The February shop schedule is as follows:
Sundays – February 2, 15, and 23 – Noon to 4 PM (Shop closed February 9 for Blaine Swap)
Tuesdays – February 4, 11, 18, and 25 – 7 PM to 9 PM
Thursdays – February 6, 13, 20, and 27 – 7 PM to 9 PM
Special event on Sunday, February 9, Blaine Velo Swap. This annual event is your chance to snag extra-special deals on some of the best stuff MMRB has to offer. We haul it all up to the Schwann Center, which is located at the National Sports Center in Blaine. The Swap begins at 9 AM and they charge $5 for admission. There are lots of other vendors there besides us, and there are always great deals, so plan a day up at Blaine for the Swap, and be sure to stop by our table.
The final bicycle give-away count for 2013 was 720. That is a little short of the 755 we gave away in 2012, but we did remodel the shop so that slowed us down just a little. For January 2014 we gave away 20 bicycles, so we are off to a pretty good start. We have a group at a school over in Minneapolis that need a bunch of boys 20″ bicycles with coaster brakes. We ran out of these during December due to overwhelming demand from the Holiday Wishes program. If any of you have any 20″ boys bicycles available for this effort, please bring them in to us.
Other special events scheduled for later in the year include the Andover Recycling Day (last Saturday in April), the Fridley and St. Francis Recycling Day events (first Saturday in May), and a bicycle give-away program in Maiden Rock, WI on Saturday, April 19. We have several other events in the planning stages, so watch this space for further details.
Our sales have been very low these last three months – lower than they have been for a few years. While our primary mission is to give away bicycles, we still need to sell enough stuff to pay the bills, and we have fallen short for our third straight month. We need customers to come in and buy our stuff. If you know someone who is in the market to buy a bicycle or who needs some parts, please send them our way. We also do repairs, and our labor rate is an affordable $15 per hour. We keep our repair prices as low as possible. Now is a good time to bring in bicycles for repair, because our workload is low. Once we get to March, things get really busy and repairs take longer due to high volume. My guess is that the weather will turn nice all at once – get your bicycle tuned up now so you are ready to ride on that first warm day.
As always, we look forward to seeing you at our shop.