HaveBike is the pick-up and drop-off servicing company looking after your bicycle

People often don’t realise a bike needs looking after in the same way you look after cars,” says Nick Brown, CEO and founder of HaveBike. “A bike should be serviced and at the end of the day, you need to keep yourself safe and we all know a bike rides so much nicer when it’s freshly serviced and it doesn’t squeak and creak.”

In 2009, after the financial crash, Brown was told to take a sabbatical from the law firm where he then worked as a finance lawyer. Choosing not to sit on his laurels Brown dived into his childhood passion, bicycles, in particular mountain bikes and the maintenance of them.

“I was always the kid taking his bike apart in his mum’s kitchen, filling up the sink with all the parts to clean,” he said. “I just took the sabbatical as an opportunity to do things I enjoyed. So, I did my bike mechanics qualification, I went out to the Alps, I went out to Italy, did a bit of cycling, and got a feel for the scene.”

When he finally returned to work, however, Brown had decided it was time for something new. He told his boss that he was quitting and that he was going to start his own business; HaveBike.

The idea for HaveBike was born out of a common experience for many cyclists. One lunchtime Brown took his bike to a nearby chain cycling store and asked if he could get his bike serviced. He could, but he’d have to wait a couple of weeks. To him this was madness, he thought you shouldn’t have to wait for so long.

Brown, who is originally from Doncaster, first thought he could teach people to service their own bikes before realising a better way was actually to service people’s bikes for them. So in 2010 HaveBike was born.

The company was unique in putting servicing at the forefront of the business. Oftentimes a bike workshop is just an add-on to a small retail shop whose first priority is selling bikes – not so with HaveBike.

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It was also first to market with its collect and return service. A customer simply goes online, chooses what sort of service their bike requires, books a pick-up time and a return date and HaveBike does the rest. The company is even responsible for looking after the bicycles of many of the emergency service fleets in London and around the country.

“I want you to be able to book a bike service in the same way that you can buy a product off Amazon,” Brown says. “It should be very simple; click, click, click.”

Once you’ve booked your bike in, a van will arrive on your chosen day, cover your bike up and put it into the custom-made holders designed to keep your bike safe on the journey. Brown told me that he understands how important an item a bicycle is to its owner, noting my own carbon fibre bike in the safety of my flat behind me in the video call.

But HaveBike is not just for the lycra-clad road warrior; the company is about “catering for all levels” of cyclist and the services vary from a basic “Regular” service at £59.99 to the “Super Deluxe” at £199.99. No matter what service you choose – and there are additional options as well – all services carried out by HaveBike include a 104-point safety check including brake checks, just as a car service would, before the rest of the bike is checked over and adjusted as necessary to make sure all moving parts are working correctly and ready to go back on the roads again as smooth and safe as when it was new. And the best thing about HaveBike is you don’t have to leave your home.

So surely then, lockdown has been good for the business. With a rise in bicycle sales and people looking to make old steeds roadworthy again, HaveBike would have benefitted? Well, yes and no.

“A big part of our business was that our mechanics were going into these big city offices and doing the repairs on site,” said Brown. “Well, literally overnight that side of our business basically closed down.”

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As well as this, in the early, uncertain days of the first lockdown the emergency service fleets were put to one side, until eventually they realised cycling was the best way to get around. But as the bike boom began to take hold Brown realised there was an opportunity to expand the pick-up and drop-off services. Already operating in London, HaveBike increased capacity and began to expand into the home counties, into Surrey and Hertfordshire.

Affected by his experience of being asked to wait two weeks for a service, Brown says he always tries to get bikes back to customers within 72 hours, but certainly no longer than two weeks. The only time they began to go over was during the first lockdown when, after the initial slow-down, business began to boom as many turned to cycling to get around in the pandemic world.

Now HaveBike is looking to expand even further afield, into Essex, Kent, and Bedfordshire, and a longer-term plan for further across the UK and perhaps even beyond.

“We really want to be a household name for bicycle service and repair,” says Brown. “In the same way that you take your car to a garage such as Kwik Fit, we want people to see us as that trusted name for bicycle repair.”

Brown is still just as passionate about cycling as he was when he was a child and on the wall behind him is a framed, abstract painting of a cyclist. But he’s moved a little away from the mountain biking. His friends joke that he got older and more aware of the dangers of the extreme sport, now he’s moved over to road cycling – treating himself to a super-bike last year – but still holds a love for mountain biking.

“We want our customers to trust us because you are literally booking online and the only human interaction you get is when they meet our driver. I know how protective of bikes I am so it’s that level of trust we have to give to the customer.”