Surviving COVID-19.
Despite the downturn in the UK (and indeed global) economy, many bike shops have seen a surge in customers. Under the current lockdown, people feel the need for independence and a safe way to travel, and have been turning to cycling rather than public transport. Living in London near Victoria park, I have also witnessed a rise in recreational cycling on a local level.
Unlike bike shops, Bamboo Bicycle Club focusses on teaching people to build their own bikes in our workshop, which the current Covid-19 restrictions have prohibited. It’s a similar situation for all other training based business, and we have seen many craft and other workshops being delayed or cancelled, causing considerable disruption and financial burden. As an innovation and solutions led club, we haven’t let that stop us and we’ve been working hard to think of other ways to reach you. Here’s a little bit of what we’ve been up to to try and survive the crisis:
Website — We have always had an online presence and as a micro-business have always tried to invest in our online resources to improve reach and efficiency. We manage all our own social media, marketing and website build, which has allowed us to adapt quickly. The Covid-19 crisis has just forced us to think more creatively about how we can still interact with our customers.
Live videos — We’ve launched a weekly Q&A and received over 1,500 views on the sessions we have run so far. Live every Monday at 1 pm
Live workshops — A big part of what we do is teaching people how to build bikes and giving them the confidence to build at home. Our live workshops help to demonstrate the ease of bamboo bike building. These videos will be taking place every Friday from 3pm!
New products — The crisis has given us a new focus to launch new products. We’ve used the time to shoot new videos and produce accompanying manuals. We’ve also developed a new lug product which will help us achieve our goal of getting more people to make more bikes, as this product certainly makes the process simpler. See our new product
Zoom workshops — We’re running a zoom workshop for anyone to attend on the 8th of May where we’ll be building our new lugged kit live, as well as a standard home build kit. Get the link by signing up here- https://www.bamboobicycleclub.org/product/live-1-day-workshop/
Improving our services — We’ve updated our webshop images by building in a workshop photo studio and will continue to do so!
We would like to thank all our club members for their support. We’ve learned a lot over the last week and we plan to continue to deliver our live videos and other offerings, as we feel that it’s been a great way to connect with people all around the world.
