Bicycle repair shop
Description:
Buy, sell, repair and store bicycles for the community.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
Growing up in a small town there was no large bicycle company performing these services. When I was old enough to own a bicycle I had to go with my parents to a near-by city to purchase a bike. When I got home all of my friends had to have one. I saw I could provide a service and took advantage of it.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
Several years later a business started up in competition to me. They had a lot more money and time than I did. So I decided to go to college to better prepare myself.
What I learned:
There are opportunities all around us. We just need to act on them.
Bike repair
Description:
Description: Fixing/repairing bicycles around campus. Flat tires, bent alignment, bent chains, broken brakes, broken pedals, squeaky chains, etc.
How I got the idea / found the employment:
How I got the idea/ found the employment: As I was preparing to come back to school after my mission I didn’t have a car, but I had an old bike that was in pretty bad shape, my brother as well had an old mountain bike that he wasn’t using, and he offered to let me use it. So I took the good parts from both bikes and made one good bike using all the good parts and repairing a lot of other problems. As I have ridden my bike around campus and visited other people’s apartments I have noticed that there are tons of discarded bikes as well as bikes that have flat tires and various other problems. With my experience fixing my own bike I think I could offer an entrepreneurial bike repair service. My roommate is also one of those people who have a bike but it has a flat tire as well as a bent rear wheel. As I talked to him he said that he wished his bike would work but didn’t want to deal with the money/hassle of going to a bike shop. If I went to people’s homes to fix their bikes for a relatively lower price I think I could have a successful little business. It would be pretty easy to advertise I think as well, just through a referral service from people I serve as well as just asking people I see with bad bikes if they want it fixed. It would cost a little bit to buy tires, patches, WD-40 and other tools, but I think it would be a profitable business. I would not expect to hire any other employees.
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them:
Challenges I faced, and how I overcame them: Coming up with an idea that I think would be somewhat successful was pretty hard. One of my roommates is pretty entrepreneurially minded and so as I was doing this assignment I asked him about some ideas that he had done or had been thinking about. He mentioned scraping windows in the mornings in the winter for a fee, tutoring, dumpster diving and selling on eBay, repairing and reselling playstations, and doing cleaning checks for other people. I don’t have much knowledge with playstations, but I do have a little experience fixing bikes so that is how I came up with my idea.
What I learned:
What I learned: Doing this assignment made me think a lot about what kind of things that students need that they would be willing to pay for. Most students do not have a lot of money to spare, so I had to really think hard about what they would be willing to spend money on. I also learned that if you really want to earn a little side money doing these kind of entrepreneurial jobs it wouldn’t be too hard to it, whether it be scraping windows in the winter, or doing cleaning checks for other people, or even dumpster diving especially around the beginning and end of semesters when people tend to throw out a lot of perfectly good things just because they don’t have room or a need for anymore.