This December we’ll celebrate 10 years since opening our shop in Nunhead.
We’re massively grateful to all of our customers for their support over the last decade, and to say thank you we’d like to invite everyone to our bike-themed pub quiz at Herne Hill Velodrome pavilion on Saturday 17th December.
There’ll be music, prizes, give-aways, food and drink from the bar, and general merriment. Although the quiz rounds will be written by the Rat Race team and be (loosely) bike-themed, it’s definitely not just for bike geeks, there’ll be something for everyone!
It’s been a difficult few months for bike shops and workshops, and for those who rely on them. We’ve been doing our best to insulate our customers from the industry-wide problems, with a fair degree of success, but it doesn’t look like things are going to get easier any time soon, so I’ll try and explain what’s going on.
What’s the problem?
The whole bike industry has experienced a “perfect storm”, with lots of separate events combining to create a bigger problem. Obviously Covid has played a part, in shutting down factories in Taiwan, China, Japan, Malaysia, Italy, Germany and anywhere else that most bike parts are made. Many of these factories usually make the parts nine months to a year ahead of when they actually arrive in our shops, so this halt wasn’t immediately experienced over here. At the same time, every part of shipping – dock staff, customs officers, even actual ships – suffered big drops in staff numbers and everything slowed down and backed up. There was a global shortage of shipping containers because so many were stuck waiting in ports. Coincidentally, That Ship got stuck in the Suez Canal and also held up hundreds of ships in the queue behind it, and thus millions of containers, for months more.
But the “good news” has also contributed to this storm – we’ve seen unprecedented numbers of people getting on their bikes since the start of the pandemic – some to avoid public transport, some to find a new form of local exercise when gyms were closed, some to try new places to ride and types of riding… it’s been brilliant to see, and we’ve tried to keep up with this demand and keep as many people riding as possible. But that’s also meant our stock, and our distributors’ stock, has been used up more quickly.
How does it affect us?
Increased demand for bike parts, and stalled or dwindling supply, has meant a worldwide shortage of parts. Even without the confounding factor of Br*xit – which has meant some companies have decided it’s now too much hassle to sell things to our awkward little island – most bike shops have struggled to get hold of the sort of things we’d normally find in easy and plentiful stock. Things like 9-speed chains, or V-brake pads, or 26″ inner tubes. We’ve had a whiteboard at the back of the workshop with “DANGER LIST” as its title since January, and the list keeps getting longer, with very few things getting removed.
This isn’t unique to us, of course. You’ve probably spotted that most bike shops don’t have many bikes to sell. And most online shops are going down the honest route of quoting long lead times, because they can’t get hold of the groupsets to build up the frames they’ve got. It’s not unique to the UK, I’m told – countries that rely heavily on bikes for everyday transport like the Netherlands suffered big problems finding replacement parts too.
Another way it affects us is financially. According to one of our distributors, the average price for getting a shipping container to the UK from Shimano has gone up from a fairly stable $2500 to around $18,000. That’s over seven times the price, which has a really big effect on the cost of bringing in bulky items like helmets and wheels, where you’re “mostly shipping air”.
This, unfortunately, means a lot of things simply cost a fair bit more for us to buy in.
What are we doing about it?
As soon as supplies started looking a little unpredictable, back in May 2020, we started ordering further in advance and keeping much higher levels of stock in the shop, where possible. We’ve never normally needed to keep 50 pannier racks in stock, but if we don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get any more for three months, we’ve had to be prepared – and find space! We’re devoting time each week to keeping our ear to the ground and planning further ahead for stock we might need several months from now.
We’ve always sourced our stock from a diverse range of suppliers, it’s one of the advantage of being independent – we can choose the best quality and /or the best value and shop around. We’ve built good relationships with practically all the distributors in the industry because we’re usually pretty good at finding you that one weird bit for your non-standard bike setup. But now we’re also spending a lot more of our back-office time hunting around our less-used sources for parts that are still available, and even buying in from overseas sources where needed. We’re testing out products we don’t usually use, like SunRace cassettes, for compatibility and durability, and we’re building a blacklist of fake or poor quality parts we don’t want to curse customers with!
We’re also trying to keep customers informed. We’ve been out of stock of simple things like 8-speed 11-32t cassettes for short periods, and while we (and the rest of the country) waited for stock to arrive sometimes we advised customers that actually the best thing to do was not to replace their worn-out chain, but for us to clean their old chain and cassette and keep them meshing well. Or, if the chain was worn but not worn-out, sometimes it’s best to replace it as a pre-emptive measure so they don’t have to replace the cassette for a while. I explain this at much greater length in our blog entry “Why do I need to replace my chain and cassette?”
And as for the prices… unfortunately there’s not much we can do about those. We’ve tried to keep our prices constant and avoid unpleasant surprises to customers, but sometimes when we’ve had those unpleasant surprises ourselves (Shimano RS100 wheels almost doubled in price a couple of months ago!) we’ve had to charge customers more than we originally quoted, just to cover the cost. I don’t like putting prices up. Like most people who start their own bike shops, I did it because I love riding bikes, I love encouraging people to ride them and I love the pleasure that comes from riding a reliable machine. And I hate feeling ripped off.
So we’ll continue to spend extra time hunting around for the best – and sometimes only – deals on parts; we’ll continue making space for more stock than we used to. We’ll continue putting more money into holding stock for longer. And we’ll continue doing our best to keep your bikes running smoothly and reliably even if nobody will be able to supply a new part for a few months!
And I’ll try and blog more with updates, and to answer any questions you may have. Please use the contact form on our Find Us page if you want to ask anything.
It feels like – with nowhere else to go – we’ve all been physically present in our communities more than ever this year, and yet it’s still so easy to miss what’s right on our doorstep. Far from being the most wonderful time of the year, many people in our community are finding it hard just to feed themselves or their families, never mind buy Christmas presents or decorations.
This month, we wanted to help lift up two amazing local charities and bring them to your attention. Firstly, the wonderful people behind the Tenants and Residents Association of Nunhead’s Rye Hill Park Estate, who have been running a food bank throughout lockdown. Demand for it has only increased as the months have passed, and as volunteers they have struggled to keep up. When we asked how we could best help them, it turned out that they were in need of somewhere that was open longer hours where people could drop off donations, as currently they’ve only been able to collect for a few hours a week.
So, starting right away, whenever the shop is open, you can drop donations in with us. We’ve got a poster on our window showing the kind of things they most need, and you can get more details on their insta too – @ryehilltra.
But if you find it hard to get here or just want to help in a different way, they also need financial support. If you’d like to support them in this way you too can do so via their JustGiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ryehilltra.
We’ll be giving them 5% of all our takings this December.
If neither of these things are within your means, but you’ve got something else to give (time, skills) and want to help, you can find them online or on socials at @RyeHillTRA.
We’ll also be giving 5% to another local charity; watch this space for more details.
As England enters a second lockdown, we’re very thankful that once again bike shops have been recognised as providing an essential service. We’ve been honoured to keep so many people riding during the summer, and to help get new some new riders up and running too. We love making people’s bikes run as reliably as possible so we’re very happy we can continue to do so.
We’re going to keep our current opening hours for now, although we’d appreciate hearing from you if you’d like us to change. That means we’re open:
Monday: 08:00 – 18:00
Tuesday: 08:00 – 18:00
Wednesday: 10:00 – 18:00
Thursday: 08:00 – 18:00
Friday: 08:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 17:00
Sunday: closed
…and we’ll still be encouraging people with small jobs like punctures and replacing brake pads to come down first thing any morning except Wednesday to take advantage of our unbooked walk-in service. It’s first-come first-served so it’s often a good idea to get here as early as you can. We focus on doing the more major pre-booked services later in the day but will still try and fit in small jobs if we can.
And we’re still not allowing customers into the shop, sorry. This is to make sure we can keep you and ourselves safe and maintain social distancing – we’ve got a big awning out the front so you should be able to find shelter if you need to!
We’re really grateful to our customers for their patience and understanding and we hope to keep as many of you running smoothly and enjoyably as we can through the winter!
On Friday the Government rolled out the “Fix Your Bike Voucher Scheme” and its website promptly crashed several times over the following day(s) under the demand.
We’re happy to be part of this scheme, and voucher-based enquiries are coming in thick and fast, so this post aims to answer a few questions:
Vouchers are valid for repairs to get a bike back on the road only. Vouchers can’t be spent upgrading parts that don’t need replacing, and they’re only for jobs involving labour to replace the parts.
Vouchers are valid for adult and children’s bikes; electric-assist bikes are eligible but only if they’re road legal (i.e. not home-built or modified).
Vouchers can’t be claimed on work that’s been carried out in the past.
Vouchers can’t be part-refunded or exchanged if the job costs less than the full amount of the voucher.
Vouchers are valid for 60 days from the date they’re issued.
We can’t give other discounts on jobs with vouchers allocated.
When we take the bike in, we need to see:
– a valid voucher code
– a photo ID: driving licence, passport or residence permit
– a recent (last months) proof of address: utility or council tax bill, mortgage statement, benefit book or council / housing association rent card
The voucher is valid for a specific bike; we have to submit a photo to prove that’s the bike we’ve worked on when we redeem the voucher.
Only one voucher per job.
Only a maximum of two vouchers per household.
We need to collect, and keep, details of the customer’s name, phone number, email address and address. The customer needs to approve this, because GDPR.
The first wave of vouchers have all been granted, so if you already have a voucher you’ve got 60 days from the date of voucher issue to book a bike in. As I type, our workshop diary’s pretty much full up to the second week in September, but that still gives plenty of time to book in. Or, of course, we’ll accept vouchers if you’re using our walk-in service first thing in the morning for smaller jobs (a new pair of tyres can easily cost over £50!).
Keep an eye out on the website(s) at the top of this post for announcements about further waves of vouchers being released if you were unlucky this time.
These are exciting and busy times at Rat Race Cycles – we’re doing all we can to keep as many people rolling as possible, and it’s been great to see so many new cyclists as well as many familiar faces.
We’ve taken on a couple of new team members – hi Alex and Joe! – in the last month too, and as our team grows it’s getting all the more important to make sure we’re working well together and keeping the shop standards high.
Busy workshops get grubbier and more disorganised quicker, and we all need some time to learn and to make sure we keep improving. So we’re going to be changing our opening hours again: we’ll open at 10am on Wednesdays instead of the current 8, to give us time to have a team meeting, to do some training and also to have a bit of a deeper clean.
We’ll be in the shop, but we’ll be closed, so we won’t be running the walk-in service on Wednesday mornings. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes – we chose Wednesday because it’s been our quietest day on average for walk-ins so we hope this will affect the fewest people.
For people who have bikes booked in on Wednesdays we’ll be encouraging them to drop bikes off the night before or after 10am; we’ll try and notify everyone who’s already booked in over the next few weeks and make things work for them.
One of the things we’ve been discussing is extending our opening hours, now we have more staff to cover this, so watch this space for a further update! Thanks for your understanding.
We’re going to be closed on Thursday 11th June, for a much-needed (and slightly overdue) stock take. This means we won’t be able to answer any enquiries at the door or on the phone, though you can still email us with enquiries or to book bikes in.
Sorry for any inconvenience this causes! Business will continue as normal from 8am on Friday 12th.
Our opening hours on weekdays for the last couple of years have been 7 til 7. 7am, bright and early so people can drop off bikes on their way to work and catch trains or buses; 7pm, late enough that people can finish work and pick up their bike on the way home. We had a flurry of visitors at the start and end of the day and we spent most of the middle of the day servicing those bikes.
At the moment, we’re experiencing very different traffic to the shop. Probably because so many people are staying at home and staying local, we’ve been busy with shop visitors throughout the middle of the day, but quiet at the start and end of the day.
So, for now, we’re reducing our hours to 8am to 6pm on weekdays. It means that there’ll be more of us in the shop during those times, so some of us can be working on bikes and someone else booking them in and out at the same time – basically so we can get more done!
To keep as many people as possible riding their bikes we’ll still be working on small jobs as walk-ins between 8 and 10am, and prioritising booked-in bikes after 10. As with all of our recent announcements, please watch this space for any further changes we’ll need to make!
What a weekend for a bank holiday. Especially one on lockdown. On any normal May Day bank holiday weekend with weather like this, we’d be planning rides, adventures, social events or visits to family. There’d be group rides, races, audaxes and sportives to join, and parks and pubs would be full of families and friends meeting up.
But not this year. We’re still in lockdown, still required to keep our distance from each other and still being asked to do whatever we can to minimise transmission of the coronavirus.
So many of us have been finding these last few weeks tough. And we’re no exception.
It’s been unbelievably busy at the shop. It’s a lovely problem to have – we’re proud of keeping so many returning, new and regular cyclists rolling – and first and foremost we want to thank you all for your continued support and understanding as we try to make things as safe as we can for ourselves and for you all. But, if we’re honest, it has been pretty full-on juggling the increased demand with the new ways of working.
So, this weekend, we’re closing the shop. The team have also been incredibly supportive of Rat Race these last few weeks, working hard and long hours, (and we’ve all managed most of it in brilliant good humour, amazingly!) and frankly we all need some time out.
So, we’ll be closed on Friday 08, and Saturday 09 May.
Thanks again to all of you. We’ll see you bright and early on Monday. With our brand new opening hours… (watch this space for details of those coming right up!)
And remember – even if you haven’t got a turbo, you are still allowed to ride. We’re going to be trying to get out into the real world, for sure – just look at this weather! Please remember, though, if you do decide to head out, make sure you go solo and follow British Cycling’s guidance for riding during lockdown: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20200319-about-bc-news-Coronavirus-Covid-19-FAQs-0
Hello from the workstand once again! I feel like I’ve written more blog posts in the last few weeks than I have in all the years of the shop being open.
We’re still here, still open, working as hard as we can to keep everyone riding. I have to be candid though, it hasn’t been easy; there are two big challenges and we’ve had to change the way we work to adapt to them. If you’re short on time, please scroll to the break for what it means for you. If not, here’s a longer explanation:
The first problem is, of course, COVID-19. We’re keeping the door locked most of the time so that we and you can keep our distance, and when dropping a bike off or picking it up we’ll be setting it in the stand outside the front door and disinfecting contact points like the saddle, grips and levers. We’re wearing gloves practically all the time and disinfecting those gloves, our tools, work surfaces, the phone, the card machine, the iPad… that’s all to protect both you and ourselves and minimise transmission as much as we can.
The second struggle, however, has been coping with how busy we’ve become! Obviously, it’s a great problem to have; we’re very glad to see so many people getting on their bikes (and we’re especially grateful for all the messages of support and encouragement we’ve been getting, thank you!). But this busy-ness, combined with the new ways of working we’ve had to adopt for COVID-19, means that at times we’ve been so busy answering enquiries at the door, answering the phone and trying to reply to emails and messages in a timely manner that we’ve had very little time to actually work on people’s bikes! It’s a perfect storm.
Although we’re all experienced and methodical mechanics, there’s a certain lag that comes from breaking off in the middle of a service to answer the door or the phone, and then coming back to the bike and getting back to whatever you were working on before. It’s not a lot, but it starts adding up when it happens many times over and a 20-minute job stays in the workstand for two hours because there have been so many interruptions. It also means the bikes that customers have booked in aren’t getting our undivided attention, which doesn’t seem very fair.
We’ve always had a policy of trying to fix people’s bikes on the spot if it’s a minor task – you’d usually only have to wait a few minutes if you have a puncture, for example, and we try and do most small jobs as quickly as possible to avoid booking bikes in and filling up the shop. But unfortunately, we have to change that, at least for now.
From Monday 20th April we’ll only work on walk-in jobs before 10am. If you’ve got a puncture, if your wheel needs truing, if your brake pads need replacing, that sort of thing, please get down to us as early as possible and we’ll try and fit you in that morning.
Otherwise, our workshop will be appointment only. From 10am onwards, to make sure we can give booked-in bikes our full attention, we won’t be taking in any un-booked jobs. Not even punctures – sorry! To minimise interruptions, we’ll also be letting the phone go to voicemail, and calling people back regularly throughout the day.
We’re very sorry for any hassle this might cause you, but we hope you understand that we’re trying to be fair to as many people as possible, and making sure we can focus on getting as many bikes properly serviced as we can.
Rat Race Cycles 