Chris’s Opinion and Comments (from this week’s email)….
We have been humbled and honored by the bike industry and nominated as one of 6 top mountain bike shops in the US again in 2016. There is an award ceremony at Interbike in September and the final “best” shop will be chosen.
I learned about it from Joe Nocella because Joe’s incredible shop, 718 Cyclery is also nominated. I am friends with Joe. Joe has a shop in Brooklyn and goes on amazing adventures all over New York and New England. I am looking forward to joining him soon on a trip.
This voting element got me thinking, because I don’t feel right or like asking people to vote for us. Plus, we had already won the honor in 2012 as Best Pro Mountain Bike shop (different criteria did not include general voting). We have also been recognized as a top bike retailer for the last three years in the industry and we even won a Small Business of the Year Award by the State of California where we went to a ceremony in Sacramento with our senator. We more than appreciate it all and are humbled to even be considered any of these kind recognitions. We also recognize that any award or recognition goes to everyone in the shop family who rides on Saturdays, helps each other and is around for piece of banana bread and cup of coffee deserves the award. Now I am in a quandary, I don’t want anyone to feel bummed for us because we didn’t “win”. I also don’t want Topanga Creek to feel like we are competition with awesome bike shops. I want to keep encouraging people to go to all of them. Feeling competition toward other shops is the last thing any of us want. In fact, the other shops on the list plus many many more shops all over SoCal and the US are all absolutely fantastic and deserve as many accolades as possible, I wish I could vote for them all. Our real competition is people buying new computers and sitting in coffee houses on Saturdays instead of buying bikes and riding them. My fear and competition is that kids won’t learn to ride bikes like I did as a kid and their lives will not have the exploration, wanderlust and adventure that the bicycle has brought to me. I want to win against apathy, against unsafe routes to school, against childhood obesity and against all of the things keeping both kids and adults from riding their bikes. I want all good and fair bike shops to be wildly successful especially mountain bike and adventure shops. In fact, I would love anyone reading this to fight against anyone of these things far far more than clicking a mouse to vote.
We love bike shops. In SoCal, we are friends with a whole bunch of shops that deserve all kinds of BEST OF recognition’s, we love the crews at Golden Saddle, The Shop at Pedalers’ Fork, the Hub in Idyllwild, the Mob Shop in Ojai, Orange 20 Bikes, (and many other shops all over the USA). We go on camping trips, have sodas and beer with these folks regularly, we ride with these guys and are earnestly excited to see them do great, along with everyone on the list for best mount.
We will put it out there a couple times for votes, so our mom’s can see us listed and vote for us, (Mom’s like to vote for their kids), along with our awesome shop family who are so much a part of every success and accolade we have ever been considered. But, rest assured we want everyone to win in the bike industry, many many times over.