A mate is thinking of setting up an LBS, and has asked me for advice.

I’m not quite sure what to say!

Keep lots of shoes in, in all sizes, so folk can try them on then buy online?

Develop a taste for biscuits as that’s what folk seem to think is acceptable payment?

😉

Seriously tho if any of you have anything to say…

Better to be the best at a specialism than try to please all the people all the time.

location? this has to be a big factor…edinburgh is nuts for shops frinstance..

Know your market. Don’t stock carbon V10’s if your trade is 90% commuter.
Do something different. The standard bikeshop stock of Endura/Royal clothing is just lazy.

is he loaded? the folks i know that have done it have money/investments to fall back on if need be

How to make a small fortune running a bike shop?

Start with a large one.

Start with a large fortune.

Always be nice to people when they come in. Even if they are idiots who don’t know their arse from their elbow….because you never know when they will become proper riders and suddenly remember how badly they were treated previously when they are now looking for a new bike every two years, plus kit and endless spares……

Location, location, location.

Apart from GT, no bike shop in on near Edinburgh is beside the trails. I always thought there would be a potential opening in the likes of Currie or Juniper Green. Hire bikes to day trippers on the WoL and Pentlands, service & supply commuters.

Or – somewhere else on a commuting link.

Good location with good parking

Be friendly

Know your market

Stock something different to all the other shops in the area

Location, For instance Wheel base is an ideal shop/gold mine.

Be near the trails, and be open early Sat/Sun; I reckon there’s a fair amount of work in fixing bikes that people have suddenly discovered are U/S, and similarly fixing stuff on a weekend when people have broken it & want to get turned round again quickly. Can probably charge premium rate for this, too.

And answer the phone/email and do it when you say it will be done. My new LBS has been open about six months, and he is particularly good at this, unlike some of the more established (and bigger) bike shops round here.

Andy

Probably not a lot to add beyond your shop experience Al, only to ask himself whether he’s a businessman prepared to focus on the retail management details or a keen cyclist with a real passion for what he does.
If you’re one not the other you can run a bike shop, but from what I’ve seen you need to be both, or have both involved, to do it well and make money. And to have any hope of weekends off in your future )

Location, Stock & Customers.
Following that research
Then Research

If he’s a friend, tell him not to.

i) Be careful to avoid filling the shop with slow moving stock

ii) set aside enough time to do the paperwork & invoices properly, or pay someone to do it, otherwise you will spend lot of time making up convoluted explanations for X not being here yet, when in fact its because you’re on late payment.

iii)

I reckon there’s a fair amount of work in fixing bikes that people have suddenly discovered are U/S, and similarly fixing stuff on a weekend when people have broken it & want to get turned round again quickly. Can probably charge premium rate for this, too.

+1

repairs will prob make u loads more then selling bikes!!

so where would it be?

Sell American bikes that start with a C@the start in Folkestone and offer good customer service ,the southeast needs it /

Twas the best thing I ever did, shops still there 10 years later, made enough doe to pay off my mortgage, made loads of really good friends, got to ride my bike a lot, and got lots of nice bikes out of it!

What could possibly go wrong?

😛

Tell him to read this

Then get him to read this

Then if he has any will to live remaining tell him to read this

I would also suggest he subscribe to the Bike Trade Buzz forum to get a reality check from real bike shop owners. Ideally get a job in a bike shop to see what its really like.

There really isn’t much money to be made running a local bike shop. That’s not to say don’t do it, but if your friend currently has a nice 9-5 job with all the benefits he needs to think very hard about what running his own shop means. Long hours, not much time for riding his own bike, and likely being the owner-manager for the foreseeable future. Oh and not making much money.

I only go to the LBS for repairs I either can’t do or don’t have time to do. Or for parts I am desperate for.
For this I use a small shop called Firths in Queensbury.

I buy most stuff online as this is better value. So, for me, repairs are what I want.

Look to be fair, 90% of the money that i made from owning a LBS was not made from people who even knew what STW was as are probably most LBS’s. I started a LBS in 2002, loved ‘almost’ every moment of it, it was great. Best time of my life.

Shops are there, some of them even stay there a while, they succeed if you do it right.

1) location
2) Stock
3) Price

Get that right and you can do ok. OK, you are not going to make millions, but you’ll be doing something you love and you can muck around with bikes all day.

You can listen to a load of people on ‘STW’ or elsewhere telling you to do this that and the other: or do what the hell you you want to do with your on life. I did and I have no regrets what so ever. I made more money than I ever would have some in what I was ‘trained’ to do. and enjoyed it more than anything else that I have ever done.

I would never, never tell a mate not to follow his/her dreams. In fact I told a mate (best man at my wedding) to stop packing shelves at somerfield, get back to school and redo his a-levels. He did that, and now he’s a surgeon. So f*ck you people that don’t take a chance on what they could do.

So…… by all means, don’t do it. Live life being a social worker, admin clerk, engineer – what ever it is that what makes you comfortable. But if you don’t give it a go and give it all you’ve got then you’ll not know what I now do and be glad that you did it.

That’s from someone who got off there butt, got out there and did it.

😀

alexathorne, great rousing speach… however…

That’s from someone who got off there butt, got out there and did it.

*their

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

I’ve worked in a few bike shops, some great, great times. However I never ran one, thankfully, I can imagine if you’re not truly committed to long hours at times, it just will not succeed.

And, like people say, location is the key. That, and having the right bits at the right time. I popped into 2 shops around Dalby the other week to get a camelbak bite valve, neither had them in stock. When I suggested buying a new bladder, they didn’t have those either.

Nice one alex 😆

Start at the bottom and work up rather than stocking bling only having to end up giving it away 💡
My lbs tried to move into the bling market a few years ago selling high end bikes in an attempt to move away from their core customer the family and kids. Gave up and gone back to what they are best known for.
Another wee back street shop survived for many, many years and made a comfortable living mending punctures, truing wheels and fixing any old bike that came through the door. He had bins and shelfs of bits and pieces gathered up over the years and was rarely stuck for a part. This shop is now owned by a young guy after the previous owner retired. The new owner started off with a farm shed and collected old bike, renovated them and either sold them on or sent some to a charity. He has tidied the shop up a bit but still maintains the same sort of ethos and clientele as previous owner and seems to be doing well.

*their

Sorry! too much to drink. that’s the trouble when you’ve run a bike shop and retire to the sun to the southern hemisphere and post in one’s evening. (i’m not the only one by the way)

Do it! but get some advice first maybe, from people that have done it.

I helped a few guys set up shop in the UK. All of which are still thriving. It’s not impossible.

Do you think when you pass every corner shop etc “how the *uck are they making any money, there’s a Tesco down the road”. Same thing with bike shops. Don’t think for a moment that your main income will be from STW’ers – I assure you that it won’t be.

Got to love what you are doing. Got two shops near me – one cheap but grumpy and one a bit more expensive but happy and chatty

Happy gets all the business – no biscuits involved

repairs will prob make u loads more then selling bikes!!

Indeedy. My LBS (The brilliant DJ Cycles in Holcombe) are very nice to me whenever I walk in, and refrain from immediately asking me the obvious question – “what’ve you broken now, you big clumsy oaf?”

He always does me a good price on replacing whatever I’ve smashed this week, as I’ll break something else next week. Then there’s always the “Oh… while I’m here, have you got……?”

I found the ‘impulse purchases in LBS’ thread enlightening, there were a lot of respondents who had done just that with something far more expensive than theyd gone in to buy. Difficult to cater for that market but if you have some blingy kit in and its not extortionately priced then the more ‘serious’ cyclist is likely to do just this.

Sadly my LBS (who ironically has an internet presence aiming at the budget market) saw fit to price up Hope headsets at 70 quid so they’ll be staying in their cabinet a while 🙄

+1 for repairs being the future for LBSs. Down here most of my work is on bikes that originated from Argos/Tesco/Toys-R-Us etc. That’s actually quite satisfying as I can often make those bikes work far better than they did when new which regularly prompts a lot of gratitude from customers.

It appears that appealling to all sectors of the market just isn’t possible, but I still feel a little disappointed when people turn up on nice bikes, look through the window at the hybrids and retros I’ve got and then roll on obviously having decided that it’s ‘not their kind of shop’.

It does feel that I’m spending my life thrashing along in second gear at times but in a tough economic climate I do appear have built myself a reliable income and for that I am very grateful.

Sadly my LBS (who ironically has an internet presence aiming at the budget market) saw fit to price up Hope headsets at 70 quid so they’ll be staying in their cabinet a while

Bite their arm off i say. They are £80 rrp.

Those with bike shops who have replied to this…..

how much technical bike knowledge did you have before opening the bike shop?
Could you pretty much repair anything before setting up? Or did you go on courses/learn from a friend to get the knowledge needed?

I’m not thinking of opening a bike shop, but do have another idea at the back of my mind.
I can get by doing certain repairs currently, but also use the LBS for repairs, partly because some things I don’t know how to do, partly because I’m not spending x amount on a tool that’ll get used once.

Having a top spanner-monkey is key for me – I still buy pleanty of kit from my LBS purely on the basis that I know I’ll be treated well, their monkey reallly knows his way round a bike & if I ever have a problem they’re willing to help out.

I always (more often than I’d like) recommend folk to them when someone else has attended to their bikes with a club hammer & GT85.

In addition to the market research any prospective LBS owner should prepare polite answers to the following:

“£80 to fix it? But that’s a quality bike, I paid nearly £300 for it”
(Customer whose teenage son has just trashed his 6 month old bike)

“What do you mean, ‘it’s worn out’? Can’t you just adjust something”.
(Customer with chain so worn it’s slipping over the tops of the teeth on the sprockets)

“I could buy a car for that”.

“Some of my mates are going to Wales. I’m going with them and I need a new bike. What have you got for £200”.

“Why can’t you do it in the next half hour? I’m a paying customer”.
(Customer who has just spent ten minutes trying to haggle down the price of a repair and there’s a dozen bikes already in the workshop queue.)

has attended to their bikes with a club hammer & GT85.

Well that clearly won’t work. Sledge or nothing for the delicate bike parts these days, idiots the lot of them 🙂

I’ll supplement MB’s post with:

“I was just riding along when…:
– I got a puncture, I assume that’s warranty?
– My chain snapped, I assume that’s warranty?
– My hub bearings seized, I assume that’s warranty?
– My frame snapped clean in half, along with my seatpost and my handlebars. I assumes that’s warranty?”

Etc etc.

Tell him to start it as a franchise using your name, for the franchise he pays you 20% of all transactions (note i didn’t say profit as there wont be much) that way when you fall out at least one of you will have got something good out of it

Those with bike shops who have replied to this…..

how much technical bike knowledge did you have before opening the bike shop?
Could you pretty much repair anything before setting up? Or did you go on courses/learn from a friend to get the knowledge needed?

I’m not thinking of opening a bike shop, but do have another idea at the back of my mind.
I can get by doing certain repairs currently, but also use the LBS for repairs, partly because some things I don’t know how to do, partly because I’m not spending x amount on a tool that’ll get used once.

Gladly answer any q’s via email so we can have back and forth.
manager@thebikechain dot c o d ot uk

My advice would be caution in the current market, and don’t try to do it on borrowed money or expect to get funding beyond what you introduce, it’s quite tough in retail right now, so the entire sector gets marked down by those who tick boxes when you get a bit tight and need to borrow to tide you over when nobody walks in the door.

Which lead me to another point, just opening a store and expecting folk to walk in and buy stuff in the current climate at what you want them to pay for it sadly isn’t going to happen right now either, there is such downward pressure on pricing from the oversupply the recent upward trend has placed on the market, customers are quite literally spoilt for choice.

So, having said that, an enthusiast engaged with his/her customer base, trading in some of the niches still vibrant can make a go of it. If you can find a shop premises that say gives the ability to have a say a coffee shop alongside, make sure there is ample room for repair and service which is about the only bit that is reliable right now. Organise rides with your customers, Road rides, Offroad rides, Mum and Toddler mornings don’t forget the ‘mature empty nester markets’ work hard and you can still succeed.

Don’t let yourself get bullied into holding too much stock by zealous reps, bone up on things like stock turn, profit and loss reports, don’t enter into binding long term lease agreements and know your local market and the potential it might have for you to create a market that serves your model. Consider new ideas, some folk are going heavily into Electric bikes, some are focusing on high end road, but if the local area isn’t the higher end of middle income those markets might not deliver.

So I wouldn’t say don’t do it, but I would say tread cautiously and research first and have a plan, it’s a lonely tough world out here carving a living for yourself, it can be very scary, but it can also deliver a rewarding life and lifestyle, it’s an old saying but true, you get out of life and business what you put in, assuming of course that there’s not a crap Government in power scaring the shit out of folk about the future..

Thanks all, interesting comments.

He’s a dissatisfied lawyer with an uncertain future, thinking of opening up in a small town near Edinburgh.

People who know their stuff will order online and do work themselves. I think the need and purpose of a proper shop has moved towards keeping the casual cyclist on the road/mud, difficult servicing that uses specialist tools, fixing mechanical bodges (ah, the walk of shame into the LBS with a busted thingybob), suspension servicing and clothes/shoes.

Some bike shops can be competitive with completes and the test ride/aftercare offered can be appealing to those who are upgrading their knowledge at the same time as their bike.

It may be worth offering BMX parts if there’s a scene in the area. I think establishing a community (maintenance courses, guided/club rides etc) will help a shop survive. Handy opening hours, manners and a fast turnaround go a long way. The LBS I’m most loyal to occasional does little jobs for next to nothing, like swapping my fixed cogs over after I bought one there.

Be discerning, I prefer a shop with a specific narrow range of good parts rather than a big one with a broad range of cheap and nasties.

Links with a powdercoaters/anodiser would be pretty cool!

I think the need and purpose of a proper shop has moved towards…clothes/shoes.

I am not so sure about this point. I wonder how many folk use the LBS as a fitting room then go buy for the cheapest price on-line?