Originally Posted by
Garfield Cat
There's a big bike shop in Davis California and its part of the University of California. At the UC Davis campus, there's about 20,000 students who ride bikes. So they have their own bike shop in a converted barn. The student fees support that bike shop plus the shop charges for repairs, etc. So for UC Davis, that shop gets free rent, an automatic customer base of 20,000 plus an annual membership fee subsidy. For visitors to the campus, there's even bike rentals. I suspect their typical customer base is the student-commuter.
This has got to be the ultimate in the non profit model for bike shops. Student commuters first, recreational and sport second.
Anybody here been to UC Davis bike shop?
We have something similiar at University of Toronto. Except that our student base is more like 50-60k students. However, we don't charge for repairs (opting for a sustainable culture instead - we teach them how to do it). We do charge for parts though.