A little backstory from Andy our manager and co-owner at our Engadine store.
After five years working as a bicycle messenger in both London and Sydney I was looking to do something different don’t get me wrong it’s a great job but at the end of the day you were just picking up and delivering envelopes and parcels it’s not that mentally challenging an old rugby mate of mine had a bike shop in Manly and he gave me a start there in the year 2000.
I worked at another three Sydney bike shops including the infamous city bike depot and was between jobs back in the year 2016 and had a bit of time up my sleeve to think about I wanted to do living in Helensburgh. I caught the train to Bondi Junction to see if that was viable commute and did the walk all the way down to the CBD stopping in bike shops along the way from memory it was August and most of the shops are very quiet and to be frank I thought some of the sales people I dealt with were wankers. Sure I had a couple of good experiences but in general I was questioning the industry I working at the time I was also doing some side gigs with a company called Bikewise supplying free check and tunes for the City of Sydney for people riding their bikes to work that was very rewarding also teaching three hour maintenance courses.
So on that fateful day I went up to the CBD to check out the industry I also thought hey what about that Ebike guy over in Pyrmont, what’s he up to? As I mentioned most of the shops I walked into were very quiet. I walked into SEB and I could not even get to talk to Jake it was that busy, I could not believe what I was seeing. I started doing a few shifts in the workshop for Jake and it quickly became obvious to me the massive potential for Ebikes for both commuter cyclists and leisure riders.
After three years running the workshop in Pyrmont for Jake we opened up in Engadine and I still come across many customers from my days of working around the Shire. As for the future now that Covid seems to be on the back burner we can start doing shop rides again, I love mountain biking it’s one of the reasons I’ve moved to Helensburgh originally. It’s also been great to be involved with the cargo bike seen in the Northern Illawarra that really is a green transport revolution.
Technology wise I’m looking forward to seeing the first bikes with a mid drive motor and gearbox combined to me that’s the logical next step forward also mountain bikes with big capacity batteries there really is a market for multi day off-road touring I’m excited to see where this goes!
