Bespoke Blog

After four very happy years at Farringdon its time to turn the lights off for the very last time.

I took possession on Valentines Day 2011, and its very much been a labour of love to get the store (and the business as as whole) to where it currently is (and is hopefully going).

A number of things stand out from those early days:

- The fact I went from 800 sq ft in Hoxton to 3,700 in Farringdon and signed the lease with zero staff
- we were so quiet when we first opened there was only two of us in whole shop, and there were days and days when the phone never rang nor did people enter the shop
-Some suppliers actually told us to only open upstairs and keep downstairs closed as we were "not ready yet"
-we had no money so the fit-out team did the fit-out after their priority jobs; so work was done from 8pm -4am
-Not surprising the fit-out dragged on and on and on !
-the infamous break in when we had £20k of stock stolen from ram raiders three weeks after opening
- for every day since then, as part of locking up we take all bikes off display, and bring them out again in morning . Over 4 years thats a lot of man hours spent doing that!
-The break in occurred on my eldest son's first birthday. He is now 5 and he has two younger brothers
-Ben joined the business as our third hire. There are now 24 people working at Bespoke…..
-Thats quite a lot of mouths, and families to look after, and I am very humbled the talented staff choose to work here over competing offers
-The fact that when Ben joined he was single and now he is married with a beautiful son
-The very first Saturday when Ben did bike fits alone in the shop and I had a weekend off. Initially I called every 30 minutes to make sure he was okay. He soon stopped answering the phone. At the end of the day he sold a new bike after the fit, and I finally realised what being scaleable meant…
-I used to do all our accounts and VAT returns. We now need full time staff to process all the payments
-The fact HMRC inspected us because were were growing so fast it flagged a warning on their system! Got to love Pro Business Britain….

Because the business is fairly relentless on a day to day basis, sometimes you forget to see the big changes in the sea of little ones.
But we have all grown up with the Farringdon store, and it will always have a very fond place in my heart.

I am looking forward to seeing what the Gresham chapter has in store for us all !

Barry Scott

Founder, Bespoke Cycling

Our new address:

30 Gresham Street, London, EC2V 7PG.

Telephone: 020 7796 1263

Our entrance is located on the corner of Milk Street and Russia Row.