BUILDING A SMALL BUSINESS EMPIRE IN TRAVERSE CITY
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- How one entrepreneur is building a small business empire catering to the booming craft brewing industry in Northern Michigan
- From zero to nearly 90% of bookings coming from online checkout
- How Xola’s automated marketing features lead to a 24% increase in sales in a month
BUILDING A SMALL BUSINESS EMPIRE IN TRAVERSE CITY
Troy Daily, a Traverse City native, is a natural-born entrepreneur. He grew up working in his mom and dad’s business.
After a short stint away from Northern Michigan after college, he came back and launched his first business – TC Cycle Pub, a party bike, in the summer of 2013.
He loved the booming microbrewery scene that was emerging in his hometown and wanted to find a way to support it without launching a brewery.
There are about ten microbreweries located inside the city limits and close to a dozen more in the county in a town that has less than 20,000 people. That’s about five times smaller than the capacity of the University of Michigan football stadium.
TC Cycle Pub allowed both locals and tourists alike to experience the great craft brew scene in Northern Michigan while supporting local businesses and the local economy.
“Because this is a seasonal business up here from May through October, I wanted to do something I could do year-round,” said Troy. “So I got a bus and started doing tours year round (in 2015), and that has grown as well.”
That’s how TC Brew Bus was born two years later. This allowed him to operate craft brew tours and pub crawls in the long, frigid Michigan winters.
He also started Kayak, Bike & Brew, a third business, when many of his customers started asking about getting on the river. This business allowed his guests to experience the brew scene by pedal and boat.
“It’s a four-hour guided tour. And over the years that’s just exploded,” said Troy.
STREAMLINING HIS GUESTS’ BOOKING EXPERIENCE
All three businesses have grown exponentially over the last six years.
He mentioned how easy Xola is to use compared to his previous booking software.
“It is easy to use. The backend is very intuitive,” said Troy. “Customer service is great if you have any questions. The learning curve is pretty small, and anybody can learn it.”
The websites for Kayak, Bike & Brew and TC Cycle Pub are now even easier to navigate as they got a facelift from Powered by Xola Websites.
Now, almost 90% of all revenue for Kayak Bike Brew comes from their checkout page (online), and that number is nearly 85% for TC Cycle Pub.
On top of that, they recently started using Xola’s automated growth features on the TC Cycle Pub website. Just through the Resume Booking feature alone, they were able to increase sales by 23.8% in a month.
As his sales have grown, especially with his kayak business, he has found Xola’s inventory management features to be increasingly helpful.
“The inventory feature on that specific business is really helpful, so we don’t overbook the amount of kayaks that we actually have,” said Troy.
WHAT’S AHEAD?
The future looks bright. Knowing how Troy thinks, he is already thinking about how he can expand his business footprint in this Northern Michigan town.
“I’ll keep adding more vehicles and cycles on the site,” Troy continued, “We have people here that just want to have a good time, and I make it easy and fun.”
