This year I took a leap into business ownership, leaving the shop I’d worked at the last six years, and started my own place. A natural progression for a lot of folks around here is to go home-based, with a garage shop, low overhead, but scrambling for repair inventory and almost no retail revenue. I wanted to try something different, a home-based scale approach, but in a tiny storefront, still small enough to run solo, but opening up distribution channels and walk-in business. Like the shoe/watch repair, or single chair barber shops that used to be in every community.
I found the perfect tiny storefront in my neighborhood and opened the doors in April, Somewhere Cycles was born. I had 1 month to build out the space, and I was really into the challenge of optimizing every inch of the 12 foot cube that was to house a full service shop. I managed to implement many of the ideas I had, but from the moment I opened I have been wrenching non-stop, and spending a lot of my time outside business hours with admin work, resulting in many of the fixtures I had planned sitting on the back burner. Still, it has been functioning very well, with a few tweaks and additions along the way. I did need to lease extra basement storage in the adjoining building to manage the flow of bikes. I can now have a rotation of ~12 bikes on hand, plus all my back stock, without cluttering the shop area.
The response to the shop has greatly exceeded my expectations. I knew there was a gap in the local shop offerings, and I have built up a good circle in the local bike community that I could count on for support. The location is an inner city neighborhood that has a growing number of young families and attracts the sort of resident that embraces cycling as part of their lifestyle. The city has invested extensively in bike infrastructure in the area. The community support has turned out to be huge! Every day there is a new face coming through the door, telling me they live in the area and that they are so excited to see me here. And they almost always follow up by bringing me work.
I have been chipping away at expanding my retail offerings. As cash flow comes in, I’ve been stocking more and more of the things I think are cool, and the things people are asking for. It feels like an organic growth that is sustainable. I brought in a frame brand early on, Bassi Bikes, and have done several custom builds and sold some frames. I picked up Hudski Bikes and am now the local stocking dealer. The retail component was not something I had planned for in this tiny space. I figured sure, I’ll sell some consumable parts that I already have on hand for repairs, but I don’t feel like people will be coming here specifically to shop. Turns out I was wrong, people like to buy stuff! My first week a random from the neighborhood ordered a Campy groupset. The opportunity to build the business towards my dream idea of a bike shop seems completely feasible.
This brings me to the current day, where I am working with another local business to lease the entirety of the building my shop is located in. This would roughly quadruple my floor space, which still isn’t that big by bike shop standards, but will open up the ability to stock some complete bikes, and have a retail presence for parts and accessories.
The depth of knowledge on tarck has significantly impacted my journey with bikes over the years, and I don’t think I would have arrived at my philosophy of bikes being their best at the nexus of fun/practical/cool if it wasn’t for this community. As there are several shop owners / former shop folks here, I wanted to have a place where I can discuss business matters with Tarck Consulting LLC, as I take this bigger and more intimidating/risky step into bike shop ownership. My webpage is one of those projects that was back burnered, but you can check things out at https://www.instagram.com/somewherecycles/