We recently connected with Christina Pena and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Christina thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.
I think family businesses are hard but so rewarding. It’s been hard as the daughter because we (me and the other employees) used to have to fight for change. It’s hard for my mom sometimes because for a long time she could only see me as the teenager/young adult that slacked in the store and didn’t put much effort into it. As I’ve gotten older and more invested, she’s been able to take a step back, she’s given up a lot of power, but I think it was really hard for her to let go of some of that control. She built this business into what it was, it helped support a family of 4 on one income for a long time. This is her legacy, her parent’s legacy, and her grandparent’s legacy. It’s scary to give up control.
We used to joke that when she started to go out of town and we rearranged the back, she’d come back and put it all back exactly as it was, whether or not it made any sense because she hadn’t done it. I had to start ordering some things using my own money to prove it was a good idea.
Now there’s none of that pushback.
It’s really hard sometimes, but it’s cool to think about this thing that’s bigger than me that’s the amalgamation of generations worth of work.
Christina , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We’re a woman-owned family business that’s 4 generations strong. My great-grandparents owned skating rinks from 1940-1963. My grandparents took over the family skating rink in Toledo, Ohio from 1963-1970 when it was torn down for I-75. They then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to immediately take over ownership of a newly opened skating rink. From 1970-1982, my grandparents owned 3 different skating rinks in the Cincinnati area and my grandmother eventually sold them a couple of years after my grandfather passed away. My mother continued in the skating industry coaching speed skaters on a National level which led her to move to Tampa, Florida our current home.
My mother realized her passion was more in teaching/coaching skating and making sure skaters were helped to purchase the skates that they needed to achieve their skating dreams and not so much in owning the skating rink. After selling skates for many years, she opened her current Skaters Choice location 25 years ago in 1997. That makes 2022 to be our 75th Anniversary as a family-owned skating business as well as the 25th Anniversary at our current location.
We have truly withstood the ups and downs and trends in skating, showing we are truly passionate about what we do! I’ve been working in the shop since my junior year of High School, and now I run most of the day-to-day business as an Owner and partner with my mother.
We’ve been there through all the ups and downs of the roller skating community and have participated in every aspect of the sport including artistic, speed, roller hockey, roller derby, and skate parks. From my grandmother teaching skating in the 1940s and playing the big pipe organs in the skating rink for authentic dance music to my mother being a multi-National Champion speed skater including competing in the first US Pan American Games winning the first US Women’s medal. My mother sustained an injury at the World Championships that ended her competitive career and launched her coaching career. She coached speed skaters originally with having one of the top teams in the country the majority of her years coaching. Mom was inducted into the Coaches Hall of Fame for speed Coaches. She was invited to do coaching seminars all over the country including the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She eventually retired from the speed skating world only to discover roller derby and coach the newly formed Tampa Bay Derby Darlin’s for 10 years. During that time she also was invited to do derby boot camps all over the US, Canada and Europe. You can also find many of her skating and training articles in past issues of skating magazines.
Being a lifelong passion for 4 generations, we have been a part of so many great skating stories, and met so many lifetime friends that were customers first. We feel blessed every day to be able to help bring new people into the sport, or to be their shop of choice when there are more and more choices every day. Sometimes it can be scary to start a new hobby, and we’re there to help. It’s probably one of the coolest jobs, because pretty much everyone is so excited to see you and so happy when they leave.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market? What’s been your most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
I hope you don’t mind but to me, all of those questions intertwine.
What helps us build our reputation is our history in the skating community. For my grandparents, it was my grandfather’s and grandmother’s ethics and commitment to the sport. For my mother, it was her skills as a skater, her love as a coach, and her genuine want to see the sport grow and prosper. For me, it’s all about being genuine and sincere and I think that comes across in our social media posts and when I talk to customers. This is a legacy I’ve been blessed to inherit and I do my best to make sure I keep up the quality that my family has put into the skating community for as long as I’m a part of it.
That history gives us our reputation I think. A lot of shops opened up during and directly after Covid, and a lot of companies are trying to cash in on it too, but they don’t necessarily make the best skates. We know what to look for when it comes to quality, we guarantee it. That goes a long way with customers, when we confidentially tell them what skate is the best for their budget, we have knowledge and experience to back it up and they trust us. When they don’t have to worry that their skates will separate in a few months, or that the wheels will fall off after a few times outdoors. People look at our shop and see our history and know we have a deeper knowledge and understanding of skates and equipment and skate culture that not everyone does. They trust our expertise and so far we’ve yet to disappoint them.
We’re very honest with our customers. We have a saying in the shop “we’ll never be rich but we’ll always keep your business”, and it’s true. I’ll have baby skaters come in, having read someone else’s opinion online and thinking they have to buy an $800 pair of skates, and we tell them that just isn’t true. A $120 pair will do them just fine to start with. We never force a sale or try to lie about something to make a quick buck. When supply lines were so messed up; I would send people to other stores because I knew they had what a customer was looking for.
Our honesty is our most effective strategy in growing our clientele. We’re constantly getting new customers that are excited to tell us “my friend told me to come to talk to Christina/Marybeth/Amber/Ray, they’ll get you set up!” I have people that drive to us from Jacksonville or Naples because they know we’ll get them set up right. I think people find that refreshing, that we’re not trying to push them into something that they don’t need. Our honesty goes a long way.
I would love to say Instagram or Facebook was our best source of new clients, don’t get me wrong, it does help, but word of mouth is by and far the driving force of new customers for our shop.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
That you can’t be political and that you shouldn’t brag about yourself, or the opposite end of the spectrum: that you can’t show your failures.
My mom is an old-school businesswoman, to her, a business isn’t supposed to be political because what happens if you ostracize your customer base?
To me, I can’t see how a business can’t be political. In this new climate, I think it’s more important than ever to take a stand for what you believe in, and if you lose some followers then that’s what has to happen. We posted a video during the BLM protest when we’d seen an uptick in followers on our Instagram that talked about our political beliefs, we wanted to make sure that we were cultivating the type of audience/base that we wanted. I did it without my mom’s permission and she was so anxious when she saw it. They were all things that she agreed with, but she couldn’t imagine a scenario where it would work out in our favor. It took all of us millennials to convince her why it was a good idea. And for 5-6 months after we posted it we saw a crazy uptick in our in-store traffic. And 90% of them told us how much they loved supporting a woman-owned business that wasn’t afraid to speak their truths.
But my family has always been a little political in this business. Whether she recognizes that or not. My grandparents’ rink in Ohio was one of the first rinks in the area to do a ‘Black’ night back in the 60’s; when most rink owners were turning skaters of colors away, my grandmother was the one running the session. A lot of the neighboring community didn’t like that at the time, and when it came time to choose where a highway was supposed to go, our rink just happened to be the spot they picked. And when Doc (one of the founders of Tampa’s Sunday night soul roll, RIP) came to Brian (the rink owner of United Skates where our store is located) and began talks about starting a Sunday night Soul Roll session, my mother advocated for the session when other rinks couldn’t see the vision.
I’ve also seen on most shops/brands’ social media a tendency to only post the wins or perfectly landed moves. I think there’s this mindset that in order for people to take you seriously as a knowledgeable skater, they can’t see you struggle. I completely disagree with that. I love posting my fails, and my customers love seeing them. It makes us approachable. It shows new skaters that even the people that have been doing it all their lives are still learning new things every day. That we struggle too. Ray (our newest/youngest employee) loves to say “if you ain’t falling, you ain’t learning”.
I think that fear of showing failure puts those skaters/shops/brands on a pedestal and makes them unapproachable. When people see me eat it doing a simple spin it makes them feel like we’re on the same level and they don’t have to worry about asking what they think is a stupid question; because we’re all learning together.
Of course, I’m also a firm believer in bragging about yourself. Modesty is great and all but when your mother is a world champion, and has been invited to the Olympic training center to gives talks on coaching, you let people know about that.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.skaterschoiceskateshop.com
- Instagram: @skaterschoiceskateshop
- Facebook: Skaters choice skate shop