To clear up any confusion as to what we do/don’t charge for at Bike Science. Our bike buying process usually works along these lines…
Firstly, anyone buying a bike or considering buying a bike from us comes in for a 45 minute appointment. We use this time to talk about and advise on required spec, budget etc plus use an adjustable fitting jig to determine the most suitable frame size, bar width, cranks and stem. This service is free no matter whether the customer chooses to buy a bike or not. If 45 minutes isn’t enough, we’ll book further appointments as necessary. We prefer to use a jig rather than a real bike for this session as it allows more efficient changes of frame size, frame model, crank length and stem length and bars. It also means we don’t need to keep 20 models of bike in stock in 4, 5 or maybe 6 sizes per model. We keep a number of test bikes in the most popular sizes so where possible customers can test ride the bike too. Each bike is built to order which is one of the big advantages of working with a company like Planet X.
If the customer decides to go ahead and buy a bike, we send the order up to Planet X and get the bike shipped in with the riders choice of spec. Once the bike arrives with us, the customer gets another free set up session on the bike. This session again takes around 45 minutes where we’ll look at basic set up. Saddle height, saddle fore/aft, bar height, stem length again (and swap if needed), grip position. This is a fairly traditional “static” fit (although of course we’ll watch the customer pedalling, we’re not actually taking any accurate measurements of the pedal stroke).
If the customer wishes, they have the option to have our higher level Retul bike fit at half the usual price. This is a pretty involved process and looks at rider flexibility, detailed knee movement, uses a motion capture system to take rider movement measurements on the bike and match the bike to rider flexibility (and ability). For the majority of people buying a £1k bike and riding a relatively low mileage there’s no real need to go into this level of detail and most just go for the free set up option. For riders either racing or riding big miles for recreation we can often help eliminate injuries and improve performance (we get a lot of LEJOG riders, long distance sportive riders an ironman triathletes coming for Retul fits for instance).
