Folding Bikes, Recumbent Bikes & Trikes, Cargo Bikes, Tandems, Custom Framebuilding
An original (non-folding) HPVelotechnik Scorpion in good condition – it’s got 20″ wheels all round, DualDrive8 24-speed gearing, disc brakes, rear rack and mudguard. A nice light, simple recumbent trike!
£800 ono
At the end of November 1998, I can’t remember the exact date, we got the keys to the first Kinetics shop – it was a little shop across from a car garage, which had been a florist. I’d managed to last 8 months in a proper corporate job – Mainframe Systems Programmer at IBM in Perth – but I hated it, and really didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting in an office, wearing a suit and going to meetings!
I didn’t actually have any money, so Bob McNab at the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the last real bank managers, had a look at the quick business plan I’d thrown together, didn’t laugh too much, and agreed to lend me a little bit of money to get started. It was enough to buy some tools, and enough spares to start doing repairs for local customers. It was closely modelled on a bike shop I’d worked for when a student – Harper Cycles was coincidentally a couple of doors along from the florist that would become our shop, and combined local repairs with selling more unusual things like Bromptons and recumbents, that’s where I first got the unusual bike bug!
We only had the lease at that shop for 3 years, so after that was a move to a bigger shop about half a mile away – Switchback Road had been a sunbed centre and was painted luminous yellow inside, it seemed massive when we moved in but it soon filled up with lots more bikes and trikes.
A dozen years later, a combination of factors meant it was time to move again – by now, we’d changed completely from a “normal” bike shop that made and sold the occasional unusual bike, to a business that only made and sold unusual things, so an industrial unit made more sense. In 2014, we moved to Garscube Road, an industrial unit owned by Queen’s Cross Workspaces, a very friendly and helpful charity that’s part of a housing association. A few years later we got the neighbouring unit as well and knocked through, to make our current layout – workshop and storeroom in one unit, showroom (and the museum) in the other unit. It’s perfect!
It’s been an interesting quarter-century – lots of things built, brands that come and go, several moves and lots of changes (plus a couple of pandemics) – but it’s great to still be here, and we’re very grateful to every customer over the years. Thank you!
Postscript: Coincidentally, one of the very first bikes I built is up for sale on eBay – a steel-framed Rohloff touring bike. It’s been through a few owners, it’s now with a charity who are selling it, I hope they make some money on it.
Want to get cycling as soon as possible? I have a bunch of things in stock for immediate despatch or collection, personal delivery can also be arranged within a reasonable distance of Glasgow:
Give me a call to make sure I still have what you’re interested in, stocks are limited!
Some manufacturers also have recumbent trikes ready-built for immediate despatch:
It doesn’t really feel like half a lifetime since I quit a perfectly good job as a Mainframe Systems Programmer with IBM, to make a full-time hobby of running an unusual bike business! It seemed a pretty rash thing to do back then.
I recently found my first (and only) business plan. It makes some interesting reading, in some places ridiculously optimistic – I estimated £100 for tools and £100 for parts! Some other ideas didn’t work out, but the basic idea of a business specialising in niche and unusual bikes has surprisingly worked. Back then, the internet was young and the idea of online selling didn’t really exist – now, of course, none of us would manage without it. One of the biggest differences comparing that old business plan to now is that I just didn’t anticipate we’d have customers all over the world.
Back then, we started out doing repairs like any normal bike shop – that picture up there is Andrew, my mechanic – but over the years the normal bike shop things have died away and been replaced by much more manufacturing and unusual bikes. Life is quite tough for a lot of bike shops at the moment, so I’d like to think this was a clever and prescient move, but really it was mostly accidental!
So, thank you everyone who’s been a customer over those 20 years.
Ben 😉
To say that this is not what we wanted is an understatement – as a company, Kinetics imports from Europe and exports to Europe all the time, we are European. Working together benefits us so much more than turning away would. We have many friends in Europe, and European friends who have come here to work and live.
The future is uncertain, but remember that the community of people who love bikes is more important than any political squabbles. Much more unites us than divides us.
Ben
The Hase Pino tandem normally has the pilot at the back, but this one needed the pilot at the front, so I modified a stem:
And with underseat handlebars fitted and controls rerouted, it now has front steering. I also made a link to fix the rear bars in position.
As I’m sure most people have noticed, there’s a wee referendum going on in Scotland on September. BikeBiz magazine, the trade paper for the UK bike trade, published an article about the issue with quotes from some Scottish bike businesses which I thought was a bit one-sided so I wrote this piece, and BikeBiz have kindly amended the article.
Proving yet again that Kinetics is at the cutting edge of bicycle technology, we are proud to announce that we are the first bike shop in the World to offer parts delivery by drone!*
Using our German-designed, Scottish-built drone we can deliver bike parts to cyclists in need anywhere!**
*Up to a limit of 1kg
**Within a range of 100yds
I’ve got a very comprehensive library in the shop, free for browsing (and occasionally borrowing) – but if you can’t make it into the shop I’ve done the next best thing and listed a bunch of good bike books: Continue reading “The Kinetics Library”
Huret Champion:
The oldest derailleur in the museum at the moment – this Champion from the early fifties has a sliding coil spring to move the cage, operated by a toggle chain like a hub gear. Because of this, it’s Rapid-Rise, like the latest Shimano mechs 😉 Continue reading “Other derailleurs”
