Q: Supply chain issues have been causing a lot of disruptions for small businesses. I imagine you’ve dealt with some parts shortages and delays in the repair shop. How have you adapted to this?

We have to get very, very creative…we’re still getting orders that we placed a year ago for small parts and things. It can be paralyzing at times but somehow we’ve managed to kind of squeak through here and there. We’re educating our customers to what’s going on with the supply chain so we’re standing on some realistic ground there.

There’s been times where we’ve literally had to go out on the internet and find some parts, pay the retail, pay the shipping, and just fix the customer’s bike and get them back on the road, on the trail, on the greenway, whatever it is. Because that’s ultimately what’s important. We’re upfront with them, ‘hey, we had to order this,’ and we just eat the shipping on it, and just pass the retail price onto them…so maybe a couple of them didn’t make any money, so be it.

Q: The pandemic hurt a lot of businesses, but it seems to have led to a lot more people taking up outdoor activities, which has been great for sports and outdoors-oriented companies. How did it impact your business?

Very positively. When Governor Ivey had the official Safer at Home [announcement], in the days and weeks leading up to that it just kept getting ramped up…we couldn’t get bikes down off the wall fast enough. We had literally so many people we couldn’t move around the showroom very

well and we had groups of families that were buying bikes for the family because they couldn’t go to the pool, couldn’t go to the ballpark, couldn’t do whatever. They were outfitting the whole family to go outside and do some things.

That was great until May and then there were no more bikes. I mean there were no more bikes. It didn’t matter what brand, it didn’t matter who you’d beg, borrow, or steal from, everything went straight to rationing and then the rationing was gone and they were just scrambling to manufacture more as quickly as possible. But everybody all over the world was doing the same thing–factories were shutting down, so it just came to a screeching halt for bikes. There was a time when I don’t know that we had a single bike on the floor in here for a while.

The doors were closed but we were an essential business so we were allowed to stay open, but we did things by appointment–call us when you get here and we’ll bring the bike out, we’ll take in your repair, we would do a lot of stuff by phone. Before, in the very beginning everybody was so paranoid. Things have gotten a lot looser and we’ve learned a lot more about the pandemic…but at that time everybody was like rubber gloves, masks, HAZMAT suits, scared to death, Lysol everything (laughs), and that was us too. We were keeping people out of the building. Frankly, a lot of people didn’t want to come in. They’d pull up and go ‘hey, I’m here,’ we’d ring the credit card, bring it back to them, load up their bike, and they wouldn’t even have to get out of their car.

So everybody was happy to not feel at risk. It was good, our business was really good until we started running out of things to sell. And we had a big chunk of money in the bank for quite some time. I was scared to spend any of it because I knew it was just money sitting there because we didn’t have inventory on the floor and at some point it was going to come back in and we’d need to spend that money and not spend it frivolously.

The other caveat is, now we’re replacing backorder and we were told “place a backorder. Next month, even if you haven’t gotten it place another backorder and do that every month.” We were doing that on things that we move like innertubes, tires, chains, wear items we knew we’d have to have.

Now, a year later, these things are starting to come in in big chunks…we’re not able to manage our inventory effectively cause we’re at the mercy of “as soon as it hits, it ships” and we know it’s coming because we just got a shipment notification. Then all of a sudden we’ve got 500 chains and you wouldn’t think that’d be a whole lot of money until you start adding up chains, you know, and some chains are $40-50. We don’t have a lot of those but we have enough.

Anyway, it’s been a challenge…we’ve gotten really spoiled with just-in-time inventory. We’ve got distribution in Birmingham and a couple days away in Pennsylvania, and if you’re on a 2-3 day turnaround on repairs it’s easy enough to have some odd part be here in time for your repair or whatever the case may be and we’ve just not had that luxury.

Q: What advice would you give someone considering starting their own small business?

A: I would say have your processes and procedures so you and your fellow coworkers can all be on the same page and you can be streamlined. Count your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves. But if you just provide honest to goodness good customer service, treat people like you want to be treated.

We made this decision early on that we’re going to treat people good. We’re going to give them the customer service they’re not seeing and experiencing out in the world, and if we can’t succeed in doing that then we’re going to shut down and not do it. It’s just not worth it…I’m going to tell you straight up the truth about everything and be upfront with you and if it’s good enough, it’s good enough, and if it’s not good enough, it is what it is. I don’t know what else to do.

I’m a bicycle person, not a businessman. I’m a graphic designer who loves bikes, and so business is not my strong suit. Fortunately my business partner is a good businessman and has been great guidance in a lot of those things. I’m just an honest guy who likes bikes.

Q: Any final thoughts or words of wisdom that we haven’t covered yet?

A: If you haven’t ridden a bike in a long time and you’ve got one, dust it off, pump up the tires, take it out and ride it. They’re still as much fun as they ever were. The city is really wanting to put in some more infrastructure to be able to do some things and get somewhere and it’s amazing how quickly you can make a trip for a gallon of milk or just run downtown and pedal back to the house.

There’s so many things to see and do in Huntsville and it’s so easy to get around on bike and as we get the infrastructure to move around more safely by bike…it’s just a ton of fun. It keeps you young.

Images provided by Steve Babin.