust business model. High quality scooters at a very competitive price (compared to more highly advertised brands: Honda, Yamaha, Vespa) that come with a two-year warranty and very few quality issues.
So, in addition to having a high-quality product at a reasonable cost, we also pride ourselves in being nice to people. It sounds simple, but we do get a lot of comments about our vibe. There is a long-standing stigma about scooter shops not being friendly, which seems weird when you think of a scooter as something fun and expressive. So, we don’t take ourselves too seriously as scooter aficionados. Conversely, we take our promises and commitments very seriously. It is very important to be finished with a job when we say we will be finished. The only thing worse than a long repair job is if the customer isn’t kept up to date on the job. One of the competitive areas that we recognized at the very beginning was to have good service.
Most of the complaints that we saw about other scooter businesses had to do with service. So, we have always wanted our service capability to differentiate us from the competition. Same is true when we order a scooter from our warehouse in California. The scooter must be ready when we tell the customer it will be ready.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
1) Lease, or even buy, a more adequate space. We love our current space and location, but the space was really meant to be a retail shop and possibly even a coffee shop or small restaurant. We made it work, but we could use more square feet and a real service area with a real garage door. As for location, we don’t get much foot traffic because we are a little north of the main retail area of Lincoln Square. The bright side is that we know that customers who stop at our shop come here purposefully. The downside is that even though we are on Lincoln Avenue, most people drive right past us. So, a larger shop with automotive design in a more heavily retail area would have been wiser. Maybe something closer to the Loop, but then would we lose our suburban customers?
2) Not sell Chinese scooters initially. Even though we kept them running for the most part, they were not high quality, and for all of our effort in trying to keep customers happy, we still fell short with the quality of our initial scoots.
3) Obtain consumer financing before opening. We lost a lot of sales because we did not offer consumer financing from day one.
4) Shop around for liability insurance, known in the trade as garage insurance. We were in a pinch and ended up spending an enormous amount of money on insurance the first year.
Pricing:
- Used scooters start at $300 and come with a 30-day warranty.
- New scooters start at $1,699 and come with a two-year warranty.
- Helmets start at $54.
- Winter storage is $70/month.
- Service is $85/hour.
- Insurance should be about $150/year. Rates vary greatly depending on your circumstances.
- Towing is about $80, so we recommend getting towing insurance, just in case.
Contact Info:
- Address: Second City Scooters
5578 N. Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60625 - Website: www.iheartscooters.com
- Phone: 773-754-8533
- Email: geo@iheartscooters.comcastbiz.net
- Instagram: secondcityscooters
- Facebook: facebook.com/secondcityscooters
- Twitter: @iheartscooters
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/second-city-scooters-chicago
Image Credit:
All pictures taken by Second City Scooters and/or Mike Hari (fadeoutfoto.com)
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