Tuesday Treats 149: The Riders’ Guild

Your regular 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 introduce: The Riders’ Guild

A first treats of 2016 and it’s a cracker. Having very quickly made a massive impact on the custom build scene, The Riders’ Guild are making waves.

Owner Steve Jones talks us through a crazy busy first year for these bike porn meisters, from Chichester UK …

By the time you read this we will be just hitting our first birthday. Feels like we have been around for longer but its been a amazing year all round.

We are a dedicated mountain bike shop and service centre that specialises in top brands from Yeti, Evil, Orange, Mondraker and Intense. We stock top components and clothing from brands such as Evoc, Raceface, fiveten, 100% and many more.

Our aim is to simply bring you the best brands and service out there from a local bike shop. We will help you buy the right accessory, component that you are after or the bike for what you ride and then guide you through every step to make sure its set up correctly before you leave. But it doesn’t end there, we support our customers for as long as needed with set up and will tweak suspension settings till the cows come home, to get it dialled in for you.

Who works with you? What are your specialisms?

The shop is based in Chichester, West Sussex at the foot of the South Downs and is run by my partners Aaron and Brett (Tree to his mates) who both live and breathe bikes and have years of industry experience behind them.

We carry the highest-level Cytec qualifications, are expert wheel builders and have invested in a workshop to match. Oh and you might have noticed our Tree is quite handy with a camera!

25lbs Intense Carbine 29er 160/140mm, anyone?

Tell us about these custom bikes then and about Demo bikes?

We’ve have had some amazing custom builds roll out of the shop recently, like a 25 Lbs Intense Carbine 29er (above) which is insanely light for a 160/140mm bike but the latest Evil Insurgent we built, certainly got a little bit of attention on the internet. This is actually one of our fleet of demo bikes, so available for you all to come and ride. Love them or hate them by the way, ‘the tan walls are coming’ …

Bronzed out, custom Evil Insurgent, tall walled wheeler

What kit makes it onto all your staff bikes?

There are just two products used by us all: Firstly, the 100% Brisker glove. It has just recently won best glove and best value winter glove in a well respected magazine but we have been shouting about it all year. Seriously it would still be that good a twice the price! [Scroll to the bottom for the full, TRG Custom Build Gallery, Ed]

These ‘Brisker’ digit savers will give you …

The other is the Derby Carbon rims, rolling on Hope Pro4’s. A super stiff carbon rim with a quality that is hard to match. They are supplied with a great warranty and are half the price of most of the competition.

Derby Carbon rims on Hope Pro 4 hubs

Is there a regular shop ride or forthcoming event you think our readers should know about?

The shop is all about the local riding community and just getting out on your bike. That’s what it comes down to in the end and so we started bi-weekly shop rides from day one. We were never expecting the size that it quickly grew to and by the third week, we were hitting 20 – 30 riders every two weeks and that has continued throughout the whole year.

It has given us the opportunity to show people some new routes and local trails that they may not have found on their own, and we have met and made some great new friends. They are posted on our Facebook page the Saturday before and happen every two weeks, on a Tuesday night.

One year on, what does the immediate future hold for TRG?

Funny you should ask, as we are currently having a bit of a shop refit as there is an addition to The Riders’ Guild that was planned for a bit further into the future but we’re bringing it forward… We can’t give too much away just yet but will have regular updates on our busy Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.