Another financial year has ticked over. Like many small businesses I’m stuck in the jam of doing a stocktake and reviewing my product and labour prices. It’s been a weird 6 months, reminiscent of the early Covid period, where business and consumer confidence plummeted, leading to much speculation ranging from a global financial collapse to an oil crisis ‘bike boom’ (good luck with that!). However things play out, I tend to avoid reading too much into the daily news cycle and the so-called poly- or permacrisis that we seem to be living in. If I have any business strategy it’s not ambitious… more of a motto.
Do good work
Don’t go into into debt.
In case you were wondering, I don’t count every spoke and nipple during stocktake.
The first 4 months of 2026 were amongst the busiest and toughest I’d experienced in a long time. This wasn’t due to any massive boom or decline in my work, but the changing reality of my daily-weekly schedule. In January I cut back my work hours to 3 days a week (Monday, Friday, Saturday) so I could tag-team the other days with the kids while my partner was at work. January was also one of the busiest periods we’ve have with online shop sales. Not a bad problem to have. However, with reduced hours and lots of online orders to fulfil, I had very little time for wheel building and repairs. I was effectively “banking” a heap of new jobs for the following month, with the hope that I’d get to it sooner or later once I returned to full time hours. February kicked in and my older son started high school at a different school to his younger brother. I was now doing a double drop-off and pickup routine getting to work just before 9am and closing at 3pm or earlier on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. My “shop hours” had been reduced by 5-6 hours a week, however I was no longer able to do discretionary overtime, where I’d start early or finish late just too “get it done’. The culmination of these two dynamics, meant that my wait times exploded by up to two months. In March I stopped accepting new work for the entire month so I could catch up. It was only in late May that I started to find a happy-medium with turn-around times around 1 month for wheel builds and 1-2 weeks for repairs. So in summary, I can’t do as much as I have in previous years. I am fortunate to be in the position where I can reduce my work hours.
It’s now the July school holidays and I’ll be returning to a three day a week (Monday, Friday, Saturday) for the next two weeks. As its peak winter rainy season, I’m not expecting to be overloaded as much as I was in January, but I’ll need to finish stocktake first.
PS. If you’re still reading, well done. Please note that on Thursday 9 July the Spartan Cycling Club will be hosting a Tour De France screening at The Local Hotel in Fremantle. Event details are on facebook here.
If you’ve been following Melody Wheels online, you may have noticed that I haven’t been active on this Blog or Social Media in the last few years. I’m now 12 years into the business, and its 11 years since I started here in Fremantle. When I first used social media, it was a young and fairly naive space in which it was fun to share your thoughts, ideas, processes and insights into your work; and connect with others who shared the same interests. I met (digitally) lots of cool and amazing people from all over the world. However, sometimes as you get older this digital “share” house goes from being a fun place to hang out, to becoming more of a s**hole, and you just want some time and space for yourself. I’ve been fortunate to have many excellent customers who’ve supported what I do and kept coming back to see me, even when I keep moving shop. My work doesn’t scale, and if I tried to take on too much, I’m not sure if I’d still enjoy doing it. Hence I’m happy to be tinkering away in my shop without a big sign or much of an online presence.
In terms of the bike industry, not much has changed in 2025. The bike industry is still grappling with the same issues of oversupply, low profitability, and anaemic growth since the Covid boom. Concept stores seem to have had their day, direct-to-consumer will always be, Chinese bike brands are becoming more established, and the professionalised “service department” is still the great remaining hope for Local Bike Shop profitability. EBikes are still one of the few areas of genuine growth, despite ongoing concerns about what is and isn’t an eBike. In the wheels department, carbon spokes have become more mainstream on road bikes, and this has brought with it a number of challenges around serviceability, repairability, and the use of proprietary components. If it wasn’t already obvious I’m not a fan of this, because I prefer simple technologies and standardised componentry … but I’m also the guy who rides an allegedly “heavy” steel frame bike with rim brakes and external gear cables…. so my opinions are best ignored. Thankfully there are still a good number of people who understand the difference between abstract performance and better quality products which will work well and last a long time.
Outside of the shop, 2025 has been a good year for me, in which Ive generally been more happy and less rattled than I was in 2024. The biggest change was not in my own life, but in that of my partner Pia, who returned to full-time study and subsequently back to “professional” work. This shift in our household, has meant that Ive needed to step up do more with the family and that’s been a good thing. I’m still riding with my cycling friends, but I don’t always have the time for coffee. The weeks are filled with family activities and a lot of “rinse and repeat”.In 2025 I was unable to race the Numbat Cup (cyclocross season) and I missed the Tour of Margaret River for the first time since 2021. The biggest cycling event of my year was the Spartans Pemby Heroic which was just a few weeks ago. This event involved an epic cycling adventure from Fremantle to Pemberton and a mini-tour of South-West WA, amongst the wonderful Karri forests. We covered around 270km each day, with the challenge of backing up each day to 800km in total. I was very nervous about how I would go on the ride. I had some “hotfoot” issues on Day 1, but felt increasingly better in the subsequent days. I hadn’t done a ride like this for many year and it was awesome.
In 2026, I’m not expecting a huge amount change, but you really never truly know what’s around the corner. Like every year, I’m hoping for a better year on the bike, and I’ve had my eyes on the upcoming Road Nats Grand Fondo in early January and the 2026 WA cyclocross season. On 1 Feb the Old Traffic Bridge (about 300m from the shop) will close for the last time, and then they’ll be a period of at least 12 months before a new bridge is built in its place. This has been referred to as a coming “carmageddon” for North Fremantle, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens. In the short term, I’ll be reducing my working days to 3 days a week during the January School Holiday period, and when school recommences I’ll be reviewing my regular hours (Monday to Friday) once I get a handle on how these changes will impact getting my kids to two different schools in 2026.
From 25 December to 2 January 2026 Melody Wheels will be closed for the Christmas break. Please keep an eye on the website and google business profile for changes to the shop hours 2026.
A big thanks to my many friends, customers, and industry suppliers who’ve supported Melody Wheels in 2025. I hope you have a fantastic holiday break and look forward to seeing you again in 2026.
It’s now been 10 months since I moved into the new shop in North Fremantle. The great news is that the space is working out really well. I feel like I won the trifecta in terms of home, family and work. I’m able to get a lot more done in juggling my work hours and family/after school responsibilities. I even have a bit more time in the day for early morning groups rides. That said there have been some negatives. Despite my best efforts to describe where the shop is located, occasionally customers have difficulty finding the shop. The curse of being on a large corner block is that our street address is confusing. The street address is Unit 9, 210 Queen Victoria Street, however the actual shop frontage is on Tydeman Road. If you drive down Queen Victoria St, you won’t see us. If you don’t pull over before the corner, you’ll either have to drive around the block or find yourself heading over the old traffic bridge into Fremantle. There is dedicated parking on site, however its a bit of rabbit warren trying to find it. Eventually our new and returning customers work it out. I’ve written a guide on where to find us and parking HERE.
Another difficulty we are going through is that we are entering a phase of construction where the old Fremantle traffic bridge will soon to be closed (and demolished), and will not reopen, as new bridge, until late 2026.
The flow-on effects of this major infrastructure development is that traffic has become more congested in North Fremantle, particularly in the afternoon peak, and it will no-doubt get worse. There isn’t much we can do about this but ask for patience. Eventually it will get better. However, if you are coming to the shop, we recommend trying to get there earlier in the day, or late on Thursday, when we are open until 9pm every Thursday night.
On the topic of hours, I’ve just adjusted my hours to close early on Wednesdays at 2:30pm (it was previously 4pm). I like to keep my hours as regular as possible, however I need to finish early for school pickup and after-school sports training. Eventually there will be time when I can maintain more consistent shop hours, but for the time being it’s a juggling act.
