How Anyone Can Get A Job In The Bike Industry

It’s not so long ago that I was an outsider – I rode bikes, but beyond my local bike shop, Wiggle, and a few brushes with British Cycling, I had no re …

By stwhannah

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How Anyone Can Get A Job In The Bike Industry

As this is in the members section I hope my comment will be ok.
If not, please feel free to remove it.

I’ve worked in industrial B2B sales and product management for nearly 30 years now. Generally love my job but once made the mistake of being swayed by an advert to sell for a bike manufacturer.

Had one interview, got the job and a week later I was away from my previous job of 12 years. eek.

Anyway, it really didn’t work out for many reasons – most of which I doubt would happen today.
The crux of the story is, be careful going into your hobby as a job. Make sure everything is checked and thought about first.

I’m happy to share my complete story outside of the public eye if anybody is interested.

That is a really great eye opening article. Thank you very much.

As someone who’s previously worked as a bike mechanic and is currently out of work I have indeed looked at getting back into the bike industry recently. Had two interviews for jobs out of seven applications. The biggest barrier to getting back into it though was the wages. Only one of the jobs I enquired about could pay enough to cover my bills (which are low), the rest were just impossible to live on unless you were a young person living with your parents. I’m not just talking about spanner monkey work either. Uplift driver at £8.93/hr but only guaranteed 20 hours a week, sales rep at minimum wage too, trainee mechanics on Apprenticeship wage for 2 years (£4.30/hr!) and shop manager jobs at less then you get to stack shelves at Aldi.

There are decent jobs in the industry but they are few and far between. The majority are low paid and seemingly play on people ‘doing it for the love’ while scraping by. The only ones I’ve seen advertised that pay reasonably well are the office jobs where you could easily go all day without seeing a bike part.

“There are decent jobs in the industry but they are few and far between. The majority are low paid and seemingly play on people ‘doing it for the love’ while scraping by. The only ones I’ve seen advertised that pay reasonably well are the office jobs where you could easily go all day without seeing a bike part.”

Quite possibly the truest thing I’ll read all week. I started in the bike trade in the mid-’90s shop floor sales and then onto mechanic, deputy store manager and store manager. I spent time as an importer and internet retailer. I even ended up as the launch editor for a cycling B2B title and through it all, I was on frankly crap wages. The only upside was cheap kit and working with some truly wonderful people.
My last full-time role in the trade was editing the B2B title and that was basically f*cking me up, never had or have had such a stressful job and during the eight months I was in that role I barely rode my bikes.
I’ve now found a happy balance where I’m working full-time outside of the bike trade and simply writing occasional freelance pieces for cycle trade and consumer titles.
To sum up what it is like to work in the trade take this lyric from Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Sunscreen’ and drop cycle trade in, in place of New York City and Northern California:

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft

I like the reference to paper clip salesperson in the text, CFH would be proud!

Ironically, the one thing that attracted me more than the ‘working with bikes’ aspect of the job I took, was the salary.

Selling BSOs and accessories (very much low end bikes) got me double my previous salary and around £28k a year in 1999. 50% of it was commission and the job itself was torture but, well paid if you could stick it.

I lasted 2 months and 3 weeks before telling the boss to stick his bikes where the sun doesn’t shine 😉

Bike Industry lifer here – weekend shop monkey at uni, and now a brand & product director for a well know brand, plus pretty much every step in between at retail, distributor, manufacturer and e-comm. It’s not a bad life at all, and I earn (now) what i consider to be pretty OK money. But it’s taken over 20 years to get to that point and my mid-twenties were definitely pretty hand to mouth. I do often think about what life ‘outside’ would have been like, and tried to break out a number of times without success. What I will say is that i honestly believe i would ride more if i wasn’t in the industry, and my hobby was literally just that, not my life. I love bikes and riding, but i’m certain that familiarity breeds contempt…

I didn’t write this meaning everyone *should* get a job in the bike industry! It was more to illustrate how things work so maybe people would see possibilities they didn’t know were there. I see a lot of ‘I want to quit my job and work with bikes’ posts on Facebook groups/forums and they’re almost always focussed on the frontline jobs that we see as riders. I hoped to let people see there might be less nuclear options than throwing a whole career away, with perhaps some sideways opportunities.

As for the money – you’ve certainly got to be able to cover your costs, but for the right employer, work/life balance and bike bits discounts then I think a lower salary can work out as a better standard of living. Having done it myself, it’s an interesting exercise to look at how much you spend on getting to/being at work, and how much you spend because you’re too worn out from work to do something yourself/cheaper.