The Beginner’s Guide To Choosing The Right Local Bike Shop.

The bike is a fun and practical way to ride around the city and exciting and adventurous weekend activity. But the process of finding the right bike shop near you? It’s not that much fun.

Many people do not have great experiences with bicycle shops as they can be found as sexists, elitists, or just outright unprofessional. Like a relationship, you don’t want to engage with someone who doesn’t make you feel like you matter.

A good bicycle shop, however, is like a dream come true. In your bicycle career, a good bike store is your best friend. These are the people who take care of you and your bike. They can enhance your cycling experience with excellent insider tips and advice. You could even find a life-long friend there!

How to Choose a Good Bike Shop

Even though there are tons of bicycle shops everywhere, it is very difficult to find a place that works for you. You may need to experiment a bit on your bike shop hunt, but keep those criteria in mind, and you will be golden.

A Great Selection Of Bicycles And Accessories

If you are looking to purchase a new bike, a wide range of bicycles in the shop makes the buying process easier. From cross-country Specialized bikes to Trek mountain bikes or even children’s bikes, it is easier to look at the entire collection in a single store than in separate shops.

Bicycle shops are more than just showrooms; they also house a workshop for you to bring your bicycle for repairs in the future. The store’s inventory of bicycles and accessories may suggest how specialized (or not) the store is. For example, a store that exclusively sells gravel bikes will not help you with your Trek mountain bike.

Friendly and Knowledgeable Staff

The mechanical aspect of a bicycle shop is important, but also their service. If the staff ignores you when you enter the store or they’re too busy chatting to approach you, it is time to get out of the door.

Unprofessional bike shops do not care if you get the best service or not. All that they want is to move their stock or sell you more things you don’t need. They could even try to screw you up by messing up your bicycle during repairs for more money.

On the contrary, the friendly and knowledgeable staff are people you want to commit to. They can not only help relieve much of the stress that comes from buying and repairing, but they can also give you insider tips and advice on the local cycling community.

A clear indicator of excellent staff comes to your instinct. Are you uncomfortable dealing with them? Do you feel pressured to buy anything? You do not want to face things like this if you want to make cycling a more permanent part of your life.

In-shop Bike Fitting Service

You can’t get used to bikes like you do shoes. It does not take too many miles to turn a slight discomfort into full-blown agonizing pain. To prevent that from happening, you need your bike professionally fitted to suit you.

The in-shop bike fitting services range from basic saddle adjustments in a few minutes to entire customization. However, it depends on the type of bike you get, as you can only make minor adjustments with some bikes and parts fully adjustable with others.

However, a warning is that some bike shops charge for this service, so it takes a little trial and error to find something that works with your budget. It could be a hefty investment at first, but comfort is worth it.

Workshop and Good Mechanics

Even the sturdiest bike needs to be tuned up from time to time. When this happens, you would like to bring it to a bicycle shop that knows what to do with it. You don’t want to settle for less when it comes to your bicycle.

Also, bike parts can be notoriously expensive, so you don’t want monkeys with hammers to tinker around your expensive Schmidt hub dyno. The problem is that many mechanics are confident about their skills, sometimes wrongly so.

So how do you know if they’re really good, especially if you don’t know anything about doing bicycle repairs?

Sometimes the quality shines through the process. A professional workshop would have documentation, checklists, and clearly defined completion dates as part of the process.

In addition, they would also have specific tools hanging from the walls of their workshop and spare parts needed for more usual repairs.

Good bicycle shops also repair bicycles based on a formal and standardized price list. This ensures transparency, which shows they take care of both your bike and your wallet. They don’t take you for a ride.

Convenience

​When bike shops consider the schedules and convenience of their customers, they tell their customers that they care and want to do the best for them.

People live a busy life with a lot of things to do. So, a good bike shop wants to make sure that their shop hours are long enough for their customers to bring their bike for fine-tuning. Others compensate for better weekend hours.

It could also take more than two days to get your bike fixed, so bonus points if the bike store provides bike rental or, better yet, free loaner bikes. Not only can you go ahead with your daily life on these bikes, but you can also take the bike for a test ride if you are looking to buy.

About buying a new bike, the option of booking an appointment or ordering online makes things infinitely easier for people who are always on the go.

CONTACT HOUSTON BIKE REPAIR COMPANY

If you’re looking for help with service or repairs, don’t hesitate to call and ask questions about it. Our customer service will be able to work with you to find a time that is better for you to get your bike the attention it needs as quickly as possible. We are able to perform all your servicing and repair needs to get you back on the bike as soon as possible. If you’re interested in our services or have a question for our team, we’re more than happy to help. Don’t hesitate to call us! Our contact number can be found on the website.