I know he seemed to delight in winding people up on here but he’s taken an interesting direction with the Real Cycles business.

Basically gone workshop only and trying to tie in with larger online retailers etc to offer PDI and warranty inspections as well as doing maintenance for those who’ve bought bikes elsewhere/online.

It’s an interesting model – with all shops saying they struggle to compete with online retailers for parts and accessories pricing he appears to have decided to stop trying.

Article here:

https://cyclingindustry.news/shop-owner-why-im-closing-my-store-in-favour-of-a-shopping-centre-based-workshop

So, will this catch on? I guess it’s the Kwik Fit etc approach – don’t sell cars or most parts, just service the ones that people turn up with?

Yeah it’s happening
Plenty people doing it now
Workshop only is the way forward for a decent mechanic to make living out of the bike trade

Hello, this is Steve @ Real Cycles, although now it’s @Bike Spanner.

I have indeed closed the physical Real Cycles shop, although it is officially only a temp thing… The shop was located on a staggered junction, which is presently being turned into a very big roundabout. Work commenced In June and is expected to last six months, we had warning of it at the start of 2015, it was always the plan to close for the duration as the whole area is one big building site.

As that article explains we also always had plans to spin off the Workshop into a standalone business, we started marketing the service as Bike Spanner over a year ago.

As it turned out, just as we were building the Bike Spanner brand and preparing for the spin off the bike industry was busy hitting the self destruct button with a very big hammer, so timing on that one worked out pretty well. Likewise, we eventually found the perfect premises for Bike Spanner just as we closed down Real Cycles. So, with everything coming together so well, and the industries determination to wipe the IBD out, it all came together for us really well.

The LastMile service that the OP mentions, that is, the tie in with online retailers and direct to consumer brands is only a small part of what Bike Spanner does. We have a couple of workshops dotted about the place, we hold regular maintenance courses, we offer warranty support for some B2C brands and of course we fix peoples bikes Next year we’re launching our mobile workshops and hoping to open another couple of locations too. It’s all looking rather good at the moment, and with our future NOT in the hands of bike brands or suppliers, there is no reason why Bike Spanner shouldn’t continue to grow.

Will Real Cycles reopen? Dunno. There is an interested party who is looking to buy it at the mo, they plan to open a shop andwebsite and to capitalise on it’s reputation (whatever that is!). If that comes to something, happy days, Real Cycles will return, if the sale doesn’t happen and the industry sorts itself out, I might reopen it myself. Or, it might just join the long list of shops that have disappeared in recent times. It’s certainly not my focus at the moment, but never say never.

Regards

Steve.