With the bike industry changing on an hourly basis we know it can be a daunting place when you start looking at what you want to buy. At Biketreks we look at your needs and desires from the point of view of getting you out riding more, with more confidence and with the view to riding to places you never thought possible. We won’t blow your mind with technical jargon, we won’t make you uncomfortable in your knowledge or lack of it, and we will always offer you a beverage to calm the nerves (we are opposite a bar, have 2 trained barista’s on site with a proper coffee machine, and have more flavoured teas than Booths!)
On average we will spend an hour going through the options available on a Santa Cruz (or an Orange) mountain bike, but if you know what you want then it can be as quick as 10 minutes, or if you need more help then we won’t clock watch, we will work until we get it right. It sounds cliché but we really are one of the few cycling businesses who sells products from the point of view of your needs and future desires rather than on a technical spec and a price point. We’ve won awards because of this approach!
We will take you through a logical process of building a bike from the frame upwards, helping you select components that are suitable for your end goal. We have used, abused and thrown away many of the supposed “greatest things since sliced bread” products that come to the market, and riding daily in the rigours that the Lake District throws at us we know what works and doesn’t on a bike. You might think something looks great in a mag, and Mr MBR said it was amazing but the reality is often very different. This is again another reason why many people choose to buy their bikes from us, we will give you no nonsense advice based on fact and having used the products rather than a marketing budget!!
We will listen, fine tune and expel the virtues of all the possibilities available on these bikes and then help you make a decision as to what best suits your needs. It’s no use telling you that BOS forks are without a doubt the most incredible suspension fork on the market if you’ve got a busy lifestyle and don’t know one end of a spanner from the other, and equally if you want to start hike-a-biking after a years worth of riding we won’t sell you a Highball, and just because we ride SRAM 1 x 11 doesn’t mean we will push you onto it. We will build you a bike that suits your budget and your hopes and dreams!
When it comes to sizing you on a bike we have not only 30 years experience of sizing people on bikes, but we also have a nifty piece of software written by our ex-teacher Bryan that will take some vital statistics from you and then give us a size based on them. We will then send you out on one of our bikes that we have on site for you to see how it feels and give us some feedback based on a test ride (we have both a car park and an off road test circuit). If you are one of the few people who wants a full off road demo on a bike before their purchase then we can organise this for you, but since 90% of people buying bikes do not need this don’t get caught up in the endless rut of demoing bikes. We have some customers who have tried bikes for 3 years and still haven’t bought anything and since we struggle to understand the mentality behind this we offer a sizing and satisfaction guarantee on our bikes. If you buy a bike from us and you are not happy with the size or the way it rides then we will swap it for a size that you want.
Once we have a clear picture of what we are creating for you we will compile a spread-sheet of everything we have discussed so you know what to expect when you collect your bike. If we promised to put red decals on your forks and blue bore caps on your brakes then we will ensure that happens. We will give you an estimated delivery time based up on the facts that we’ve got, and we can’t always promise you a firm date as sadly the bike industry around us doesn’t operate in the professional manner that we do, but where a scheduled date changes or a component becomes unavailable we will let you know. We will offer alternatives if possible and believe us when we say we have an admin chap Piotr who is good at getting results from stalling companies! We will always be honest with you even if it leaves you a little disappointed, we won’t just say “oh it’s around 6 weeks away” which is the typical Santa Cruz dealer response! As parts arrive for your bike we will let you know and finally when all the parts arrive we pass your soon to be a bike on to our service centre…
A workshop is only as good as the tools that are in it and the mechanics that wield them. We have one of the largest selections of specialist tools in this industry and we are the envy of many bike shop owners. In fact I’d hazard a guess that we have more money in tools in our service centre then we have in bikes in our shop. This means that we fit, remove and assemble all components using the correct tools rather than botching them together. There’s no ill fitted creaking headsets that come out of our workshop as they been fitted without retaining compound, and some workshops would do well in noting that there’s more than one type of
