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2024, Year in Review

It’s that time of year.  Again, it’s been a while between blog posts but I thought it would be timely to reflect on what has been another big year at Melody Wheels.

Snakes and Ladders (again)

Coming after the Covid19 Bike Boom, the bike industry is well and truely into its “bust cycle”.  I’ve heard, although not confirmed, that up to 15 bike shops in Perth have closed in the last 12 months. Less than ideal. Covid was like a big drug hit for many in the bike industry – an unnatural high of demand – in an industry that typically “limps” along. It seems that many of the industries that did well during Covid are suffering a similar fate. As my business is niche and serviced focused, the “bike bust” hasn’t affected me as badly. Most of my customers are seasoned riders who care about their bikes and value the services that I offer. However, there are fundamental changes in the broader economic environment with heavy discounting of new bikes and components, and purchase decisions that were brought forward a few years.  Massive discounting and “clearance” pricing is a market signal that affects all players whether you choose to engage in such practices or not — everyone looses. Perceptions of value are lowered, discounting becomes normalised with a “race to the bottom” on price, and all good practices for maintaining a profitable and sustainable business get thrown out the door. Ironically, while there has been aggressive discounting on many bike goods, this hasn’t always  “trickled down” to retailers.  Amongst a number of product categories I sell, Ive noticed significant price increases from wholesalers. It’s hard to understand these fluctuations in pricing dynamics. Some blame the lower Aussie dollar, inflation, geo-political uncertainty… whatever, but its made it harder to be profitable and or take more considered approach to inventory. I wouldn’t describe myself as a ruthless business person, but I am ruthless when it comes to making sure that the products I stock are reasonable “profit earners” and not so-called “loss leaders”. Small bike businesses like my own have felt increasingly squeezed on profitability. This issue is nothing new, but it’s accelerated in the last 12 months.

The Big Move

2024 was the year I/we made the big decision to move shop. Like choosing a place to live, choosing a place to physically locate your “bricks and mortar” workspace is a big decision – full of pros and cons, hopes and compromises. The process took around 4 months in total. I would have liked it to have been quicker but I am confident that we made the right choice. I’m now based in a much smaller 60sqm shop in an active urban centre. Ive gone through the process of getting rid of years of accumulated “stuff’ and only keep the things that are core parts of my business. My workshop has never been better organised. Ive even developed some new habits like cleaning the shop every day. It takes about 5 mins. Previously it would have taken me about a days work to dust and vacuum the old factory. I’m now working much closer to home and finding a lot more time in my day for the ever growing list of after-school kids activities that fill up our week. The workshop space is small and cosy and easy to keep cool or warm. In my small shop, I’m now surrounded by fitness studios, physiotherapists, legal offices, and cafes. I miss the camaraderie of the tradespersons I used to work next to.  I can’t run a noisy air-compressor anymore, but I’m managing just fine without one.

About the Bike

2024 was defiantly not a great year on the bike if my fitness was anything to go by. Ive found myself drifting backwards through the bunches. I used to enjoy pushing myself on the bike, but nowadays I feel more like “the little engine that could”. Not having a road bike ride for 2 months didn’t help. Unfortunately my old titanium Guru frame cracked so I had to find a new frame. Finding a replacement frame for a rim brake, mechanically geared, external cabled traditionalist wasn’t exactly easy. Thank you Mr Ritchey:

In spite of my declining fitness I still did a full cyclocross season and even managed to get an Equal 1st on points in the Open Category of the Numbat Cup. I am reminded of the old saying: “Showing up is half the battle”. My best result in any race over the entire series was 3rd place, however I did manage to complete every race. I love the WA Cyclocross community and how it manages to balance competitiveness  and inclusivity at the same time. It’s been awesome to be part of it for another year, as both a racer and sponsoring business.

This year I also did the Tour of Margaret River for the fourth year a row with my teammates from the South Perth Rouleurs. Again, I’ve found myself drifting back into the lower grades… which one teammate, Ash Brown, aptly named “Joy Division” aka Div J. I was hoping to build fitness and train properly for this event but found myself going through a bizarre cycle of sickness and recovery in the two months that preceded the race. We scraped through the 3 days of hard racing and just managed to hang onto 2nd place in the teams classification. Not an entirely bad result.

Christmas and 2025

Christmas is peak period of cycling activity and this year I’m expecting this year to be one of the biggest ever, with advent of the AusCycling Road Cycling National Championships here in Perth. Currently I’m fully booked for wheel builds until Friday 22 December. However I will have time available for repairs before Christmas and right through the Christmas to New Years break. This year I’ll be working throughout the festive season and into early January. I’ll then take time off in the later half of January before school goes back.

As far 2025 goes, I haven’t consulted my crystal ball or tarot card reader yet. My motto for this year has been “Survive to 25”. 2024 was a tough year because of cashflow challenges and so much uncertainty while I moved shop. Thankfully, I/we managed to get through it. Our online retail shop at Bicycle Spokes Australia has ticked along but I’d like to put a lot more energy into it in 2025. And despite the current “bust phase” the bike industry is in, there is certainly no shortage of demand for professional bicycle mechanics. One has to be optimistic for this work, however I still feel that the business model for serviced focused bicycle business needs to evolve to ensure that the business fundamentals are sustainable.  In spite of these challenges, I’m still excited to continue working in and being a part of the community of people who love riding bikes.

Kaizen Foam… or workshop hiatus part 2.

When I set up my workshop in O’Connor I was given an incredible blank canvas. There was ample space, incredible natural light, and a wonderful sense of place. It was a dream come true to build my business there. 

One of the early jobs in setting up my workshop was organising all my tools. I used the Kaizen Foam approach of neatly cutting out the shape of each and every tool, so they could be logically organised in my tool draws – “a place for everything, and everything in its place”. It was a lot of work to set up, but the work paid off over time in terms of workflow efficiency as well as “head space” benefits. Having my workshop neatly organised made it a very enjoyable place to work. I found that this setup helped minimise frustrations and allowed me to get straight into “the flow”. However, one drawback of the Kaizen approach is that over time you acquired new tools, and these new tools don’t really fit in the existing setup. And sometimes the tools you have are not really that useful anymore. You can try to squeeze them in, or even relocate them in a secondary toolbox. However, at a certain point in time it is easier to just pull out the existing setup and start again with a completely new layout. It’s a tedious job, but it’s worth it in the long run.

Recently I decided that the thing that really needed changing in my workshop was not my tool drawers, but the workshop premises itself.  To be blunt, the factory unit was simply too large for my needs and it had become less conducive to the Zen-inspired work environment I wanted. I’ve become dependant on sub-letting half the premises to make it viable. Over seven years, we’ve had five subtenants to share the premises. Also, I could see that I had fallen into a trap of “hoarding” too much stuff, because the was space available.

Recently my partner and I sold the O’Connor workshop after placing it on the market a month earlier. I didn’t want to say anything at the time because I didn’t know how it would go. For obvious reasons this has thrown a spanner in the works of the day to day operations of the business. I stopped taking on new work in mid-March and have managed to clear most of my backlog. Currently I have a couple of weeks worth of work from jobs I was waiting on parts. However until I’ve relocated to a new premises, I’ve had to put a pause on new work. It’s going to take time to clear out my current workshop, and it’s going to take time to fitout a new place.

At the moment I’m going through a period of hiatus while I get everything sorted out. If I can make one assertion however, it is that this is not a “down-sizing” of Melody Wheels. It’s more of an intermission. The online shop at bicyclespokes.com.au will continue running as per normal. I’m not 100% sure when I’ll reopen, but look forward to continuing with the work that I started 10 years ago.

Featured image credit: zouchconverters

2021… almost a wrap

It’s been a long time between blog posts. 2021 is almost done. I’m glad to have made in though another year. Next year will be a special year for me as it will be the 10^th Anniversary of Melody Wheels from our earliest days in Sydney. 10 years is not necessarily a long period time to be doing this but neither is it an insignificant passage of time. My favourite component manufacturer releases a special commemorative anniversary edition of their groupsets every decade… another 2 years and it’ll be their 90th. I won’t get ahead of myself, but thinking in decades is something to aspire to in an industry that is often driven by fads, fashion, and short-term focus.

The Good Stuff

One highlight this year was starting a secondary/sister business, Bicycle Spokes Australia, with my real life partner Pia. While I can’t say we’ll be giving Jeff Bezos anything to worry about, I’ve been happy with how our little online shop has progressed. Many aspects of wheel building require a detailed understanding of component choice, compatibility, and tool use. In this respect we’ve tried really hard to join the dots to make it easier for customers (professional and enthusiast) to get the best information on wheel building components and tools. We’ve also worked hard to make available a number of uncommon components and wheel building tools in Australia. There’s more to come here so watch this space.

It might sound silly but another happy thing this year has just been just enjoying riding my bike. Finding the balance between work, family, and bike is never easy, but essential (for me) to keep me on track. I know that all the cool kids are bike packing and riding gravel these days… but I’m an unrepentant roadie. I like waking up stupid early and getting a good ride in because the rest of my life is work and family. It works for me. I had a pretty rocky start to the year with some ongoing back issues, but eventually things corrected themselves. I’ve enjoyed doing a bit of cyclocross racing, the Tour of Margaret River, and my regular group rides with the South Perth Rouleurs and Spartan Cycling Club. These are the bookends of my week.

The no so Good Stuff

A common cliché is that you “learn from your mistakes”… and I’ve made plenty over the years. However there are only so many mistakes that you can afford to keep making. In 2021 I changed my approach to work scheduling with 1 month rolling calendar and a detailed “time block plan” for every day and week. This has generally gone well. Moving into 2022 I will be reviewing my labour pricing to better accommodate some of the work that I do. In theory wheels should be simple but the reality of what’s often involved in many jobs is more complex. I increasingly get referrals from many shops for wheel repairs because I guess the jobs are not very desirable jobs. I don’t mind taking on difficult jobs but there are only so many “jobs from hell” you can sustain and be financially viable. There is a risk/return wager with every job. You’d be amazed how quickly half a day can disappear on what was “just a little job”. My pricing structures need to accommodate more of the risks I take on with repair work. In my experience wheels are often neglected in regular maintenance, so by the time I get to see them, the problems have really escalated.

Following on from this issue, one decision I’ve made is that will no longer offer to fully rebuild proprietary wheels. By this I mean, systems wheels such as your Mavic, Fulcrum, Shimano etc. which require proprietary rims, spokes etc. that cannot be substituted with regular spokes and nipples. Very rarely do these jobs work out for me without a large number of headaches, costs, and complications in sourcing the right components and/or technical documents. Quoting on such jobs has been an exercise in perverse optimism bias and I’m just going to say ‘no’ from now on.

A second issue is tubular wheels and tyres. Most of the tubular tyres I come across in the workshop are not glued on to a standard that I would consider safe or desirable. The process of gluing a tyre doesn’t phase me like it did when I started out. I’ve become pretty good it. However the incredible amount time it takes to clean a rim back to the bare carbon or aluminum is time that I just cannot value properly. I need customers to meet me half way if they want to ride tubular wheels. I’ll happily glue your tyres on but I want you to clean the rims first. If you want to do the whole job yourself, then I’ll tell you every trick and so-called secret I know about getting the best results.

December and Beyond

Every year I take time off over the Christmas to New Year’s period and the first week of January. As things stand I’m currently booked out until 22^nd of December for wheel builds. This means that there are just a few slots I have available for wheels that I can build this year. Once these slots are taken I’ll be booking jobs in for the second week of January. With wheel repairs I can still do relatively fast turnarounds within a 1-2 week timeframe (depending on the nature of the repair). I know everyone is riding more at this time of year, so I’ll do my best to keep customers rolling through to Christmas and beyond.

One last thing that I wanted to mention is that I am hosting an event next week on Friday 10 December. This will be with long-term collaborator Mooro Cycles who is a brilliant Perth-based custom frame builder. The theme is custom-made bicycles as a collaborative process. They’ll be plenty of drinks, nibbles, beautiful bikes, and conversations. If you’re free that night, I’d love to see you there. The event flyer is below.