By NICK STEWART
Four years after going global, Rob Flindell is now going local.
With the success of Blue Sky Gear, his online pilot supply store, Flindell has opened a 500-square-foot retail outlet in the lower level of the Parry Sound Municipal Airport.
Following the early summer unveiling, he's been kept busy learning the ropes of a brick-and-mortar store, opening his market to local flyers.
“I can’t believe how busy I am,” says Flindell, who also works full-time as an acting sergeant for the Burk’s Falls detachment of the OPP.
“When everything was in-house, it was a very easy business model. Now that we’ve expanded, we’re jumping in with both feet into a deep, deep lake.”
Flindell’s path to retail began when striving for his pilot’s license in 2003. Dissatisfied with the lack of information on standard pilot checklists for Cessna aircraft Flindell designed his own and soon took to selling it online through auction website eBay.
Rising sales from around the world pushed Flindell to set up his own virtual storefront at
www.blueskygear.com
, where he continued to add more and more items. He now offers more than 800 products, ranging from his signature checklists to books to specialty pilot bags.
In 2005, Flindell’s wife Tanya found herself in casual conversation with officials from the Parry Sound Area Municipal Airport, who urged the couple to set up shop in the terminal following its renovation, which they did in March 2007.
Working 40-hours a week at his day job at the OPP, Flindell balances his remaining waking hours between his business interests and his two young children, Emma, 5, and Erin, 2.
Even after hiring an employee to manage the store, he says he still finds it challenging to transition from a home-based online business to a full-blown brick-and-mortar outlet.
Given the wide range of material and relatively small amount of space, up to 400 different products may be on view at the store at any given time. Though this number fluctuates widely as demands on stock vary between the online and retail components.
With a physical storefront now in place, he expects consumer confidence in his online business to skyrocket, as general fears surrounding fly-by-night fraudulent online businesses will dissipate by his “real world” location.
Currently, online sales account for 80 per cent of Blue Sky Gear’s business, though Flindell expects the percentage of customers visiting the store to escalate as well.
“We’re looking forward to expanding with the airport, and we’re quite pleased to be here and to be a member of the community there, which I think you’ll find will be growing by leaps and bounds.”
As though Flindell wasn’t busy enough, he has also partnered with Calgary-based Aviation.ca to create Pilot Supply Canada Ltd., a distribution business for other pilot supply shops and flight schools across the country.
Through this partnership, a series of crash survival kits for commercial and personal pilots, which were featured at the October 2006 SARScene, a search-and-rescue professional conference in Gatineau, Quebec have been available.
“They absolutely loved the kits, and they begged us to make survival kits for hunters and ATVers and snowmobilers and hikers, so that’s transitioned into our complete product line that we carry now. So we’re more than just a mom-and-pop retail outlet for aviation and pilot supplies.”
The kits have since been picked up by other stores, including Aircraft Spruce, a California-based specialty pilot supply store.
Flindell has also managed to marry his passions with his entrepreneurial spirit in other ways.
As he was first taught about the joys of flight by his grandfather, George Bremner “Scotty” Murray, who flew a Spitfire during World War II, Flindall brought this passion full circle when he created the National Heritage Warbird Foundation in July 2006. With an eye on raising $3.5 million to purchase “Marion,” the original Spitfire fighter plane his grandfather flew during the war, Flindall and the foundation also intend to create a Mobile Museum, complete with a mobile flight simulator, to honour the men and women of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Although he refers to this string of entrepreneurial efforts as his “fun job” which he pursues strictly for the love of flying, he has no intentions of dropping his day job for his businesses, or vice-versa.
“I don’t sleep much,” Flindell says. “Four hours a night is about my average, and I’ve become an expert juggler.
Most people are amazed at the amount of work I can get done in a day, but I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and I absolutely love doing it.”
www.blueskygear.com
www.crashkit.ca
www.pilotsupply.ca
www.warbirdfoundation.org
