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Thomas Hardy, owner of Tweflth City Cyclery RIDE MORE!
Thomas Hardy founded Twelfth City Cyclery in Northumberland in 2020 to combine his passion and skills. BikeBiz learns more about how his business operates.
Can you give us a little background on Twelfth City Cyclery and yourself? I am a mechanical (design) engineer who graduated through the Motown automotive industry. When Covid hit, personal circumstances encouraged me to come home after living outside the UK for over a decade and I started the Twelfth City snowball rolling. Starting as a bike mechanic over twenty years ago, I have skills that were seemingly lacking here. Northumberland is a stunning area with still under-tapped potential as a cycling destination for all disciplines, despite being underserved by way of bike shops. We started by what felt like trading services for tools with our cycling neighbours then now we’ve created and ticked off a host of bigger milestones.
What type of consumers do you target? Having Twelfth City be my first real foray into business I laboured to develop foundational business aspects like this.
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Aware most advice will have business owners ‘niching down,’ I have had difficulty describing our market. We target a client characteristic, rather than a riding discipline. All handlebar shapes and wheel sizes live here: we want to provide something to people looking to upgrade their cycling, which may be bike-out-the-shed to first weekend trip, casual road rider, to first coast-to-coast, or those stepping up to category podiums. We want to encourage those fun-seeking, developing riders through education and confidence building.
What makes your business unique? Unique is one of those words I avoid using. Everything’s been done before if you’ve been around long enough, there’s little that’s genuinely new anymore. We are, however, not a traditional shop. We are, happily, an alternative bike service operation. There’s a lot like us now, which we see as a good thing. Bike shops are vital for service and community but we
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