The Onion: The Four Hundred Thousand Dollar Business For Sale
What is for sale?
Ryan’s stake in Standard Bike Repair.
Is it really for sale?
Yes, this poem is onion themed. Ryan does not own the property. He wants to sell the business.
Do you have a business license to operate out of the home?
Yes, we are required to live there and follow a list of rules. The City and neighbors get the final say in you staying there.
Will the business license ownership be transferred with the new owner?
No, you would have to re-apply. There is no guarantee that you would be able to continue to run a bike shop out of the area.
Why would I want to buy the business?
Living in a bike shop is a way of life. Adventure tourists dig it.
And 400,000 came from?
My head. I imagined it when I was cooking the books one day.
I want to buy it. What do I do?
Contact Ryan and work out a deal with the state, owners and everybody else. The bidding can go anywhere.
Will I like living there?
I don’t know. I do.
My bike repair skills are…
It would be good if you are a mechanic. If not, don’t worry, you will learn.
I like the brand, logo name, but I don’t want to buy this one for 400K. Are there cheaper franchise agreements available?
Yes. If your name is Kevin, Albert, Jeff, Bob, Chris, Zach, Peter, Gary, Corinne, Angie, Brennan, Steve, David, Joe, Johnathan, Melanie, Alison, Enrique, Arturo, Lincoln, Washington, Harry, Hector, Barry, Greg, Karissa, Dylan, Devon, Sean, Taylor, Jeffrey, Mom, Lee, Jen, Jacob, Mike, Tesla, Barack, Bruce, Ben, Watson, Sherlock, Deuce, Lindsey, Vice President, Kalen, Hiroko, Brooke, Luce, Terry, Whitney, Wendy, Susan, Joanne, Barbara, Paul, Neil, Jim, James, Kaj, Calen, Thor or Loki you get one free. If not, good luck negotiating with Ryan.
Do I get to wear the T-shirts every day?
Yes, Derrick at Apollo Ink has T’s and screens ready. Sew Good owns the StandardbikeRepair.com patches.
Do you guys make money?
Yes. Our margins are wide and thin depending on the hour. Want to make a dollar? Fix a bike.
How much space is there? Looks small.
It is small. We have yet discussed the tiny home business movement.
What is the living space like? Looks like a bus.
The bus starts in the yard with an 11′ x 10′ bedroom. It feeds into the Boat-Size Kitchen. Next to the Port Holed Kitchen is the Center Room Store. The Parts Room extends the shop. The pint sized parts room has a vaulted ceiling and a hip-high workbench with three Heavy Duty Drawers.
Is there really a store in there?
Yes, in the Middle of the House is the largest room with a door. The Store Room is dominated by a lit workbench, peg board and tools. When customers see past the colorful and shiny objects surrounding the walls, they will see things for sale.
What is the Parts Room like? Don’t tell me it’s Small with Cubbies and Crannies.
There are shelves and closet spaces for bike parts. There is a big red desk wedged into a nook that houses the computer, 3-Ring Binders, pens, pencils, clipboards, iPad Credit Card Processing Machine and parts on sale for online distribution.
Where do you get printing done? Questions. I don’t know where to start.
We like Fast Signs and our In-house Small Business copier. Questions like, “I need help running the business. How much assistance will I get from Ryan?” are discussed through purchase.
Do I get control of the Facebook page?
It is a business. You will get to run it. If you would like to kick Ryan out of his house, pay him a bunch of money and give him freedom, he may go to Africa, Rome, an American place, Syria or China to open up another Standard Bike Repair.
Is it only on sale Fridays?
Yes, the bike shop is only on sale Fridays. It is a good day to decide “Should I Buy a Bike Shop?”
What exactly am I buying? You say this thing has slim margins, a $400,000 price tag and a lot of work.
You are buying a job. Bicycle Repair will not be a Bygone until bikes do not exist.
The Ultrasonic Bike Parts Cleaner. Do I get that in the deal?
Yes, preserving bike parts is paramount to staying in business. Re-using parts is efficient.
Many Days After, People ask. Are you serious?
My name is Gary Gingras. I own Fat Kitty Cycles. I will sell you my bike shop for twenty bucks. Four hundred thousand? Are you kidding me? Do these people know how much work it is.
I don’t want to buy a bike shop. This is an odd conversation to have near a keg.
How much is it worth? I want to know the finances. What do you got in inventory numbers? How many customers come banging on the door for simple bike repairs? Cash flow per month. C’mon, C,mon, cough up the answers.
I want to weld. I can build freaking awesome crazy custom bikes out of steel tubes. Neighbors and city gotta be cool with a serious garage of welding sticks and hot items.
You should sell it to an Out-of-Towner. They will pay more.
Are there any other bike shops for sale? I want to know how much they are worth. For bloody sakes, what does a business go for these days.
What kind of resources are available to sell this business? What are there, like on-line Sell-Your-Busy-ness sites. That’s ridiculous.
What are you going to do next? You are a nut. Don’t you realize how hard it is out these days. Gotta job. Keep it. Geez.
Will you please stop talking about this. I don’t want to talk about your fantasies.
You are a crazy man. You own and live in a bike shop. What more could you want?
Franchises, Franchises, Franchises, Franchises, Franchises XYZ, How many Franchises do you want to call Standard Bike Repair. Those free? I want a Free Standard Bike Repair. Whatta I gotta do, like just buy tools and things? That can’t be so hard. What, five grand? Nothing. They sell tools at Resource on 63rd and Arapahoe for a buck. And they rent tools for a membership of less than a quarter of a hundred dollars per year. How easy it easy is it to start a business these days. Do I have to pay you for the gift and burden of running a bike shop in my home? It’s probably not going to make much. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay you more than a burrito, salad, and latte, maybe not even food, just a thank you and how cool what it be to put the franchise on the website. You could have a whole bunch of Standard Bike Repairs, but since they are not paying you anything, you still won’t be rich. It’ll just be something else to think and do nothing or something about.
It is going to be hard to sell your business since you live in it. What if the city doesn’t want to renew the license? What if the landlord doesn’t like the change. These are important things to think about. Let’s face it. You are lucky to be running the business here. The City allows it and a long time ago when you moved into 1823 Marine Street, there was no intention to open a bike shop. One day, you thought it would be a good idea if you didn’t have to leave home for work. You weren’t in love with bikes since you were four, or race when you were a kid. It was just practical. It kinda made sense with low overhead, and somehow the right conditions.
I don’t even know what to say. This is a topic that I am so completely uninterested in, it is hard to say anything.
How long would it take to pay off the loan if I tried to buy you out? That would depend on projected cash flows, costs and settlement.
I am not a mechanic. I can’t even conceive starting a business even though I know next to nothing about it. Funny story how you didn’t know anything beyond how to ride a bike before you started a business called Standard Bike Repair. It is an established business now. If I start a Franchise, it can build slowly. Buying you out would be a mistake if I wasn’t an accomplished mechanic since it is an established business. It is a great venue though, right there near the Goss and Grove center of Boulder.
They say that a human’s ego makes things eight times more than they are actually worth. Working backwards here, that means your bike shop is worth one eigth of four hundred thousand. That’s not that much for a headache and a challenge course with obstacles every ten feet and thirty miles long.
Let’s talk about flooding. You were lucky this one. Next year, who knows, water, wind, leaving the oven. Goodness, anything can happen, life is so precious, day to day.
There are resources online. Turns out, there are many bike shops for sale all over the United States. Strangest business, it is one of the few that manage to stay super small scale. How many bike shops are there in the fifty states? Thousands? Geez, louise, that is whole crazy silly, I mean, I live kinda close to a lot of people, I could probably figure out the tools, YouTube, other bike people nearby and a trend. Bicycles are trending upwards till the end of automobiles unless they start running on moon fuel. Cities will get smaller, and places with strong ecosystems will turn local and eventually back to the garden. Bikes commute till metal perishes into dust. There are bike shops for Colorado even. Which are ones are they? I visited the website and some of them were mysteriously unknown. The most interesting beer. Standard Bike Repair is for sale. Franchises are free.
Do I get control of the Yelp, Yahoo, Bing, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Four Square account too?
No. I mean, yes, if you really want to work together. Competing with internet traffic is an infinite wall of numbers. No mass and space, yet information travels.
