IBD FOCUS
Hudson and his two mechanics Ben and Ricky, who both got jobs by visiting the store to say hello, one part-time worker and a number of mechanics who Hudson can call on when needed. The story behind the name is no less coincidental – Hudson came up with the name after changing the name of his partner’s Wifi network, asking her ‘what’s something you like?’, to which she responded… butternut squash.
Shop philosophy Butternut Bikes is a store driven by the philosophies of its owner Hudson, who has a clear mindset when it comes to his business. “The thing that’s important for us
with brands is really that I want to offer our customers good value and that doesn’t always mean that it’s the cheapest, but I don’t want our customers to go away thinking they could have got that product a load cheaper elsewhere, online for instance.” Hudson keeps the number of brands available low, so
Butternut bikes
stand-out brands on offer with Butternut. But there are also some products that Hudson has found
customers are choosing from a price point within a brand, rather than deciding which name they would prefer. Shimano components, popular with the commuters, Goodyear tyres, Muc-Off cleaning and maintenance products, and locks from either Abus or Kryptonite are amongst the
are a tougher sell, most notably the premium tyre market and, owing to space restrictions, bikes. “We’ve got a big backyard but what we don’t have is a shop floor space to sell bikes. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario: we can’t get bikes until we have the space. “We are tentatively optimistic about having a larger space, however we feel we may have missed the bike boom sales boat,
Tales from the workshop - Gav Hudson
At the end of one of the lockdowns we were in a pub and a guy walked in with a small kid’s bike under his arm. Alex, who works for me, noticed that the forks were on backward, so he went over. Of course I’ve got a multi tool in a bag somewhere, so I pulled it out, swapped the forks around, and the guy said thanks very much. We went and sat down at our separate tables and I was a bit annoyed he didn’t send a pint over to say thank you. A couple of months later, a bloke turned up one day and he said: “I’ve got my bike booked in for services. I don’t know if you remember me, but you fixed my kid’s bike in a pub about two months ago.” He said he didn’t want to send a pint over because there was a pandemic and he thought it might be weird, but he offered to buy us breakfast? Brilliant. So he dropped his bike
off with us, went down to the bakery and got some bacon rolls and some coffees for us all. I thought that was worth it all. Then he said he had been eyeing up getting some new wheels for his bike, those Princeton Carbonworks wheels. I said that they’re great, they are £3,500, he asked if we could get? And I said yes. We ended up selling him – well, he sold himself – and we were happy to come very close to the price they were available for online – thank you Ison Distribution for helping us with that. It was our biggest sale to date until today was because we engaged with the community and fixed a kid’s bike. Do you have your own funny, eye-opening, or important story
from the worksop? Email
alex.ballinger@
biz-media.co.uk for a chance to be featured in BikeBiz.
20 | March 2022
www.bikebiz.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
