Fast Running Blog

St. George Running Center and Fast Running Blog are pleased to announce the arrival of a new online shopping system. It has been integrated with the Fast Running Blog database, and now members of the Fast Running Blog can automatically received a 15% discount by entering their Fast Running Blog login credentials during checkout.

St. George Running Center has provided a lot of support for the Fast Running Blog, and was instrumental in helping us achieve a number of successful performance including the win at Del Sol and 2-3 finish at Wasatch Back. The success of the Fast Running Blog to a great extent depends on the success of the St. George Running Center. We encourage everyone to shop at the St. George Running Center.

Feedback on the shopping experience including web site interface, product availability, and pricing is welcome. While we would like you to be a loyal customer, we want to make sure your needs are being met. Send your feedback to support@fastrunningblog.com.

I'm in *desperate* need of a FRB singlet but every time I call they are out of stock!   :o

Conspiracy or coincidence?!?

Just talked to Steve. He is printing some men's, but he has plenty of women's in stock.

We are still trying to get the printing logistics figured out. If you have some experience with printing shirts any suggestions are welcome.

Excellent!  I'll try harder this time to score one before everyone else scoops them up!

I don't have any experience printing shirts but this outfit appears to be able to print any quantity/size on demand with custom graphics.  http://www.runningbanana.com/ (http://www.runningbanana.com/)  Perhaps there's a teaming agreement possible between FRB/SGRC & them to setup some type of singlet/shirt printing deal?  Just an idea.

If you guys need some help with the printing, my Sister in Law's family has a great print shop in Provo.  They would surely help out if wanted.  Let me know if you need the contact.  Thanks Seth

Update: Steve now has a FRB section on his website (which as of a couple days ago was not there!), which contains a few items so far.

Here is my vision for the St. George Running Center/Fast Running Blog partnership. The vision of the blog is - I want to keep it accessible to everybody in full capacity. I have considered charging fees for special services, but I decided it would be a bad idea. Those few bucks will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The power of the blog is in the people. I do not want a required fee to ever become an obstacle to somebody's blog experience.

However, when there is an opportunity to acquire revenues that is in harmony with the spirit of the blog, I want to capture every dollar that flows around that opportunity. Most runners buy shoes every 500 miles, and other stuff on occasion. Thus we have a natural flow of money from the bloggers pockets into somewhere. Right now as far as the blog is concerned, about 98% (if not more) of that flow is directed to a Unix /dev/null, or in other words we are not capturing it.  But we could.

I want every blogger to shop at the St. George Running Center whenever it makes sense. Fast Running Blog members now get a 15% discount upon entering their login information. If for some reason it does not work for you we would like to know exactly why. If you see a better price somewhere else, Steve and I would like to hear about it. If you do not see a product you want, tell us about it as well. If something in the web site experience is disruptive, let us know. If you are still being converted to buying running gear online, we can help you resolve your concerns. If your dollar goes the other direction we would like to know why.

Should we consider creating a wish list for this?  There are a number of things I am hoping for - perhaps a good place to compare against (sort of) would be http://roadrunnersports.com.  I realize that Steve's store is certainly smaller than a national franchise with a huge warehouse and distribution center, and don't expect there to be all of the same kind of inventory, so I am just using that as a comparison in terms of a pleasant shopping experience.  Currently there is no way to purchase apparel (for men) on the website, other than the FRB gear.  I am sure that Steve is working on this, but the sooner this information could be up, the better.  I am an avid online shopper, and won't hesitate to use the website, but right now it is not exactly a pleasant experience.  There are some misspellings, and shoes seem to be arranged in a non-sensical manner, with some shoes not having pictures, nor technical information/specifications about the shoe (i.e. whether to buy large or not, type of shoe - stability, neutral, etc., weight).  This past year, I have still purchased most of my stuff from roadrunnersports because I have had a VIP2 membership with them that is good through the end of the year.  I fully plan on cancelling that membership as of the end of this year and will plan on purchasing new apparel and shoes through Steve going forward.  There are probably other things - this is just my initial take.  I know it is a work in progress, and I am willing to be patient, but if we really want to turn blogging traffic to shopping there, the internet presense needs to be increased.

James:

The comments are appreciated. We want to fix and improve everything that needs to be fixed, but we  obviously cannot not become in an instant as smooth as an established online shop with a team of full-time programmers and sales associates behind it. Therefore we need to be careful about picking our battles and focus on the most important. So I would like to ask everybody to first list the deal killers. Be as specific as you can:

I wanted to buy product X but it was not available.

After 15% FRB discount product X still has a price  which is significantly higher than what a trivial Google search would find among the competition.

I was interested in product X, but the lack of picture/description, or bad picture/description made me hesitant to buy it.

I did operation X, followed by operation Y, followed by operation Z and got an error.

product availability (on the website) is probably one of the biggest things for me.  If the product is available at the store, I would like to see it on the website.  I am not that concerned if the price is a couple bucks more than some other site.  You can always find a place to get a smoking deal on something if you look hard enough.  Plus, buying from the St. George Running Center ends up directly benefitting the blog.

I have purchased two pairs of shoes on the website in the last month and the transactions have gone perfectly.  I know where I will be buying shoes from now on.  I probably need to score an FRB singlet sometime.

I've been trying to contact anybody from the store but getting no answer.
I want to buy a pair of shoes, but if I get no answer then I will have to go somewhere else...

I've tried a couple of times recently to buy something from the website, and I get an error when I try to get to Google checkout. I've tried it on two different computers - at work and at home, and I get the same problem.

Carolyn:

What error are you getting?

Give Steve a call at 435-628-7766.

Carolyn and Eric:

I just talked to Steve on the phone. He will be handling your issues shortly.

I enter my name and address including my FRB login info and then I get a page that says, "To complete your order, please pay $23.79 using Google Checkout. Click on the button below:" and there's a Google Checkout button. I click the button and I get a page that says, "Oops! St George Running Center has sent Google a shopping cart with errors in it. We'll contact them to ask that they fix this problem. As this could be a temporary issue, you can go back in your browser to try checking out again."

Thanks Sasha, I'll wait for Steve to get back to me.

Sasha, I waited for Steve to contact me, but received no answer. I had to buy the shoes somewhere else since I needed them delivered by an specific date to my friend's temporary place.
So as we say, "mi nodo".

Thanks for helping.

I usually say, "ni modo."

Burt, yes, my mistake, wrote wrong. Its "ni modo" or "lastima" ... I tried.

Sasha/Steve- is there a reason the only items listed on the SGRC website are an ITB strap and a Strassburg sock?  No shoes, no clothes- though they used to be there.  I can't even see what brands of shoes Steve carries.

Long story. Steve will explain.

Should we just give him a call, then?  I need to get a new pair of Tangents (mine have hit about 500 miles, which is pretty high for a lightweight shoe), and I can tell that they have lost their cushioning.

Yes, 435-628-7766.

Thanks, Sasha.  I called and ordered another pair of Grid Tangent 3's.  Like I had previously said, I am willing to pay a little more than the cheapest price I can find anywhere online to support the blog.  Plus he told me I got free shipping and no sales tax (because he had to special order them).

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I went out to the SGRC website to check out what they had and see about the FRB singlets and I don't see more than a couple of shoes in the product list.  If I click on the link for the singlets, I get a 404.

I know I can call, but I was wondering if the site was being maintained?  It looked like it was since the upcoming races are listed...