The urban bike cave

I gots an idea, imagine that ;-)

Lets say you a had a bike or two and lived in an urban area where space was expensive. Now, surely you’d find a spot to stick the ride you use for getting around town because you need access to it so frequently. But what about the weekend warriors or folks like myself who like to switch it up - road, mountain, cross, etc. Here is my proposed solution/business idea.

Suppose there was a warehouse in the city that you could store your bikes in. You’d lock them up in the warehouse. You get a code to get in the warehouse much like a normal storage faciltiy. But there are several things that make this different from a normal storage facility.

1. Much cheaper than a storage unit
2. More secure
3. It would have a couple wrenching set ups for tunes ups if you need them.
4. Water cooler, and other spare stuff in case you forgot something
5. A good place to meet the folks you’re going to ride with
6. Perhaps it’s a place for rainy day riding on trainers?

I got some ideas for the security issue because that seems to be the biggest concern. Ideas including webcams, unique codes per visitor, individual bike locks that are hooked up to the internet to provide alerts, etc. Fancy stuff you know ;-)

The tough question I have is really the pricing model. What popped in my head was almost the Netflix style monthly recurrning fees. For example: $20 for 1 bike. $30 for 2-3. and $50 for 3-6. Is this something you would pay for?

So, then it becomes a game of pure square feet and storage design. How big does the space need to be to fit enough bikes to make the business work and not be a nightmare for folks to get their bikes?

Let me know what you think of this: mholzer@gmail dot com