Eat Sleep Cycle: A cycling business success story

Amongst all the negative press about impending economic doom and gloom there are always businesses who’re seeing the opportunity and making growth happen. Eat Sleep Cycle are one such business.

Turning 6 and thriving is the message. And there’s plenty to unpack in the story of how a couple with a credit card and a dream bought 6 bikes, and turned that into a rapidly growing, multifaceted, cycling business and brand.

*Cycle holidays. Hire bikes. Local rides. Retail. Café. Speaker events. Film launches. Global brand*

Girona based, Eat Sleep Cycle started life as a cycle tour holiday business, sharing the best of European cycling with customers from all corners of the globe. So far, so good. Bike brand partnerships. A hub location. Staff out on the road supporting an ever expanding number of holiday destinations.

You know what comes next: A global pandemic.

Now Lee and Louise are an industrious pair, surrounded by a great team. They saw the opportunity when many would just place hands on head and cry.

Girona locals started asking them to fix bikes, then source bikes, clothing and anything else cycle related you can think of. What was a Travel and Rental hub turned quickly into a workshop and retail space (working to local lockdown guidelines) serving local cyclists.

The retail business took off.

The team, including ex Nike retail specialist, and now Head of Eat Sleep Cycle Retail, Mike Hawkins, radically transformed their physical space to meet new needs from new customers.

Unrelenting pace is kinda the norm’ when you’re a cycle tour holiday business, yet even that experience didn’t prepare the team for the amount of local custom they received.

So they expanded further.

A planned café location, on the side of the existing retail and bike rental hub became a part crowd funded reality. Around this time it also became obvious they had now outgrown the original hub, which overflowed with apparel, sports nutrition, and bikes for sale, as well as a workshop and bike fitting service. It’s still a magical space – we visited whilst in town for Sea Otter Europe – just it’s not the way the team see a genuinely premium retail customer experience being delivered.

Standards.

Always be raising them.

Whilst all this is happening there’s somehow time to add a new bike hire centre. Plus a new head office was found, and moved into. There’s that drive and energy to make success a reality again.

And, just to keep them busy, the team took advantage of a prime ‘right next door’ location becoming empty – new retail space secured, and work in progress. A dedicated space for clothing. More room made for bike sales and new partner brands.

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s Málaga… an entirely new Eat Sleep Cycle ride hub location which the business is opening, ready for 2023 and beyond.

Did I forget to mention ‘registering the intellectual property of the Eat Sleep Cycle brand?’ Yeah, that’s right, there’s that too!

So this weekend, when Lee, Louise, and the entire Eat Sleep Cycle team celebrate 6 years of hard earned growth and success don’t forget to raise a glass. So much to admire, and no shortage of inspiration.

Here’s to celebrating those making good things happen.