‍At a Glance

SkateHut is the UK’s number one retailer of skate related products. This action-sports retailer offers all the top brands in skateboards, scooters, skates, bikes, longboards, and more.

Who is Richard?

Meet Richard Skidmore, Head of Marketing at SkateHut!

About SkateHut

SkateHut began back in the early 2000’s with a relatively simple concept, Heelys. They were a popular shoe in the United States that featured wheels that users could ‘skate’ around or they could use the shoes as standard tennis shoes.

The founder of SkateHut had never seen anything like that in the United Kingdom and decided to launch a movement. From Heelys of their own to skateboards, scooters, BMX bikes, and so much more, the company has evolved from one simple idea to the leading brand in the UK for outdoor action sports.

Richard’s Journey

Richard’s background actually started in search marketing, and from there he decided to continue building and growing his skills, branching out into UX, data analytics, and more. He admits that when he started everything was quite segmented and different pieces of the marketing process were done very separately, but with the advent of AI and Google and so much more, everything is more integrated than ever.

His current work is often looking at leveraging the way that the company shows up in AI search results and what he's finding is that customer service and SEO are starting to join forces. It’s a unique experience, and a unique time for him and the entire team at SkateHut as well.

But just what does that team look like? Well, it’s a little bit smaller than it was at its best, which was during the COVID pandemic. After all, during that time people were looking for new things to do and new activities to try out. And at the time, SkateHut had close to 100 total employees and a massive headquarters. Now, they’re downsizing things a bit but still looking to create more opportunities for their customers.

That still means having approximately four people on their customer service team, to make sure their customers are getting the support they need and that they feel trust in SkateHut as a brand.  

Business Growth and Revenue Strategies

When it comes to enjoying the day, what is it that Richard likes best? He loves spending time on content creation because it’s a great way to communicate and engage with customers and potential customers. It’s not just about selling and pushing products, but about educating and informing people.

By taking a closer look at their overall demographics, Richard has found that their clientele is mainly kids and young adults who are buying for themselves and the parents who are buying for them. Creating content that helps each of those demographics figure out what they need can actually bring about more sales, but in a way that feels less pushy.

For Richard, being able to help those people and create engagement in real-time is the energizing part of his day, especially when it comes to things like YouTube and TikTok videos or even standard SEO content.

Gaining New Customers

Keeping customers coming back is always a strong strategy for business, and for SkateHut it starts with looking for upgrade opportunities. As kids get older and continue to grow both in size and in skill, they start looking for new products and SkateHut makes sure they’re on top of it, sending out reminder emails and even voucher codes to let them know that it’s been a year and it might be time to look for something new.

The after-sales techniques, of following up on abandoned carts or offering birthday gifts and coupons or even newsletter sign-up coupons, can be extremely important to gaining and keeping customers. And Klaviyo helps them to do it.

And of course, there’s the before-sales techniques as well, which is where creating high quality, informative, educational content is crucial. Getting as many eyes on that content and making sure that it’s helping people means that even more people are aware of SkateHut and willing to trust them with a purchase.

SkateHut’s CX Philosophy 

When you’re part of a family-run business, keeping that ‘family’ atmosphere is important. And that’s exactly what’s happening at SkateHut. The important thing for their customer service team is to be friendly. It’s about being centered on the brand voice and taking care of people in a way that’s not robotic and not automated. It’s real.

And that ‘real’ feeling extends beyond just talking to the customers. It’s about providing them with a service as well. Where SkateHut sells their products in assembly kits that are meant to be put together by the customer, not all of them know how. But that’s not a problem, because customer service at SkateHut means giving customers what they need, including helping them assemble their new setup completely free.

Innovation and Adaptability

What’s the future for SkateHut? For Richard, the future is about maintaining efficiency throughout growth. And it’s about understanding and utilizing AI to the fullest extent. Still, Richard is also looking to lean heavily into content creation and becoming a community led brand. By creating more content through YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok it’s possible to keep building up the brand and the community knowledge of it.

One way to do that is through a UGC program, where influencers are rewarded for creating content and supporting the brand. It allows the company to save money on sponsorships and to know that they’re actually getting content when they’re paying out to those influencers.

Richard also doesn’t have a problem acknowledging that they use AI to create some of their content and to create conceptual aspects or even some of the video or image content as well. They’ve experimented with it for several different holiday campaigns with great success and Richard is interested in seeing what more can be done.

Inspiring the Next Generation

Success is what everyone is looking for, but Richard wants new entrepreneurs to know that, while it can come overnight, it’s extremely rare. Many people think they should immediately be successful and therefore believe that if they’re not then they’ve failed. But Richard wants them to understand that you have to give the brand time and you have to have consistency.

It’s important to look at what works and keep doing the things that work while dropping the things that don’t. The key, however, is to make sure that you keep going and you keep learning. If you do it’ll fall into place, but it’ll happen gradually. It’s all about patience and determination and energy. You can do it, but you need to be willing to put in that slog to get there.