Taking over the bike shop...

[tribanjules]

@Andy in Germany it’s been inspiring sharing your journey, so good luck as you move on and look forward to the next chapter in your life 👏🏻👏🏻

 

[classic33]

As part of my new contract discussions at work I've been asked if I'd consider taking over the bike shop/department in one of our large second hand shops.

I work for a small NGO working with people who are long term unemployed; the "bike shop" sells refurbished donated bikes while giving work to two or three clients. At the moment it's a workshop hidden round the back, with a few bikes on display in the general shop. It's losing money at the moment.

I'm going to suggest that we move some of the workshop into the "public" area alongside the furniture showroom and the sewing and alterations shop, so it's more visible for casual customers, and focus on the idea of selling affordable mobility and affordable adventures, on the basis most normal, non CC people probably aren't buying a bike, they're buying a way to get to work or go out for the afternoon. To reinforce this I'm planning to use lots of natural wood and hand drawn signage.

I've managed to get most of my ideas into one sheet of paper, although I've lost a fair bit of detail. The shop is generally called "Fairkauf" which means "Fair buying" and most departments have "Fair..." in the title. "Fair Rad" is also a slight play in the word "Fahrrad" or Bicycle, although I promise that happened by accident because "Faircycle" was already taken...

View attachment 634457


Any thoughts welcome...

How close did you get the place looking to your drawing in this post?

 

[Andy in Germany]

How close did you get the place looking to your drawing in this post?

I didn't; the drawing was a proposal to move the workshop area partially into the shop but that was vetoed because it would take space from the furniture showroom, which to be fair makes a bigger profit. The manager said he'd yield space only if beaten in a bare knuckles fistfight and he's bigger then me.

The design I made for the workshop turned out remarkably similar to what I now have though.

I'll also be taking a lot of the material I developed here to my new employer; they want me to "develop" the section of the organisation dealing with long term unemployed people, basically doing the same as I am now, and there is some talk of "developing" the shop as well, so my set building skills may be usable once more...