a well known bike shop opposite Waterloo Station in London SE1

Ah, good to know! I actually had a good experience with that very store last summer when my Zesty needed new pivot bearings. The guy who did the work was a Scottish sounding guy who also owned a Zesty if I remember rightly.

Thanks for all the feedback. Our lease has gone to the solicitors today for conveyancing so fingers crossed we will be open at the beginning of April – we will be advertising in the mag and online so hopefully you’ll see us about!

Slightly late to the party, but these things:

1) Answer email/phone back when you say you will – all the LBS round here are crap at these.

2) Second hand counter – maybe not taking bikes PX but safety inspection & selling 2nd hand ones for the owner for a fee.

3) Have somewhere to park bikes – locally there is at least one shop that has nowhere to park a bike outside, and discourages customers from bringing in their bikes unless they’re going to the workshop.

4) Having ‘urgent’ workshop slots on the weekend for a premium fee is a good one, especially if you’re near trails. On a related note, if you’re going to close in the week, Monday is probably not the day as you could pick up repairs to damage done at the weekend then.

5) If you have an online shop, allow people to order stuff into store (to enable stealth purchasing)

Good luck!

Andy

Just to update everyone and say thanks for all the support we’ve had.

We got the keys yesterday to the premises so we’re still on for beginning of April opening.

We’ve got a little blog on the go so we can keep people abreast of developments and would be great to see people down. We’re going to have a little launch party and will have loads of great opening offers.

Looking forward to this opening!

Moved to St Albans about a year or so ago and need more bike shops locally.

Addiktion in St Albans is ok, but a bit limited it seems to me, Rock & Road is more road based, but to be fair they were able to do some emergency Saturday afternoon fixing in time for a Sunday ride, paid a extra to get it fitted in, but happy as I could go riding. (something to bear in mind? Expres Service)

Look forward to visiting.

going to be honest, I actually used to work at Addiktion for the best part of a decade – the problem with the shop has always been space, but they’re a great bunch of guys there and know their onions, I certainly left on great terms. Look forward to seeing people through the doors (I bloody hope so anyway!)

Jon

my lbs hate – condescending staff. f#cking pisses me off! i wish i had a nice lbs near me, because i would rather speak to a human being than order stuff online and hope the postie doesnt lose it.

other things. i only ever buy conti tubes, because all the other ones appear to be rubbish, ime. this may not be true for everyone. so if you stock other brands i wouldn’t buy them.

please have thousands of gear cables, outers and ferrules in stock, mineral and non mineral brake fluid, and 15wt suspension fluid.

please also stock a selection of brake pads, the common ones. i don’t mind paying a bit more when i am in a panic.

please have plenty of non shite chains in stock, particularly sram 9 sp and the sram links, and shimano xt/slx 10sp and also keep kmc 10sp links in, because they are reusable, and compatible with shimano chains.

and obviously when you go to lbs owners school and you get to the bit where it says talk down to your customers and never return a phone call, please ignore that bit too!!
please have a selection of bolts, including m6 brake bolts.

plenty of parking is also good.

So you want us bike shops to be full of staff that know their stuff love riding and be open all hours of the week, so when the hell do you expect us to enjoy our riding with our mates that have 9-5 jobs 5 days a week, its bad enough having to work every saturday and having one day off in the week and ride on my own like billy no mates.