This February we ran a photo feature on Avantiplus Cannington and commented that it was one of four bike shops virtually in sight of each other on the same stretch of road in the Perth south eastern suburb of Cannington.
Now the store just across the road from Avantiplus Cannington, Committed Cycles, previously run by Mr Brad Sara has closed. But not for long.
Mark Tabone is starting a new store in the same premises. He is certainly a man on the move, as he explained recently.
“We took over Midlands Cycles roughly four years ago, after I left Monza Imports to get back into retail,” Mark said.
“We helped Midlands to grow. On December 1 last year we took over Armadale Cycles. I was lucky enough to get the staff with that shop.
“We’ve now just taken over another premises in Cannington, which will be named Cannington Cycles. This will be our third location, all in the eastern suburbs of Perth.
“We’re trying to mirror each of the stores by having consistent stock supply through people like Specialized, Cervélo, Focus and Cannondale, to give us a good range of product and good support from both the wholesaler to retailer and of course from the retailer to the consumer.
“The focus for us isn’t one particular thing. We try to be pretty generous across the board with our stock—everything from a kid’s bike right through to the top of the range road bike.
But we don’t focus on the high end. We focus on mums and dads and of course customer service.
“We’re hoping that our third location, which won’t be our last one, will be as good as we expect it to be, which will be as good as anything else. We want to have that customer service and a bit more support for the consumer as opposed to the massive stores that just do numbers.
“It’s in the old Committed Cycles shop but we haven’t any part of that business whatsoever except for the location, so we’ve basically had the lease signed over to us. New stock, new blood, new personnel. Our current manager Marty, who manages the Midland store is going across to manage Cannington. Marty is new to the industry, but he’s full of enthusiasm and a real get goer. It’s going to be good.”