CX Service Innovation: Design and Build your own Custom Bike
In the market for a new commuter bike? Well, The Mission Bicycle Company, based in San Francisco, might be just the place to go to design & build your own bike. Yes, you heard me correctly, design and build your own "custom" bike selecting everything from your gearing, frame color, seat & seat post, handle bars & grips, to crankset, chain, and pedals.
Mission Bicycles is a great example of Process Innovation which is exemplified when a company creates a new process for producing or delivering an existing product or service. This is exactly what Mission Bicycle Company has done by completely re-thinking how a bicycle gets produced and delivered to end consumers (including the detailed experience).
In the traditional model for producing and selling bikes, manufacturers make bikes on behalf of end-customers and retail outlets sell bikes directly to end-customers. In the new model, Mission Bicycle Company's business model of choice, you get to custom design your very own bike choosing from over 250+ colors as you individually pick out the frame, its' color, and then select the various parts and accessories required to build your bike.
In applying an innovation method referred to as the SIT "division technique" which helps you break away from structural fixedness (the way bikes are manufactured and sold today) and create new, transformational processes (the way bikes can be bought and sold tomorrow), Mission Bicycles has created an entirely new experience around the purchase of a commuter bike. An experience differentiated from all other bike retailers.
At Mission Bicycles there are actually two different ways you can order a "custom" bike:
Order it On-line using their step by step process to pick your gearing (1-speed or 8-speed), frame & color, handle bars (casual, upright, classic, or powerful), seat & seatpost, crankset, chain, pedals, etc.; or
Visit the Store and have one their own trained technicians walk you through the design process step by step, piece by piece, to create your very own, beautiful, handcrafted, "made to order" commuter bicycle.
They recommend a Store visit (if feasible) allowing you to interact directly with them and design a bike that meets your specific needs and wants. In addition, while you are their you can even "take a test-ride" on a pre-built bike.
It is their strongly held belief that customers walk away more excited about riding through this experience, perhaps based upon a greater pride in ownership having helped design and (sometimes even) build their own bike. One of the services or experiences that Mission Bicycles offers is a "Build Together" program where you actually get to build your own bike alongside one of their trusted bike mechanics putting together all of the parts step by step.
While you can design and order a bike on-line, the customer experience has always been driven thru the store experience according to its' founder, Jefferson McCarley. In an interview he states that the idea from the start has been to "push the store experience as far as it can go and then design the Web experience from there."
Watch to learn more about Mission Bicycles:
Innovation can come in many forms and arrived at thru the application of different methods and techniques but it is always a learning-based and iterative process. At Mission Bicycles they continue to learn about the "best way to make and sell bikes."