Why has the workshop only model become so popular?
Plenty has been said about the workshop only model and its increasing appeal to business owners on the front line of meeting demand in urban areas. CI.N checks in with a fine example, Rat Race Cycles of Peckham, to understand the mechanics of relying on the mechanics for revenue…
“I have a degree in physiology, but I liked taking stuff apart, maybe my parents wanted me to be a doctor,” starts Peter Owen, the mastermind behind Rat Race Cycles, nowadays a Peckham-based physical repair shop with the odd accessory sale tacked on.
It is a story that will be familiar to many in the bike trade who just sort of land in the business on the back of years of tinkering, riding and steadily becoming embedded in the bike scene. The name Rat Race Cycles is a nod to darting around the city servicing generally fast and enthused customers who are time poor, but bike portfolio rich.
“For four years I was mobile only and used to drive into underground car parks for servicing batches of bikes. It was great really, no mobile reception or distractions. The peace and quiet to get on was great, but it didn’t scale and a lot of planning was needed for actual days working. It’s also hard to move the range of stock needed for diverse customer base,” says Pete.
His stomping ground was a good portion of South-East London, but since 2012 the customer has been the one travelling to the Evalina Road store, leased first during the Olympic road boom and servicing a diverse community from all walks of life in the local area since.
“I always wanted to set up own and living in East Dulwich, on the edge of Zone 2 my area is a good commuter distance for the inner city. There’s a real mix in Peckham, all kinds of backgrounds ethnicity and wealth,” explains Pete, adding that opening during a boom time for cycling certainly helped establish the store in the performance community.
What that means is that the workshop is kitted out to service everything from immovable seatposts stuck in frames, right through to bikes dripping in wireless shifters and internal routing. From jobs like these the business has been able to stand on its own two wheels and grow, keeping its rates respectable in view of the shop’s continued investment in training and tooling.
“Each of our six staff are Cytech 2 or above. It’s not essential, but this badge helps people to know the standard at a given workshop. The skills are constantly developing to grapple with industry standards and more than ever, electric bikes,” he says.
Pricing is of course a contentious subject in the trade, more so since the pandemic seeded plenty more upstarts in the world of bicycle mechanics. Some of those skills that flooded into the trade in 2020, Pete says, have since hit immovable walls (namely supply) and have ended up resetting in stores around the city. When asked about fairly pricing a skilled service, Pete’s not shy in saying if you’ve got the skills, then charge your worth.
“We’re likely more expensive than others, but we’re better! We punch above our weight, but then we’ve built bikes for transcontinental races and all sorts of top-end applications. We can justify the price and we did just put them up to reflect moving goalposts and product quirks. A full strip and rebuild on an £8,000 bike now includes handling internal routing, di2 firmware updates, tubeless sealant refills – it’s just more complex than it was before. People who have those bikes trust us to do it right.
Pete continues: “If you put prices up and no one complains then possibly should have done it sooner. In benchmarking our position we consider hard-earned experience, the location, training, tools and competition locally. The industry is full of and started by cyclists wanting to help other cyclists and feeling guilty charging other people like them, but labour isn’t a commodity in the way a set of Gatorskins is.”
So, why did Pete opt to go down the workshop only route when the surrounding shops could easily be seen to be enjoying the spoils of a busy road cycling network not too far from prime locations, as well as a commuter trend that has grown steadily with each kilometre of segregated path into the city?
“When I first opened the shop and started selling bikes, I did so just because I thought we should. I had however worked in enough other shops to know it wasn’t the way the industry was going. By 2012 it was standard to see showrooming behaviour with a certain customer type. It’s the main reason we stopped, not being able to sell consistently at full retail, or hold each SKU in stock. It is, sadly, always cheaper online, so the tilt toward servicing, where our reputation was strong, made business sense,” says Pete.
As a long-term sideline to the main workshop business, Pete has specialised in high-spec wheel building under the Owen Wheels banner. Once more, skills like this cannot be showroomed and in most cases word gets round that a specialist exists that will offer a service a cut above for performance wheelset builds. This reputation led to a partnership with Karen Hartley, a celebrated London frame builder, with Pete’s wheels shown on her bikes at the Bespoked handmade shows. At his busiest Pete can turn around 20 to 30 wheels a week, so his hand is finely tuned to throwing spokes at hubs in between bike servicing.
There are other speciality services blended into the typical 8am to 6pm day (hours differ Thursday and Saturday). Lately the cargo bike trend in inner London has sparked a new line of customer enquiry and service work. Rat Race is finding that the fast evolution of this segment is leading to a quickened service schedule on some cargo units, whereby parts are struggling with the required workload and very often need upgrading to cope.
“We have a group of nannies (childminders) who each told all their friends about the cargo bike lifestyle, and it’s caught on. For us, cargo bike Wednesdays is now a thing for our workshop and we educate our cargo customers on parts wear and maintenance schedules. Honestly, I don’t think I saw any in the first four years of shop, but now it’s regular; the motors made them so accessible to so many people. That’s the same generally speaking too, I just got a Brompton Swytch conversion for my wife to return to office, that’s made it more accessible for her as a regular means of transport.”
Consumer behaviour changes have been well-documented and few trends have been as pronounced as the change to the ways and means people are using to get from A to B. Within Pete’s corner of London, that has meant having an ear to the ground and adapting.
“We saw a massive change during lockdown. Before lockdown, we operated 7am to 7pm, the full commuter hours. This trend is not noticeably returning, so we switched to 8am to 6pm. There wasn’t a front of house role before lockdown, but now there is always someone on hand to greet people.”
The store’s layout is deliberately open plan and if you’re lucky it’s shop Border Collie Poodle cross Bryn that will greet you. People entering see bikes being fixed in two stands as they walk in. “We don’t want that communication breakdown that can happen when mechanics are hidden away,” explains Pete.
Communication has been something that the business has gone a long way to fine tuning, in part in response to Pete’s own business education, but also down to personal experience of meeting uninspiring front of house staff in bike shops elsewhere.
“We keep up an element of sales training to combat any chance of putting customers off. I have come across surly mechanics who can really alienate customers. My aim is to make 100% of our customers comfortable in our environment. We don’t want anyone looking down the nose at anybody, no matter what they wheel through the door. You get a reputation for that stance and I don’t want it for Rat Race. Our culture is built upon consciously reminding ourselves to put ourselves in the shoes of all customers.”
Written on the wall of the shop is a message that backs up the ethos of always striving for personal development – “own mistakes, own failures, learn from them.” It is encouraged that even if any staffer comes close to a slip up they communicate how it happened in order to help others avoid similar pitfalls. “Near misses are good for best practice learning,” says Pete on striving to help all ships rise at once.
It may soon be more than a pair of mechanics at stands soon greeting customers. Pete’s ambition has been to scale, though for now it’ll be servicing the ample local demand.
“We have planning permission to extend the workshop, but there’s no builders around to do it, plus there’s some supply issues with materials; everybody has been extending their houses so we can’t get a look in just now. We’ll add two more stands and more bike storage as a starter,” he says of the near-term plan.
As for Pete’s role in the mix? “My role changed from mechanic to businessperson, so I’ll continue to receive business coaching. Though we’ve been around a while now, I’ve found that very useful and necessary to forge a path ahead, so I’d recommend it to others.”