by Mike | Feb 9, 2023 | Uncategorized
Greetings, beloved customers!
Don’t panic. After 27 years of doing this recumbent biz, Mike Librik (that’s me) is closing down Easy Street Recumbents showroom operations. The Austin showroom will close on April 30th unless someone takes it off my hands and keeps it going. The Keller showroom will do the same on July 31st.
Neither Mike in Austin, nor Micah in Fort Worth, will disappear. We will continue to support our current customers by appointment. Our major suppliers are aware of this change and will continue to provide us with parts as long as needed. Again, don’t panic.
In Fort Worth, Micah intends to continue some sort of established operation, so he’s keeping all his tools. The nature of this operation depends on what investment support he gets, but he plans to stay active in recumbent retail and service. If you’d like to invest in his shop then let him know.
In Austin, I will still be available for trike work, but will be actively advocating the establishment of a new recumbent specialist in Austin that can render me redundant. I don’t expect that will be too soon.
If you or anyone you know is interested in the exciting work of specialty retail in the 21st century, put them in touch with me! I’ve got two complete shops, with tools and supplies, vendor accounts, fixtures, doddering old computers, and a battery-powered towel dispenser. Valuable intangibles like branding, website, phone numbers, and customer sales data is available to anyone buying the operation(s) whole. I wouldn’t call my financials “impressive,” but if you factor in my lack of management professionalism and neglect of common budgeting and marketing practices you’d see there is a lot of easy improvements to be done.
It sounds banal, but my real satisfaction in this work has been the care of my customers. I grow decreasingly interested in the technology. What motivates me is the pleasure that my customers get from that technology. I don’t even ride my own bike that much since I quit using it for my primary transportation.
On the other hand, Micah’s heart remains with cycling, and with exploring what the latest technology is doing to transform his riding and yours. Hopefully we’ll be seeing him shaping his own operation, which I’m sure won’t look entirely like mine.
More to come. Keep in touch.
by Culture at Easy Street | May 15, 2018 | Community, News, Uncategorized
I thought it was just about time I got up to see the progress being made on the new shop and ride some of the trails in the area and meet with my Executive Party-Planning Committee! So glad I came. The shop is looking good; very bright and clean looking. Our signature green, white and black colors are in evidence, Mike and Micah consulting at every turn. I feel just a little disappointed that we are going to have to put off some of the more artistic touches — especially for the bathroom, so enthusiastically discussed on Facebook — but we will get those eventually.
I did get to ride the trails this morning, leaving Mike to wield hammer and saw as he works on building a platform to display our lovely ‘bents in the windows. My oh my! What an extensive trail system! I had LOTS of opportunities to get lost and tried to take advantage of all of them. 🙂 The benefits of my meandering path included seeing lovely neighborhoods and having a number of conversations with friendly people who I accosted along the way to see if I could figure out where in the world I was and which direction I should go to complete what I thought was a loop. (This tends to be my favorite part of going on a relaxed ride in unknown territory.) The prize for friendly conversation, however, goes to a woman who was out working in her back yard garden bordering the Cottonbelt Trail and overheard my conversation with another bicyclist. She offered to be of any help that she could… including inviting us in for water and to use her bathroom. I was very impressed and told her she got my gold star award for friendliest bicycle support person for the day.
Finally turned on my phone’s GPS and, though she directed me to go in the exact opposite direction that my evidently untrustworthy intuition urged, made it back to Cross Timbers Park from where I could find my way back to the shop. YAY!
Look forward to seeing you out on the trails,
Rebecca, ESR Minister of Culture (etc.)
by Mike | Mar 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
This is it. I’ve signed the lease!
Look for us in the Keller Place shopping center at the SE corner of Rufe Snow and Tarrant Parkway. We’re all the way at the north end of the complex.
Note the open area behind the center. You’ll get a few delivery trucks rumbling through, and a bit of employee parking, but it will serve as a near-in test ride area.
Here is a view out of the showroom doors
Beyond that, in cooperation with the City of Keller, Easy Street will install about 200 linear feet of trail to connect to the Little Bear Creek trail. LBC connects to the John Barfield trail that connects to the Cotton Belt trail and you can easily do a 20-mile out-and-back if you want, ranging to North Richland Hills (Micah will have a 10-mile all-trail work commute) or up to Grapevine.
If you are in the area, head on down and snoop. I’ve marked off the proposed trail and the Parks Dept. has offered to help with clearing in advance of the survey team.
In typical Mike Librik fashion, the layout will be bass-ackward. We’ll have showroom windows facing Tarrant Parkway, but the customer entrance will be to the rear, facing the test ride area. This will also give you a more private place to park. And that puts the bathroom in the showroom.
You can email Micah at Keller@WeMakeCyclingEasy.com, and a phone number is coming soon. Build out work always takes longer that you expect, but hopefully we’ll be doing business by the end of April. Hopefully.
If this doesn’t destroy me utterly and bring the whole enterprise down in a flaming ruin, its gonna be a blast!
Now the real work begins.
