Cycles UK Greenwich

Rugby Stars choose their new bikes from Cycles UK Greenwich

2009-05-23T13:19:00.006+01:00

England rugby Star Tom Rees and his Wasps teammate Joe Simpson visited our new store in Greenwich on Thursday 14^th May.

Wasps Rugby club are using a number of measures, including the Cycle to Work scheme, to promote cycling among their team and staff. They have recognised that cycling is not only a great way to keep fit but also a great way to reduce the clubs carbon footprint.

Both Tom and Joe chose Marin Urban bikes which are specifically designed to withstand the stresses and strains of city commuting. Tom Rees said that “living close to the training ground is a great incentive for me to leave the car at home and get on my bike every day’’. He added that “Training and playing rugby at Premiership and International level can take its toll on the body. Being able to warm up and cool down on my bike before and after each training session will be a great way to help me stay fit and mentally focussed’’

Wasps and England 7s Scrum-Half Joe Simpson shares his team mate’s thoughts and is also looking forward to introducing cycling into his daily routine.‘’Fighting through the traffic in my car everyday to get to training does become a little tiring to be honest’’ he said ‘’Being able to hop on my bike and to arrive at training refreshed and ready to go is a huge bonus for me. It’s a lot greener too’’

As with any piece of sporting equipment, fitting is of paramount importance when choosing a bike. We put both Tom and Joe through the Specialized Body Geometry Fitting process examining their physiology and measuring how they sit on the bike so that we could help them choose the correct cycle and then adjust it so that it fits perfectly.

The Marin bikes were personally fitted to each of the two players by the Cycles UK Greenwich shop manager, Brent Smith.‘’Making sure that the bike fits perfectly is an important part of ensuring trouble free ownership and a pleasant riding experience’’ says Brent ‘’As professional sportsmen, Tom and Joe are looking to ensure they stay as healthy and as injury free as possible. Making sure their bike fits them correctly is an essential part of this and we strongly recommend it to all our customers’’.

Bike Belles Review our Shop

2009-05-19T08:44:00.002+01:00

We are very pleased to have received a positive review from the Bike Belles website for our new store in Greenwich.

As a company we have recognised that there are increasing numbers of female cyclists and would be cyclists but that male dominated bike shops are not always very female friendly. In an attempt to try and overcome this in our stores we have consulted female cyclists and non-cyclists about what they would like to see. One of the measures we have introduced at our new Greenwich shop, along with our stores at Norwich and Basildon, is a large dedicated women's cycling area with ladies bikes, clothing, and accessories all grouped to together.

Bike Belles has been set up by Sustrans who are responsbile for the award-winning National Cycle Network, and for community based projects working with kids, schools, people at home and at work, and with entire streets helping regular people like you to walk, cycle and use public transport more.

Their aim with Bike Belles is to overcome so fairly stark statistics. That men are three times as likely to cycle as women. And three quarters of women never ride a bike at all. Their mission is to change this by “making it easier for women to get in the saddle or get back into the bike habit so we too can enjoy all the benefits that travelling actively brings”.

LCC Discount

2009-04-08T13:54:00.002+01:00

The opening weekend went very well and we are looking forward to a very busy bank holiday weekend. Bikemagic and RoadCyclingUK readers in the area should have received a discount voucher on email and there is a discount voucher in the new edition of the Meridian Magazine.

We are going to be offering a 12.5% discount to LCC cardholders for the first year*. We will be advertising this in the next LCC magazine but the offer is valid now so feel free to use it.

*not valid on items which are already discounted or in conjunction with any other offers

Opening Offers

2009-04-03T15:12:00.002+01:00

We are officially opening for business at 9am tomorrow (Saturday 4th April) and we are going to have a range of special offers over the weekend.

These include

A selection of 2008 Specialized and Marin bikes at Half Price

Up To 40% OFF Selected Mongoose BMX Bikes

Specialized Centrum Sport £349.99 - only £249.99 - save £100

GT Avalanche 1.0 Disc £499 - £399.99 - Save £100

10% OFF all other bikes

20% OFF ALL Accessories & Clothing

These offers are valid for the weekend of 4th-5th April 2009 only.

Open Evening

2009-04-03T11:46:00.008+01:00

The shop is now pretty much ready and we had our open evening last night ahead of our official opening on Saturday. We had a pretty good turnout with local cycling groups from Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark among those in attendance.

The feedback on the store was generally very positive with our dedicated women's cycling area receiving particular praise from a number of female cyclists. Several people asked for more road bikes and less mountain bikes which is something we are going to be looking at over the next week or two.

Below are some images taken at the preview evening last night by our newly appointed in house photographer Jack.

Opening Hours

2009-04-02T10:07:00.004+01:00

The votes we have received on the blog, and the surveys completed at the store, were showing a split between early and late opening hours with the late option (10am to 7pm) leading by a majority of around 5-10%. A late surge though has seen the 10am to 7pm option establish a clear majority with nearly 50% of the combined online and offline votes.

As there was still a substantial vote for the early opening hours we are going to open from 9am to 7pm for the first couple of weeks. If we get the demand we will try and add a couple of early mornings/extra late evening opening days as well.

For the opening weekend the hours will be 9am to 6pm on Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday.

Tacx Trainer Installed

2009-03-28T09:34:00.008Z

The guys from Fisher Outdoor were down earlier in the week to install our Tacx trainer setup.

This is a very cool piece of technology which allows you to link your bike up to your PC and virtually ride classic race stages from around the world, or race your friends on the other side of the world without leaving your front room.

When we can drag our staff off it we will be using the setup both to demonstrate the Tacx technology and to help less experienced cyclists get to grips with their gears and SPD pedals and the like before we let them loose on the road.

As well as the Tacx trainers, and their usual range of Sram, Avid and Rockshox products, Fishers are supplying their colourful new range of Basil bags (picture above) as well as a small selection from their new bspoke range. This is a collaboration with Transport for London to design a range of clothing and accessories for urban commuters. We already have their light range in stock as well as a few sample pieces of clothing. We will bring in more of the range later in the spring as we get feedback from customers on what they do and don't like.

Open Evening Invites Being Sent

2009-03-27T16:27:00.003Z

We are going to be holding an open evening on Thursday 2nd April between 6pm and 9pm.

We are sending out invites over the next day or so. As well as a chance to meet our staff and have a look around the new shop this will be a chance to tell us what we have got right and wrong. Some of our suppliers will be in attendance to answer questions and there will be wine and nibbles on offer.

If you haven't got an invite and you really want to attend drop us an email before the end of Tuesday 31st March and we will add you to the list

Workshop now taking bookings

2009-03-24T10:27:00.004Z

Our workshop is now taking bookings for the week starting 6th April. Staffed by experienced Cytech qualified mechanics we can undertake pretty much any servicing and repair jobs. You can contact us at the store using the details below.

email: greenwich@cyclesuk.com or phone us on 0208 692 3148

Store Opening to go ahead for 4th April

2009-03-24T10:17:00.002Z

We have been reviewing security at the new store following last weeks break in and we are taking a number of steps to beef things up a bit.

We will still be going ahead with our official opening on Saturday 4th April and will be holding 1 preview evening on Thursday 2nd April with a second one possibly happening earlier that week. We will be sending out invites to these evenings towards the end of this week.

Bikes Stolen

2009-03-20T12:48:00.006Z

We reported earlier that we had a break in at the new shop last night. We can now confirm that we had 8 bikes stolen. These were

2009 Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Comp Medium
2009 Specialized FSR XC Comp Medium
2009 Specialized Stumpjumper HT Expert Carbon 19"
2009 Specialized Langster 56cm
2009 Cube Reaction XT 18"
2009 Wilier La Triestina Mirage Large
Mezzo D10
Mezzo D9

If anyone offers you one of these bikes please let either ourselves or the police know.

This is obviously a big set back for us. We are currently reviewing the security situation at the shop and what implications this might have for our opening schedule.

The shop is getting full

2009-03-20T08:16:00.004Z

All the bikes and most of the accessories are now in the store and it is starting to look pretty full. There is still a lot to do in terms of signage and merchandising though.

Below are some pictures taken mid way through the day yesterday just after we had received two big deliveries (hence the number of cardboard boxes in the background). We spent several hours last night playing around with the layout of the bikes. Something which past experience of shop fits tells us will continue up to and after the opening.

Windows Broken Last Night

2009-03-20T08:13:00.002Z

We've just heard from the police that a number of the windows were broken at the Greenwich store last night. A couple of our guys are on their way down there now to asses the damage. So far it doesn't sound like anything has been stolen. If we just need some new glass then this shouldn't put our opening dates back at all.

Courtesy Bikes to be supplied by Marin

2009-03-19T13:43:00.004Z

The courtesy bike scheme we are going to be piloting has proved to be a very popular idea. A lot of the people we have spoken to about the scheme are dedicated cyclists who commute every day and can't live without their bikes. We are aware that these kind of people are used to a certain quality of bike and above all need a need a cycle which is reliable and suited to the job.

We have therefore teamed up with ATB Sales, the UK distributor for Marin Bikes, to provide our fleet of courtesy bikes. We are going to be trying out a couple of different bikes from thier urban and hybrid range to see what people like. A selection of these bikes will be on show at our open evenings next week.

The bikes are coming!

2009-03-12T11:36:00.001Z

We have just had a huge truck from TNT at our warehouse with about 80 bikes on it from Marin, Trek, Mezzo and Wilier. This is in addition to the 30 Specialized bikes and 10 Cubes we had delivered on Monday and there are still more bikes to come.

All of them are destined for the Greenwich store next week. At the moment the mountain bikes and hybrids are being built up and checked over in our central workshop to make sure they are ready to ride when they arrive at Greenwich. The high end road bikes, meanwhile, are sitting to one side waiting for our senior mechanic Brian to start work on them tomorrow.

Opening date confirmed

2009-03-11T08:32:00.002Z

We now have a confirmed opening date for Cycles UK Greenwich of 4th April 2009. We will be holding a series of preview evenings the week before the official opening. This will be a chance for local cyclists to come and take a look at our shop and let us know what they think. We have already had some great feedback as to what local bikers would like our shop to provide.

One suggestion we have already received which is going to be put into place is a fleet of courtesy bikes which can be borrowed while your own bike is in for servicing or repair. We will initially be launching this service as a pilot programme for selected customers. To become one of these customers, and get an invite to one of our preview evenings, all you have to do is drop us an email telling us what you would like to see from Cycles UK Greenwich in terms of product, service and opening hours. Alternatively you can complete our online poll.

Below are some photos we took at the store yesterday. The shopfitting is progressing well and we should be able to start putting stock in next week.

Let us know what you think

2009-03-07T12:22:00.001Z

Our aim is to be the most professional and helpful quality cycle shop for the local community. We think we have a good idea of what our customers will like but we always want to hear from you. Tell us what you do and don't want to see in your new shop in Greenwich.

We have created a quick online poll or you can email us your thoughts.

Welcome to our blog

2009-03-06T13:37:00.000Z

After a lot of delays we finally have electrical power at our new store in Greenwich and we are starting to get ready for the opening. Barring any major problems we hope to be open for the end of March.

Greenwich will be our 17th shop and is to become our flagship store. It is going to be stocking bikes from Specialized, Trek, Marin, Wilier, Charge, Cube, Pashley, Mongoose and more as well as an extended range of clothing and accessories.

At the moment we are waiting for the electricians and the carpenters to get the bulk of the shopfitting done while we finalise the product ranges and merchandising.

Below are some pictures of what the shop looked like a couple of weeks ago. We will be updating the blog with more pictures as the shop fit progresses as well as updating you on the opening events we have planned.