The Move of the Store 3 years later.

One time a person told me, never be so arrogant that you think that everyone has heard your story. I'm not sure if arrogant is the right word but we probably can agree that it fits. Warning I don't edit these and I don't get to choose the emoji next to my name. As far as my story goes, I opened this bike shop over 13 years ago and still regularly meet people that didn't know "Zanesville has a Bike Shop". It's not like there's been a lack of trying on our part. But this story is more about the move that we did and how it's really panning out. First off, we had a great time Downtown and in the Freight Shoppes and there are certainly irreplaceable memories that will go along with that decade for us. We started a business there, a family there and met a lot of great people who were supportive of us and understanding that we were just a couple of kids trying to make a living running a bike shop.

Leaving our first location was definitely scary even if I acted like I knew exactly what I was doing. And if there was some time to give advice, I would say, sometimes you have to bite off more than you can chew and just keep chewing. lol. That sounds ridiculous but I guess the point is that believing you can and working towards that belief is a key to achievement. It may sound all sappy, we live in an era where people are born with immaculate knowledge and success. They've never had a day of doubt, they've never even thought incorrectly, they have always been and always will be people of great status and wealth and they project it, and if you shop with them you can be like that too. Eh, that's just a satirical haymaker at how ridiculous the internet, marketing and influencers have gotten and made others. We're more of a start from scratch story, but anyway this is a story about our building. The building has really allowed us to apply new standards and efficiency to your bike repairs. We have a lot more room than ever and a lot more capability than ever. Before we had to manually clean your bike and it's parts, now we're able to have a full washing a lubricant dedicated area. Before we had to meticulously maneuver bikes and constantly juggle workspace where now we can easily balance multiple projects and space to work isn't an issue. Also, we have a whole room dedicated to bikes and it has the potential to house a lot of bikes. We made good use of our previous space but at the end of the day it was tight. We could easily fill up with 20 repairs, have a bunch of bikes in stock and if 3 families came in the store felt a little claustrophobic, now we could have all that and a dance party and there would be still be space. Now we're not the largest store on the planet but considering we started at 0 this is a great improvement. We have our own parking lot with a big sidewalk so test riding bikes, eh, test riding bikes is probably the same. Overall moving has been a good thing even though at first it was rough. It wasn't that long ago that a pandemic had came, there were new rules, new supply chains being built and more. For awhile our distributors didn't have inventory, things we had on backorder weren't arriving and we didn't have a lot of answers.

For a time after moving we couldn't tell people if we were going to sell bikes again. We had enough with certain aspects of working for major brands and more importantly we had ideas of how we wanted to proceed with our lives. We've been in a rebuild mode since moving. First we moved, and quit doing social media, so a lot of people think the pandemic put us out of business. Second, we stopped doing business with brands that we were associated with so some people think we're less quality. Third, times were rough for us, we had bought a building that needed a lot of work, moved directly into, worked on it while working out of it, our website got destroyed, we had little inventory after we sold out. So yes, rebuild mode. This year we've been able to bring bikes back into stock. With the bikes coming back into stock we've been able to market something other than our repair services. And, we've made significant progress on our quest of being able to manufacture bicycles. At the end of the day, even though everything has changed, nothing has changed. We're still committed to doing our best work at a fair price. We're still committed to having quality bicycles available. We're still committed to believing that bikes are a great part of life. We're open 10-6 all week and 10-4 on Saturday. We have a decent amount of BMX bikes, Cruiser Bike, Women's Bike Path Bikes as well as a random collection of used bikes. Also if you have time, become an activists for the kids that like BMX, which is an Olympic Sport and write the City of Zanesville about how you think a few piles of dirt are needed at Chaps Run Park to make a few jumps.