Creekside’s current shop on North Fairfield Road measures around 1,500 square feet. The pair have a small office for their workshop, and during peak season lack the space to store the dozens of bikes being sent in for repairs.
“Once we get customers in here, there’s not enough room. It’s just not viable,” Mike said.
The move would also give them the space to hire more staff, including two more mechanics, and allow them to expand their selection of e-bikes, which have exploded in popularity locally.
“More and more people, particularly young people, come in wanting to commute to work by e-bike,” Mike said.
Gas prices are also a major contributing factor to increased bike and e-bike sales. Doing the math on an average commute, Mike said a car with 40 miles per gallon would cost $1,600 annually in fuel. The same commute with an e-bike cost $8.
The pair had an interest in keeping their business in Beavercreek, which sits between the two major cycling hubs of Xenia and Dayton.
“Beavercreek is sort of the epicenter of the trails,” Conrad Dillon said. “We get customers here all the time that are vacationing here with the specific intent of riding the bike trails. If you ride bike trails in Chicago, New York or D.C., they’re congested just like the roads. You don’t have the same sort of peaceful experience you have on our trails.”
Greene County has the nation’s largest paved trail network, and many places in the Miami Valley are part of the Great American Rail Trail. The project by the Rails to Trails Conservancy seeks to connect bike trails across the country from Washington D.C. to Seattle.
“Lots of people are going to be doing that. That’s going to be a new bucket list item, and they’re all going to go right past our shop,” Conrad said. “We want more people to use them and benefit from them just like we have, and we want to be a resource for doing that.”
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