Retailer Profile A La Bonne Planchette, Tours, France

A La Bonne Planchette is a recently opened skate store in Tours, France.  Read on for the full shop profile and also video.

Please give a brief history of your store including when it was started, who started it, who the owners and key players are.
The story of A La Bonne Planchette started with three skateboarding friends, Julien Bonnet, Alexis Jamet and myself. After many discussions, the idea to create our own shop became clear three years ago.

Alexis takes care of the visual part while Julien handles the management and financial part of the work. As for me, I take care of the sales and special events management. So we are complementary.

Flo Boutin arrived in September as the one in charge of the shop located in Tours.

Being a skate shop, we obviously are a team.

Today, A La Bonne Planchette consists of two board stores, one in Nantes and the other one in Tours.

What percentage of your sales are from online business compared to your brick-and-mortar sales?
The website A La Bonne Planchette has been online for six months only, so it’s not easy to have a reliable feedback yet.

The aim of our website is to convey the board store spirit. We want to take our time to make things well.

What are the benefits of having a physical shop over simply having an online store?
A La Bonne Planchette team’s members do practice skateboard and are passionate about this sport and lifestyle.

We consider that sharing our experience and advice with the shop’s customers is essential.

The board store ethic is a bit like sitting on a bench and having a talk, having fun with friends. You won’t find this on a computer screen!

However, nowadays the Internet represents a major part of the market so we also want to be online.

What are five products you couldn’t live without right now?
There is only the skateboard of the shop we couldn’t live without.

What are your secrets for selling high-end products?
The clearance sale and street sales make things easier to sell high-end products. Sometimes we also set up a special shelf for discontinued items in order to renew our stock.

Are new lines important to your product mix? Why or why not?
There’s no secret; passion, quality and specifications make the product. People who are passionate have understood that. Otherwise we can show and inform beginners about the advantages of specific products.

Did your store’s sales increase or decrease over last year? To what do you attribute your gain or loss in sales? What will you do to either maintain your growth or to reverse the decline?
Our A La Bonne Planchette board stores are quite young so we are in a phase of progress.

Hopefully we are active in creating advertising campaigns through events (skateboard contests, DJ sets…) with the intention to make the local skateboard practice and our skate shop evolve.

The longboard scene is very active in Nantes.

What makes your store different and in what ways does your store excel beyond your competition?
Team’s complementary skills:

Alex: Creativity / graphic design
Julien : Administrative / management
Max: Customer service / marketing

* We skate every day, we are passionate.

* We are a young team but we do have experience. We have been skating for fifteen years and doing business for ten years

* The authenticity of the shop. Everything inside the shop has a history.

* We have a real identity with the name of the shop which is really “Frenchy” (the name is like a culinary and homey way to refer to a board)

How do you stay in touch with the wants and needs of your customers?
We want to share a moment with every customer, create a relationship by discussing and finally create a privileged relationship. This is what really matters to us.

We want to be different from the standardized shops like H&M or Mango.

It’s always passion, which has an essential role in what we do and which gives its identity to our shop.

To summarize, we are cool storekeeper skaters!