Teaching Your Customers to Fly: How Kitty Hawk Kites Aims to Delight and Empower People Through Experience Artwork

Let's Talk a Little Shop | ASD Market Week

Welcome to Let’s Talk A Little Shop, a podcast created by ASD Market Week. Let’s Talk A Little Shop aims to help small retailers navigate the rapidly changing digital and real world landscapes. Whether you own a brick and mortar store or an etailer, we’ll provide tangible strategies to keep your cash register ringing.

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Let's Talk a Little Shop | ASD Market Week

Teaching Your Customers to Fly: How Kitty Hawk Kites Aims to Delight and Empower People Through Experience

May 08, 2023 • ASD Market Week - The Largest Wholesale Merchandise Trade Show in the U.S. • Season 2 • Episode 4

In this episode, Stephanie Beringhele interviews Ben Saltzman, the Marketing Director of Kitty Hawk Kites. Kitty Hawk Kites has 28 retail stores and several e-commerce sites.

01:25: How Ben got into the retail business
03:09: Understanding Kitty Hawk Kite's retail business model - Kitty Hawk Kites, Kitty Hawk Surf Company, and Life is Good stores.
05:49: How Kitty Hawk Kites went from being a hang gliding school into becoming a large destination business in coastal states.
06:55: How the mission of the business drives the entire experience. “We want to teach our customers to fly”.
7:54: Social media is a powerful tool to communicate with customers.
8:43: Encourage your customers to share their stories that relate to your retail business, they will!
11:06: The challenges of employee recruiting. Training, housing, and retention are top of mind.
11:54: How Kitty Hawk Kites encourages their employees to grow and move throughout the organization.
14:32: Trade shows are critical to business and relationships, but also for finding trends.
15:41: Economic conditions change how you do business. You need to learn how to pivot in order to get your customers' business.
16:38: Mastering story and sharing customer experiences is critical in showing why you’re important to your customers’ lives.

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