Demo gets underway

Internal layout plans are finalized and demo sin underway. It looks like the next couple of weeks will be busy ones. Most of the walls in the place will be coming out and the the Drop ceiling will be removed. Unfortunatly all of the ductwork and electrical is just sitting on the drop, so we will have to put in all new ductwork and find a way to tidy of the wiring. So there is a lot to do, but once the plumbers, electricians and HVAC guys get in, we should be moving rather quickly.

And here is a picture of the shop if you are interested.

We Have Keys!!!

As of yesterday we have closed on our new building on main street in downtown LaGrange. The design team will be in next week and we are hoping that we can get the remodel of the building done by end of year. The shop should be complete and fully stocked by February and we will pull off some sort of real grand opening sometime in March. We will, however, have the doors open for those in the know much sooner than that. We will move current inventory and some new lines in as soon as the security system is functional. Internet operations will switch over as soon as the computer sytems and internet are in.
In case I have forgotten to say it before, thanks to all our customers, team riders and distributors who took a chance on us. The past two years have been a great ride. We started out as simply some guy hawking bike parts out of his "bike room". The inventory was stored in a couple of tupperware containers, and we sold $40 worth of product our first month. Since then our inventory has grown steadly and we have added brands monthly. Our additions of SRAM, Wheels Manufacturing, and Stan's no tubes have brought us to a competitive position in the online market. Brands like Spiuk and Viner rounded out our line and got us into some high end niche markets. Our racing team which was new for the 07 year helped us get some of the word out and start bringing some local business.
All of this is now coming together to a point where the inventory that was in two boxes in a small room in the house has taken over the dining room, office, and bedroom as well as the "bike room". So two years after putting up the sketchy initial version of our website we are moving into a brick and mortar shop.
All this is especially exciting because not only am I no longer wrenching on my front porch, the new building will allow us to further expand our line of products. Watch for an expanded Campagnolo line as well as the addition of Shimano, Thompson, KHS, Time, Crank Brothers and many more.
So again, Thanks to all of you who have helped make this possible. I think most people on this forum will understand how excting this is for me. Now when someone asks me what I do I can say "I play with bikes for a living."

Whats with the ad's

Ok, here is a question that has come up, and I suppose it is worth talking about. If you look at our site you will see that we actually sell ad space to our competitors (via google ads) So if you are looking at tires on our site, you may see ads for tires from other companies.

To understand this you must realize that we are well aware that our customers already know that they have options. As one of the smaller sellers, we realize that our customers have already checked out the big guns before they come to us. The beauty is that because we are so small, we have much less overhead than the big guns, so our prices are usually lower or at least on par with our competitors. So we allow these ads for two reasons.

1. We are not sending anyone anywhere that they didn't already know about. So in a sense we are just allowing comparison shopping between rivals. Since our prices are typically lower we are confidant that most customers will come back. In the event they find a beter deal somewhere else, we may lose the sale, but at least we made a little on the ad. This brings us to point two.

2. By putting a small proportion of our competitors advertising dollars in our pocket, we are able to keep our prices lower. The better our prices the more we sell and the better it is for everyone.

So until such a time that we get large enough that the general public will come to us first and not know about the smaller guys. We will continue to leave the ads on the site and take the extra revenue as a bonus.

Ever Closer

For those of you who follow such things, we are marching ever closer to opening the new shop. Most of the details with the building have been ironed out, and so we look to be on track for opening by the end of the year. KHS is now on board, so we will have some bikes to play with when we open the doors. Should be good fun for all....