G&O Says Goodbye
Hello Pedal Parents, Mama Bears, Ebikers, Transportation Cyclers, Passenger Pandas and Tweeps of the Internet!
Davey Oil here with some sad news about your favorite cargo bike shop.
After over ten wonderful (and challenging!) years, G&O Family Cyclery is shutting down.
I have a lot to say, so scroll to the bottom for the TLDR if you don't have time for all that.
We have seen and done and been through a lot. We have been part of a revolution in bikes as a technology, an industry and a culture. We’ve seen and helped many of you model new paradigms in transportation and new styles for parenting in Seattle. We have achieved more than I ever would have hoped when I left my career as a bike educator to transform my old family biking blog into a funny little bike shop with my co-founder, Tyler.
Before we ever thought of starting a business, Tyler and I made performance art together. Our heroes were John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Cage and Cunningham made collaborative art which found its energy in the audience's engagement with the performers’ act of discovery and their shared experience of indeterminacy. At G&O, we have always valued the “not knowing” and respected the learner in our customers and within ourselves.
We set out to make a new kind of bike shop that sold a new kind of bike to a new kind of bike rider, in a new way. We sought out challenges and chased puzzles and turned our solutions into policies and training modules and sales spiels.
We related to the potential rider within the person who expected to be alienated by a bike shop, and we aspired to create a space for them. I have got to believe that we have helped more customers in sudden tears when the reality that they’d successfully worked through the complexities of choosing the right bike and felt respected the whole time. Our staff cares about you.
The staff at the Family Cyclery are my heroes. For years we have worked together to improve the quality of our service and honed the edge of our expertise in the technology and techniques of electric cargo bikes. The shop has enjoyed an unusually high rate of retention. The team forms and the team stays. But now the shop is leaving. And that is sad.
Over the years our cost of doing business and the cost of living in our city have only gone up. We have aspired to provide living, professional wages to highly skilled tradespeople. I firmly believe that high wages and more opportunities and entry level positions for more diverse types of mechanics and salespeople are the keys to revising the bike retail model and replacing the exclusive and gatekeeping culture of bike shops and at the same time provide service that is more reliable and better value than riders are typically able to depend on.
After years of skirting the edge, depending on tightening margins, and digging for good luck in heaps of bad, we have hit a string of the bad kind; the reality that we cannot support ourselves and at the same time do this work in the manner that we most want has become undeniable.
It is a true thing to say that if your business can’t afford to pay fair wages, your business has no business doing business.
The shop’s closure is happening faster than we would have liked, and the livelihoods of my staff and myself are all at risk, as is our ability to meet all of the obligations we have to our customers. We will be closed for the next few days to organize ourselves, and then in the next few weeks, starting on Wednesday the 17th, we hope that you’ll consider coming in and picking up anything you might need from our shop. We have many high-quality ebikes for sale, as well as accessories like lights and helmets. We have bags of Lego for sale on a sliding scale from $5-500. We have all kinds of lovely things, and any support would be greatly appreciated.
With your support, we can close like we always tried to operate, with mutual respect and care for our community.
So what happens now? As a result of our impending closure, we are canceling our remaining repair work and dedicating all mechanic and repair bench capacity to receiving and preparing the remaining bikes on order. Click here for a list of Bosch-certified repair shops.
If you’d like to support the G&O staff while they determine their next steps, you can donate directly to them here.
Thank you for a decade of adventure and progress and indeterminacy, Seattle. Keep the rubber side down. Keep the oil in the ground. Keep your loved ones in your heart. Keep the good times in your mind. Keep on cycletruckin’.
Your friend, Davey Oil
TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ
Shop is closing
All future repair work is canceled
Current repairs are ongoing and customer’s bikes will be returned to them completed
Closing sale will start on Wednesday
Alternatives for local repairs are linked
Bikes still on order for customers are our first priority
Staff and community need your help in this transition, please come and shop next week
Shop is closed from 1/13-1/16, will reopen for sales and visits on Wednesday the 17th