2 vehicle crashes in 6 weeks: Bike retailer Velorution rues luck after another smash

It’s not often that a cycle retailer is involved in a car crash, so shop Velorution can consider itself remarkably unlucky over the last six weeks, suffering two vehicle smashes, the latest involving the driver of a car crashing into one of its stores today (10 May 2023).

Velorution Marylebone, on Great Portland Street, suffered the smash, with a driver ploughing into scaffolding around the building shortly after 6am this morning, for reasons unknown. Video footage from inside the shop shows the driver taking the turn normally, before speeding up and becoming lodged in the aforementioned scaffolding, which is being assessed for damage before Riding House Street could be re-opened. No shop staff were hurt in the incident.

Six weeks earlier, Velorution’s Chelsea shop was on the receiving end of a bus crashing into its frontage.

Owner Jonathan Cole joked that a competitor could be to blame and continued: “On a serious note, I’m glad the shop was closed and no one was in it at the time of the event. We’re assisting emergency services and property management with their enquiries. It’s obviously extremely disappointing to have to close, at least for this morning. We’re entering our busiest time of the year and our unique cafe trike outside the shop does excellent business throughout the day. We’re doing everything we can to be open as soon as possible.”

For now, the Velorution store in Marylebone remains closed. In the meantime, customers can visit Velorution’s two other open sites in Hackney and Islington.

“We will of course let everyone know when we are back up and running after today’s incident.”

There have been a number of reports of ‘ram-raider’ style incidents involving bike shops in recent years, but we at CIN can’t recall many non-theft-related bike shop incidents like this one. Please correct us if we’re wrong at jon@cyclingindustry.news