Hi Everyone,
The Bike Church does sells bikes that are surplus to the needs of our
youth program, which raises money for the agency as a whole. We have
had this situation where people have been using the place as a workshop
for their own entrepreneurship projects. On the whole Bike Church
members have found this abhorrent and greatly discouraged it. On the
other hand, not many people seem to have much of a problem with selling
their own bikes in our space! I think it might be that what looks
valuable to most of our volunteers is the time workshop space rather
than the "customer base." There are gradations of what could happen.
For instance, is it OK for someone to sell a bike on Craig's list and
then have the person pick it up from a volunteer or patron at Bike
Church? Personally I'm fine with a consignment deal as long as it's
worked out in advance because it has the potential to bring more people
in here.
Regards,
Andy
Paul Park wrote:
Hi all,
At the Mount Rainier Bike Coop in Mount Rainier, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, we are working how to sell our bikes that we refurbish. We really don't have any fixed or regular costs; the city gives us the space (a garage), so we just use our money on spare parts and tools. We have an earn-a-bike program so youth can build up bikes for us, learning mechanic skills, and then after fifteen hours of voluteering, the youths can build a bike for themselves. Volunteers who have already put in 15 hours of work can basically just keep refurbishing bikes. No one gets paid anything at this point.
Generally, at this point, we just sell our refurbished bikes in one way or another. Do other shops do this? Also, presumably, volunteers could, after working fifteen hours, refurbish bikes for themselves, and then sell them on craigslist or something. Do other coops have a policy with regards to refurbishing bikes for yourself, one after the other, and then selling them for your own profit? Or perhaps a system where you refurbish a bike and then you have to give a certain percentage of the sale to the coop?-- PJ Park http://www.biketobrazil.blogspot.com http://www.imagestation.com/members/pjpark http://www.imagestation.com/members/pjpark http://picasaweb.google.com/PaulJosephPark
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