Tuesday Treats 50: 18 Bikes Revisited

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Your once a week dose of retail therapy from Singletrack’s Premier Dealers, stockists and advertisers.

Tuesday Treats gives you a quality serving of independent bike retailing and a chance to win big in this week’s prize draw.

This week, we revisit 18 Bikes.

We’ve been getting reacquainted with the guys at 18 Bikes, who nearly a year ago helped us launch the Tuesday Treats feature. Let’s get straight to it. Simon Bowns to pick up where we left off this time last July…

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A great deal has changed since we stepped into the unknown with the very first Tuesday Treats, and if memory serves me correctly, we were very much in the throws of our much anticipated shop move (from our little stable building), across the courtyard to our now more than ample surroundings.

Apart from the obvious, what’s really changed in the past year with the move?

We have retained the focus of the old shop, being true to our Hope Valley, Peak District roots; by continuing to push the mountain bike scene locally and focusing on high quality mountain bike brands and spares, along with a wide range of demo bikes to try on the local trails. Having that bit more space has helped massively with workshop storage and turnaround, along with giving space for more stock and display.

Workshop
Matt H twiddles, like a kid in a (very tidy) sweet shop

We’ve hardly moved far, I can still see the old shop out of the window (along with Lose Hill!) – just to the front of the same courtyard. Same great riding, straight from the doorstep – why move far eh.

In our new surroundings we’ve been able to crack on in earnest with our frame building projects properly, as we originally envisaged, with Matt H joining in to make his very own stainless steel road bike. Lovely stuff.

Not all bikes shops are the same
Matt B shows how to put a ‘C’ in Custom

Any new lines in-store that really tickle your fancy?

Not really, we’re far too jaded by the whole industry thing now 😉 We’ve moved on to dreaming of new guitars, amps and drum kits.

What is hot, product-wise this summer?

We’ve never had quite so much success with fork pre-orders than with the new Rockshox Pike. First deliveries have started to arrive (and ship straight back out!) It’s definitely a case of struggling to get them fast enough. X Fusion forks have also proven popular, especially the 34mm stanchion Slant.

What’s your current best-selling/hottest product?

It’s not exciting, but the Schwable SV13 inner tube is still our best seller! Maybe that’ll change with 27.5 and all that…

Now you’ve got all this space, what’s the score with demo bikes?

Same as ever really, we aim to keep several demo bikes to represent the bike brands we stock – Santa Cruz, Cotic and Genesis, with an 18 Bikes Pinion gearbox demo bike on the way too. We’ve been running regular demo days with Santa Cruz (with another scheduled for 31 August, so contact us for more details) and we are close enough to Cotic to borrow from their demo fleet too. Just ask if there’s a different bike you’d like to try.

Demo days are very special here, regardless of the weather
Demo days are very special here, regardless of the weather

Anything else you want to mention?

We’re now offering maintenance courses in our massive (ok, somewhat bigger than before) workshop – see the webshop for details on that. Matt’s also crunching the numbers on something frame building related…

We’re also drumming up support for Ride Sheffield – a local mountain bike advocacy group that we help out with. Please check them out and donate anything you can.

We are rather prolific on social media so Facebook and Twitter with us, if you like that sort of stuff.

Lastly, what do Singletrack Premier Subscribers get from you guys?

Premier Singletrack members benefit from special one off offers to tie in with each issue. We’ve been slack on sorting this recently, so I’ll make sure that we keep on top of this now!

For Issue 83, I’ll knock a wopping 40% off all North Face stock, how’s that?

Tuesday Treats Prize Draw

Click here to win this week’s prize!


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