ABOUT US & OUR "SHOP"

Hello, Alison here! If we've never met, feel free to think of me as "Mrs. LBG"
Cham and I started "Local Bike Guy" as a nameless experiment in 2018. We were in pursuit of two things - Time, and its oft partner-in-crime, Quality.
At first, we selfishly needed the time and quality for ourselves. Cham was burning himself out at a boutique shop in West LA. As the only dedicated mechanic on a lean staff, he was hands-on from doors opening to closing, limited in how long he could work on each bike. The shop consumed most of his days and weekends. We only had 2 days a month off with each other, so we weren't really riding - or doing much else together at all.
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Every day after he came home from the shop, Cham would talk to me about his bikes from that day. What else he wanted to do but couldn't. He tried to maximize his service in the time allowed, but he was never satisfied, having to rush from one bike onto the next.
One coworker joked that if Cham could do what he wanted, he'd work on only one bike a day.
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That got us thinking. Was that possible? One bike a day? You see, shops have overhead they need to beat before they can make a profit: Rent and insurance on a location or van fleet, inventory and idle parts, advertising, to just name a few. That's why volume and traffic matters for a shop.
So what if we did away with the heavy costs of an all-inclusive shop to focus on just one thing - the service?
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Without having to outrun overhead, Cham could work on just one bike a day, investing only in the best tools and giving his attention to quality. He could do it fully and deeply, like an obsessive lover / mad bike scientist locked in his lab. Every cable optimally routed and cut, every spoke measured, every bolt torqued to spec.
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The next question (a big one) - would people give him a chance?
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Cham has the experience. He wrenched for his mom and dad's bike shop in Cambodia since he was 12 years old. He would open the shop before dawn, leave when it was time for school, then return after his classes to continue his labor until it was time to eat dinner and sleep. He was still with his parents as a young adult, when he was recruited by a bike-touring operation. There he applied his homegrown skills to run cross-country bike tours across Southeast Asia. (This was how we met, by the way). We then moved to Singapore together, where he joined Decathlon as the lead mechanic of the pioneer workshop team in the first mega-sporting goods store in all of Singapore.
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Even given his experience, we didn't know if this would work. There were a few reasons. For one, Cham's only been in America a few years. Also we're not bike industry insiders - far from it, actually. And due to his Buddhist background he is absolutely allergic to talking about himself. I personally have recurring frustrations over this. I've seen opportunities slip by because he was too humble to even say, "Hi I'm Cham, I'm a professional bike mechanic. I can take care of that."
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So instead of taking a brand-and-advertise-first approach, we decided to do just the opposite. To go completely nameless. See if "just Cham" is enough (Well, Cham and his experience, skill, and passion).
And if that - plus a bit of word-of-mouth - could indeed cut it, then we hoped the rest would follow.
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Well it's now a few years later, and we are awed and lucky for those of you who took a chance on us, supporting us even when you weren't sure if this short guy with broken English would take your bike and never come back. But you saw that he could speak the language of your bike. Not only that, you advocated for him. Told your friends. You spread the word that Cham was so reluctant to spread himself.
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Some of the things you tell us you love... that Cham gets in obsessively deep with your bike... that he listens and consults versus pressuring and upselling... that he keeps you posted as he works... that your bike rides like new (often better than new, even) after you get it back... that he actually follows up... these comments all stem from the time and quality that we set out in pursuit of.
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So we know we've found our target. And having refined this experiment, we're now stepping out of beta. It's not a big step though. We still plan to keep things small and focused, with time and quality as our guiding stars. This is just giving a name to something we somehow nourished from a simple idea and will do our best to protect going into the future.
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Hence, "Local Bike Guy". It's unpresumptuous. Short and sweet. Not unlike Cham. We don't need a shop. Heck, we don't even want a van.
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All we need is a guy. A guy and his love of bikes.
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Happy riding,
Alison
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The TL;DR (too-long-didn't-read):
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1) Lifetime mechanic and wife sidekick chasing time and quality
2) Redefining "Wrench" as "Obsessive Lover" + "Mad Scientist"
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3) The most amazing customers taking a bet on us - and winning (we hope!)
4) Not a shop, not a van. Just a guy.