Great shop, and an ever better place to work. Rob is awesome, +1 They are also Compass (Rene Herse?) dealers too, though I bought the last Barlow Pass so expect to see new tires on the shelf soon.
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 6:28:35 AM UTC-8, Bill Lindsay wrote: > > Blue Heron Bikes in Berkeley is a very small volume Rivendell dealer. > They stock Hillbornes and Clems, maybe an Appaloosa or two. Their clearly > defined niche though is that they are THE place in the East Bay to go for > utility bikes, Bromptons, cargo bikes, e-assist, etcetera. I try to bring > them as much of my business as I can. The things I buy from them include, > tubes, Newbaums and grips, small parts, bells, reflective items. I went by > yesterday to buy tubeless rim tape and tubes to find the interior of the > store coated with dust. They had blown out the back wall and were > expanding. I had a nice chat with the owner, who has a one-syllable > man-name that I always forget: Mike, Rob, Bob, whatever. His history is > that he was a sales rep for one of the distributors and lived a life on the > road for a long time. He's probably in his mid-50s now. I asked if he was > going to expand his offerings or just do more of the things he already > does. He indicated he's focused on just servicing his current focus better, > which I think is a good plan for a local shop. Be mainstream enough that > you can sell all the mainstream bits to your local community, but be the > absolute best at some thing that will cause people to come from a much > larger radius to see you. "Big" bikes is a great niche in 2019, because > it's really intimidating buying something like a cargo bike online. Having > a shop that stocks them and knows them is a treasure. I was really happy > to see him succeeding. > > HOT TIP! If you are a Bay Area rider and need/want a 58cm Hillborne. > Blue Heron has a complete on the rack to sell you. Rivendell is out of > them in 58 and won't have them for some time. The one Blue Heron has on > the rack is a caliper brake model. It's in the lovely burnt orange > colorway. That's all the road bike a 6'1" civilized human could ever > need. > > Bill Lindsay > El Cerrito, CA > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
