718 Cyclery believes in diversity and inclusion, and we seek to do business with companies who share these beliefs.
718 Cyclery is a shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Founded in 2008, our focus has always been working collaboratively with our customers. 718 Cyclery was founded on the principle that we are practitioners of 100+ year old technology, not the guardians of it. We strive to create an environment where arrogance and attitude have no place.
I was an architect for 20 years, and started getting involved with bikes later in life. I was a messenger in NYC in the 80’s, but really wasn't attached to the culture. I started building things with my hands as a reaction to the digital life that I was living, and as a way to connect with a life my hands and I once knew.
We are a destination shop, meaning that people seek us out. We are not defined by what we sell, but by who we are. We have built a business around what interests us, and that is the full business plan (seriously). We have determined that getting our customers interested in what gets us going is a way to grow a sustainable business.
We build bikes with our customers, inviting them in on the process. Again, getting them excited about what excites us is a great way to create a relationship that is far beyond a cash register transaction. Buying a bike off the rack takes 30 minutes, building a bike with us draws us into your world.
We are very interested in adventure cycling. That may seem strange for a shop in Brooklyn, but we have tapped into a desire that urban dwellers have to escape, be it only for a few hours or a weekend. We take trips and go on (off) road rides on a regular basis, which is decidedly not the NYC way to run a shop ride (think Power Meters and pace-lines).
Look, its Ice-T!
We are an independent local bike shop. We sell what we use and what we ride, which makes selling easy as we have no sales staff. We don't care how much things cost on the internet, because we are not competing on price. We focus on what the internet can't take away from us, which is a human connection. As Matthew Crawford says, “You can't hammer a nail over the internet”.