Originally Posted by
Grand Bois
I would specialize like Mike Stonich. He works out of his basement and he once told me that he makes a comfortable living. He said that most of his income comes from shortening cranks. It's something that your typical bike shop can't handle, like his other services. What appeals to me is that everything is done by mail order, so he doesn't have to deal with interruptions by walk-ins.
Here's his website:
http://bikesmithdesign.com/
I wish that I could do something similar so I could retire from my gov't job. The trouble is, I don't have any skills.
You pretty much have to specialize in some service or sales these days to compete with online marketing.
It's unfortunate that many people get screwed online and by that time they can't do anything about it nor have the cash to get quality or what they wanted in the first place.
Thanks for the link, will look it up.
Gvt jobs are stable, at least here and have benefits, don't toss that so easily. I was self employed from the age of 17 and sometimes wished I had a Gvt job.
Skills you can always aquire, don't allow the lack of it to hold you back in anyway. When I was a kid around 16, I had started my electronics studies and an older technical neighbour told me this. He said, any time someone ask you if you can fix this, you always say yes. He said if you do not know how to fix it, go learn how to do it and fix it lol.
So in a way he was telling me to learn skills and don't give up.
Originally Posted by
cafzali
From my observations, it can work in a metro area if you're in a portion of it with a good demographic and develop a reputation for good service to a higher-end clientele. Places like Piermont Bike Shop, which is along U.S. Route 9W from the George Washington Bridge in Piermont, N.Y., make a mint on service and sales as does a shop about 10 miles away along the same highway because they get a good crowd of hard core cyclists, Ironman trainees, etc.
But if you don't have this kind of clientele naturally going near you, it can be tough. In the same county as both of these is the shop where I got my first road bike and while the guys there are nice and knowledgeable, they have all kinds of folks coming in with beaters expecting them to work miracles for relatively little money. He makes it work because it's got 2 shops, but even then, I don't get the impression he's rolling in the dough.
One of the other problems we have apart from facing online competition and sometime sales of inferior parts, is that someone with no interest in quality or ethics will open a shop with back stabbing prices, screw up the market and clientele and then close down.
This leaves a bad impression for others who could do better and offer great service. I don't think anyone can ever make a lot of money in a bike shop as bikes are still seen as something cheap and disposable by most.