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Dear was in the same post at Raleigh for 17 years and for the past six months has used his excellent knowledge of Britains IBD network in a consultancy role at Saracen.
Now hes a member of staff the obvious comment to make is that Saracen wish to beef up their business with IBDs, although Dear will also have had good contacts with Halfords after his years at Raleigh.
Paul Stanforth, Saracens MD, is pleased with his catch:
Rogers experience in the industry will be an enormous asset as we expand our manufacturing capacity and increase our sales. We had a fantastic final three months of 1999, exceeding all our targets. Roger will help us build on this.
In BikeBiz3, Paul Stanforth set out an ambitious growth agenda for the £10m annual turnover Warwick company, projecting a doubling of the size of the company within two years.
We want to be the most successful bicycle company the UK has ever seen, Stanforth told BikeBiz.
Saracen has 320 IBDs on its books and wants to expand this to 400. Dear can help them achieve this target. Roger Dear is a well respected figure in the trade and it has always been a conundrum why Raleigh let him go.
Dear has extremely good relationships with hundreds of IBDs thanks to his years of swimming pool diplomacy: Raleighs overseas jaunts for its top dealers were noted for their conviviality.
Will Saracen now be lining up some plush dealer incentive trips?
That wasnt Rogers only skill, you know, laughed Paul Stanforth. Im sure Roger will be knocking on my door any day now and asking us to do some trips. Were not noted for giving things away and you can always improve your relationships with business partners. What we already have in the way of an incentive is brilliant products that make IBDs serious profits.
Dears benchmarking business Efficient Retailing has been scaled back but will still operate thanks to data inputting from Susan Dear, Rogers wife. Instead of £1000 a year, a contract with Efficient Retailing now costs £250. This gets the signed-up IBD a monthly set of bar-charts and statistics to show whether the shop is under or over performing against the cycle industry average.
