Alan lived in Southend-On-Sea for many years, dibbling and dabbling in bicycles as his hobby. He was 20 Years old in 1990.  He went to the main bike shop in the area, it was called Southend Trading Cycle Centre, he was always buying bike parts from that shop for his own bike, on this occasion he was walking out of the door and they asked him if he wanted a job, he said “yes” straight away and he couldn’t believe his ears, he started work the next day. It was a Traditional Bike Shop where the staff wore Aprons as part of the uniform. Alan worked here for 7 years until 1997.

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In 1997 he moved to Clacton on Sea. He left Southend Trading Cycle Centre and he sought employment in Clacton. He had lots of experience so he decided to try a mobile business, he put leaflets through doors to advertise his skills and start the mobile service up. He spoke to a man on the street that was walking home with his bike. He had some problems with his bike and Alan had a look for him and explained what the main problems were, Alan said that if you contact a bike shop it will cost more money but he can sort it all out for less money than a bike shop would charge. He didn’t take Alan at face value. The man phoned a bike shop and found out that all the work will cost X amount of money. The man phoned Alan back the next day and said that everything that Alan had said about the bike was true. Alan then agreed to fix his bike for him and got it running again.

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Alan was next offered a job in Cycle Establishment A in Clacton-On-Sea, the people knew Alan in Cycle Establishment A because he shopped there regularly, when the position was offered he said yes to the job, Alan worked for them for 3 months, and the other staff members turned on him due to the fact he was more knowledgeable about bikes than them. Alan’s boss said to him to quit your knowledge because the staff members were more customer based, and that because you have an extensive knowledge made the other staff look stupid. Alan was told to either quit being knowledable in his job or be sacked from it.  Alan was also told to give up his private work but they were fine with this at the start of the employment.

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Alan next went to work at Cycle Establishment B. He was offered to run the cycle department in the shop. He did successfully run the department and at one point the shop started selling Electrical Bikes, there was a problem with one of these electric bikes, it was the motor, Alan was able to take it apart, identify the fault, contact the suppliers and order the desired part. In the meantime the Boss who was the owner, shouted all kinds of words at Alan making him look stupid in front of some customers, he said there was no way Alan would be able to put it back together after taking it apart but to his amazement Alan did put it back together. Sadly no apology was offered.
Alan had a surprise when he found out that the staff couldn’t replace gear cables when the gears are twist grips. They just replaced the whole unit. They were extremely surprised that Alan knew how to replace gear cable twist grips without replacing the whole twist grip unit. Alan felt he had no option but to leave this job because taking that abuse in front of customers wasn’t worth it.  

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After that Alan continued with his mobile work for a while, then he got divorced which did put a stop to the mobile business because he didn’t do the driving to the customers. Alan did try starting up the mobile business again on his own without the driver, it was slow and he was hopeful but the numbers of customers sadly declined. Alan has never given up on his dream.
 

Alan’s Bicycle Workshop has been up and running for about 2 years at the time this was written, it was slow at first but we are getting there, we’re hopeful that with the support of the community behind us we will succeed in always providing a great service and value for money. We thank all of our valued customers that have supported us so far.  

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We dont want to cause any disputes so under the data protection act we have removed the names of two stores and not included any names of people. 

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