Booming Business Tones Down Blue Bike Anniversary Celebrations

Darwin, NT

Tenth anniversary celebrations at Darwin’s Blue Bikes didn’t go quite to plan but manager Kyle Boeyen didn’t mind they had to be scaled back because of a rush of business.

“We were flat-chat, so we weren’t able to push the celebrations as much as we would’ve liked,” he said.

“We were slammed throughout all of last month, which was probably a combination of our recent store expansion and the nice weather we were enjoying with the start of the dry season.

“We still worked with some of our suppliers to get some entry-level bikes we could do at a really good price for the anniversary. We were running sales on a lot of our normal brands, Raleigh, Sunpeed, Specialised, Avanti … pretty much most of the brands we stock normally.”

Kyle said the team had a short-term goal to “really ramp up our servicing side of things”.

“We are continuously looking for more full-time employees. We’ve got four full-time mechanics and two casual mechanics at the moment. We’re pushing our workshop to really expand it, to be a one-stop-shop for anything bike related in Darwin and the NT,” he said.

“We know we can ramp it up a lot more than what we’re doing now. Give us a couple of years and we could probably see that double.

“There’s only three bike shops in Darwin at the moment. There’s plenty of potential to grow the pie for all bike shops in Darwin, just really expand cycling in the NT.

“We’re a very progressive shop and always looking at what we can do differently. How do we grow, how do we better ourselves and our customer service?

“Some people think of Darwin as a small town but we get all the big brands come through town and they are absolutely gobsmacked with what we’re doing and how we present ourselves.

“That’s probably the reason we’re getting busier and busier each year. While we can’t compare it to Covid figures, in terms of sales and what happened to the cycling industry, take that out of the equation and we’re busier than we ever have been. We’re really happy with the trajectory we’re on.”

He said Blue Bikes could look to expand into multiple stores during the next five to 10 years.

“We’re the only bike store in Darwin that has had multiple shops and done that successfully, even though we’ve scaled it back to one shop at the moment,” Kyle said.

“A return to multiple stores could be on the cards again during the next five to 10 years.”