Friday, 29 March 2024
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370 stores take part in Local Bike Shop Day 2021

370 independent bike shops took part in August’s Local Bike Shop Day event, organised by the Association of Cycle Traders and backed by several industry partners.

Representing a 37% uptick on the previous year’s participation in the Record Store Day inspired event, the network of stores put on a series of celebratory events for customers in order to highlight the role of the local store in the community.

For example, Cycle Solutions Uplands provided complimentary Local Bike Shop Day Goodie Bags containing Muc-Off and CLIF Bar freebies, as well as giving away free GG’s gelato to all customers, old and new, who supported them on the day! They also gave customers bonus points and entered them into a prize draw to win a £100 voucher.

Participation online drew in support from celebrities like Gail Porter who praised Look Mum No Hands!, through to Olympian Kye White who outlined that his reliance on Edwardes Cycles through his youth contributed to his progress.

This promotion meant that the Local Bike Shop Day website’s most popular page was the “find a local bike shop” search facility, indicating that consumers were actively looking for their local participating shop.

In the campaign’s final two weeks, the hashtags #supportyourlocalbikeshop and #localbikeshopday reached around 250,000 users on Twitter alone and on the platform, all posts mentioning Local Bike Shop Day had over 300,000 impressions/views. On Twitter and Instagram the amount of people following the accounts increased by 40% in the final fortnight of the initiative.

Inspiral Cycles celebrated the day in Durham and worked hard to promote the day on social media in the weeks running up to the day. Fiona, Gary and the team and said of their involvement: “We were blown away by some of the comments our customers posted online for Local Bike Shop Day in support of Inspiral Cycles as their LBS. It was a great focus for our social media posts and they were shared widely.  Support for #supportyourlocalbikeshop increased our online profile and has led to new customers discovering our shop.”

Industry support for the campaign came from a wide-array of partners, including

All Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW), BikeBiz, BikeIsBest, Butterworth Spengler, Cycle To Work Day, Cyclescheme, Cycling UK, Cytech, CyclingIndustry.News, the Department for Transport, Freewheel, Insync, London e-bike festival, Love to Ride, PaceUp Media, Raleigh UK, Sustrans, The Cycle Show, Total MTB, Transport for London, V12 Retail Finance and ZyroFisher.

A number of the campaign’s supporters arranged competitions and discounts, which included:

  • A £1,400 RoZone cleaning bundle that was up for grabs to IBDs
  • £50 off Cytech Theory one for the week
  • 15% off the Freewheel website for the week
  • The opportunity for IBDs to win a £100 voucher to spend on Raleigh goodies
  • Six of the most social media engaged IBDs to win £200 in vouchers to take their staff out courtesy of Cyclescheme
  • Four customers to win a £250 cycling gift card who requested or redeemed a Cyclescheme certificate in a participating shop on Local Bike Shop Day

If you would like to get in touch about next year’s Local Bike Shop Day please email info@theact.org.uk.