Nobs: More than just a bike shop- Final Post

The environment that I chose to study was a local bike shop. It was quite a tedious process in even finding a place to do my project. The first place that I went to the owner told me he was not too keen on the idea. When this didn't work I ended up calling up some other places around. I thought I was going to be out of luck and decided that my best option would be to just go in person. This is what I did for the place I eventually ended up--Nobs. Nobs is a small shop that is located on Oak St. about a block off of South Carrolton.

In my process of trying to find a bike shop I was able to get a sense of the differences of set-up. Nobs is a unique environment in and of itself. What makes this environment so unique is a combination of things: Service, business practice, and location. But it all comes together because of one guy, John Melton, the owner who opened the establishment in 1998. According to John, his shop has gone through a lot of changes to become what it is today. I wanted to find out what made his shop unique; so that is exactly what I set out to do. What I ended up with was an interesting insight into the bike world, an idea of what makes a small bike shop what it is, and how an independent owner must be at least energetic, creative, flexible, and personable.

To do this I asked John a bunch of questions and got a feel for what his day to day working environment was here at Nobs.

John Melton is from Baton Rouge originally and told me when he started Nobs he did so with one thing in mind, to be able to provide something that the internet cannot, and provide "American labor". John also told me that everything in the business world is changing and if he had not been able to change with it and keep up with the now that his business would not exist now. So I asked him, "How did you start working on bikes?" He moved to New Orleans with the idea to open a shop. At the time he said Oak St. was nothing like the place that it is today. There wasn't very many businesses and didn't have the almost outdoor walking mall feel. He said that he saw the potential of the area to grow into this and this is what motivated choosing the location of Nobs. When he opened the store he said that he bought the store incredibly cheap and that people thought he was crazy in his idea of trying to open up a store here. This is why he says that if he wasn't able to change his business plan and keep up with the now Nobs would not have been able to survive. He started it out as a board sports store and that this wasn't working out how he intended. He had to change from selling what he called soft goods to hard goods. This is how he incorporated bikes and bike repair into his shop which is primarily his business now.

John's interest in sports has always been apart of his life, at the age of 13 he started to race bmx and has always had an interest in bicycles and knowledge of how to work on them so the transition to selling bicycles and repairing them came easily. The mechanics of bikes have relatively stayed the same over time. Nobs, he said, now makes products instead of just selling products. Initially his business plan was selling T-shirts, shoes, skateboards and that he had to change this.

I asked him how being a smaller shop compares to other larger companies. Larger companies he said sell directly to the consumer and what he does is more service oriented. It is a completely different angle, he sees himself as being "your mechanic". He is the only one in his store that works on the bikes. About two years ago, as his customer base grew, he hired a secretary to keep up with paperwork and help him keep work orders organized.

I noticed this over my time here as almost everyone who came into his shop knew him on a personal level. They seemed like regulars for every bike need. Nobs is unique in the sense that they do not over advertise, and builds from scratch. John stated that he is, "building a product while offering a service."

All of the bikes there that he sells all looked different and are in every style from road bikes to beach cruisers. This includes a custom bike that he made called a "swing bike" that has two frames connected in the middle that swivel and allow the bike to stand on its own without a kickstand.

There were very few "new" bikes for sale there. I asked him if he just fixed bikes and how he feels his store compares to larger places. He establishes his customer base in a variety of ways. People will bring in their old bikes to get fixed and many times will not like the price that he is going to charge them to fix it, that they would rather spend a hundred dollars or so to get an entirely new bicycle. John maintains an ambiguity about this. He told me that he utilizes what he has to and has no problem with other companies or with people doing this. When people tell him this then he asks them what they would like to do with their old bike and many times they do not want them anymore and so he will buy these broken bikes for 10 or 20 dollars from them or just be given them. What he does is use the parts from these old bikes to completely build a new bike altogether by piecing them together. This is unique because he said that within the bike world every bike has completely different sizes of all the parts so you must accustom yourself with these differences in order to build the new bikes. He recycles all of the parts and builds each bike from scratch. For some parts the he needs he will go to other bike shops or the internet in order to get the part and complete the new bike.

After he spoke about how the business world is constantly changing, I asked him what he sees as the future of the bicycle world and for his shop.

Within the future of the bicycle world John told me that there seems to be growing opurtunity for electric bicycles. I was unaware of electric bikes existing and told him about how I once tried to do a project of attaching a 1-hp motor to a bicycle before and that I have been seeing alot of those recently and what the future for these may be in comparison. The way that he sees it is that we seem to be trying to move away from fossil fuels and that that is what will hinder growth in this market. The new electric bikes are being produced with the idea of replacing your car as a mode of transportation. There is a company called Torker Bicycles that is selling these bicycles and that they can go about forty miles on their battery charge.

The new bikes are very sleek, when I looked at the pamphlet I would not have been able to tell they were electric if he hadn't told me. The only part of the bikes that show this is a large Lithium-Ion battery pack that rests parralel to the ground above the rear tire. The bikes come in many styles as well.

John told me that he has incorporated these bikes into his shop and I asked him if he had to learn how to work on these in order to do this. The bikes, he said, mechanically are almost entirely the same, the electric bikes have just a small number of parts added that make them electric. What he has to do to work on them is not much different that other bikes because if these parts break or need fixing that it is more like either they work or they don't, all the electric parts are replaceable. These new electric bikes are incredibly reliable though.

As for the bike world there seems to be a trend to revert to simplicity, that less is more. In relation to this John pointed out a line of bicycles that is strictly produced in New Orleans as of right now, the brand is called Virture and is very "old school". There is a single gear and they resemble a road bike because of the frame and handle bars. These bikes are good bikes for the city he told me.
All of these elements (e.g. flexibility, smart business strategy, management, customer-oriented service, and just plain guts) come together and make Nobs the place that it is, doing what other bike places do but in a completely unique way that makes Nobs one of a kind.