I’ve been writing a lot recently about our services, we aren’t just a bicycle shop we do more than that and we’re trying to help create an efficient and useful cycling culture and eco-system within the city. We aren’t trying to conquer the world or demolish any competition we just believe there are things that can be done to provide more bicycle based services to the city than just selling you a new bike. We are a service business and not necessarily here to sell you product as there are many shops and online businesses doing that a lot cheaper than us. We want to invest in people and help create a cycling eco-system that enables people to cycle more, cycle further and allows businesses to benefit from the cycling revolution.
As a bicycle business we’ve tried to widen our approach to cycling and we’ve developed a list, not an exhaustive list might I say, of our services what we CAN do, what we WILL do and what we CAN’T do. We know that there are many providers of cycling related services in the city and we want to help work with them to offer more to those that want to use bicycles more widely.
I believe that it is integral to creating a successful eco-system there must be many players offering different services. This enables more miles to be ridden and more people and businesses to access cycles. Local businesses know the very local marketplace best, they understand their customers and provide the services they want and need. I’ve been working in Sheffield’s cycling marketplace for 12 years now and we briefly ventured into Nottingham, you really can’t imagine how different they are, each city, each region has different attitudes towards cycling and bicycles somewhat led by historical cultures. Just like selling stuff to people different things sell better in different places, McDonald’s discovered that as they ventured worldwide.
Sheffield is unique it has unique terrain, unique businesses and a unique culture that only local businesses can properly understand so we want to work closely with local businesses and local developers to help create the sort of supportive culture that makes active travel appealing to all. We want to work with the local authority to ensure that active travel is considered in their plans for the future development and direction of the city. We also want to work with other road users to get the right message out there that we aren’t here to create friction and in fact more cycling and walking makes driving easier.