Re:
sorry i haven't been on to reply to the above comments, the shop has been mental busy for the early part of the year!
@grannygrinder s045 1ub, blackfield, i'm sure you know where that is, kettle will be on.
@minifreak, as above, the kettle is always on
@Al, in regards to other shops, 6 miles north is another shop, in my opinion they are struggling, basically they are trying to be higher end when they should be mid range, that is a tough market to try to get in to as high end customers travel long distances to buy big money bikes, they have 3 or 4 high end bikes in stock, so not a lot really, so those high end customers travel to places like primera sport in bournemouth as they have 50 high end bikes to choose from so it makes more sense for these customers to make a day of going to look for their new bike, there is also hargroves 10miles north, mass market metal mover, and boost bike hub 10 miles west, a good shop but concentrates on hire bikes in the summer. there are a couple of others like GA cycles in southampton but he concentrates on repair and servicing. so obvs i started out concentrating repair, gained a reputation as not messing people about and doing good work, i then expanded in to the bike sales as that's what the customers wanted. we'll see what happens long term though, it'll be 3 years next month.
@xxnick, cheers, it's getting there!
in general though the shop is still busy, in Jan/Feb/March i work 5 days a week but for the last 3 weeks i have been having to do late nights just to keep up so most evenings have been spent at the shop till about 930-10pm, saturday was a good day, an Orange Alpine 6 Pro went out the door, took deposits on a dawes gaalxy and a ridgeback hybrid as well as a lot of workshop jobs went out the door and i still took in 7 bikes for the week ahead.
dreading april 5th though, stocktake, go that is a boring day! :roll:
i do use instagram for the shop though so if you want to see what's going on then that's a good way to see what i'm up to and obvs there is a facebook page as well.