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Community Focus Cycles
issue, you’ve got all the electrics involved and stuff. “And often it’s a process of elimination, and it literally is just plugging in different components to the same motor trying to figure out which one it is that’s faulty, and sometimes that’s a long process. But I don’t mind it, I enjoy doing it. So I’ve become the e-bike guy over at one shop I work at, and I have relationships with people at Bosch, Shimano so I can talk to them if I get stumped myself.”
Word of mouth
While he’s busy with his three roles for the moment, this will be Fillan’s first proper winter as a business, so advertising may be considered depending on customer numbers. “I was worried that not advertising was going to have a negative impact on where I’m at,” he said. “But it just seems [that] through word of mouth and through people just finding me on Google and searching, ‘bike shop near me’ or whatever it is they search for, I’m getting just enough customers that I’m not twiddling my thumbs and I’m not too busy.
18 | November 2023
“I don’t know what’s going to happen over winter because I’ve never been here and open and had a website and all that stuff through this part of the year. Without trying to force it, without trying to drum up business, everything seems to be going as it should do, you know, it’s not too much and it’s not too little.”
The bigger picture In the future, however, Fillan has plans (or daydreams) to expand his workshop to host community youth projects. “I have the odd vision of maybe running some sort of youth project,” he said. “Not here but somewhere else in Haworth or in the surrounding area, taking donations of bikes and then taking young people and showing them how to fix them and stuff. “Get some local kids around and teach them how to fix
bikes, and maybe then they won’t be wandering around their villages bored for a few hours a week. They’ll have something else to do and who knows where that might lead them. “Or, it might just be me fixing bikes, and then teaching my son how to fix them a few years down the line. Who knows where it will go.”
www.bikebiz.com
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