Spoon Customs is moving on from Orange Row
Spoon Customs has outgrown it’s home, on Orange Row in Brighton. Which means the popular bike shop attached to the business - Orange Row Speed Shop - will close this month, as Spoon Customs moves on to a new unit in Hove.
After a wonderful two years on Orange Row, this step up is one of the toughest decisions yet.
Orange Row Speed Shop was Spoon Customs first UK home, and it’s been really important to the success we’ve had this year. It’s given us a base to grow the Spoon Customs business and it’s the place were we finished the builds for the award winning bikes that we took to Bespoked this year too.
Orange Row Speed Shop, in the downstairs space at Orange Row, before the workshop moved upstairs. Photo by Matt Ben Stone
It’s not the first time we’ve moved home, but moving on from great places certainly doesn’t get any easier.
Living at 1860m in Montgenevre I had the perfect perspective from which to develop our ideas for bikes. Riding almost every day on the best roads and climbs in the world, it was a busy but simple life, and the perfect place to test bikes that worked in that environment.
Once I’d launched a product however - we put our first bike out to the market in 2017, to some amazing reviews - it quickly became obvious I’d need to be nearer to London to develop the business.
I made a tough decision to come back to the UK and I moved the workshop home, to a live-work unit in Brighton.
With the unit and it’s location near the station, shops and cafes in the Laines, it would also double up as a bike workshop. Keeping me and the tools busy tuning and upgrading local cyclists road bikes. I could live in it too and be near to Gatwick so I could hop back and forth to Montgenevre, Turin or Milan as was needed.
Spoon Customs was making some good moves back then, but it wasn’t paying its way so it was the right place at the right time and, Orange Row Speed Shop was born.
It wasn’t easy to start and open a bike shop from scratch, but the move paid off. Especially opening in the winter. By the time Spoon Customs started trading properly I’d had a really busy season at the shop, and we’d managed to keep the lights on by offering high end servicing (carving out a little niche as one of the only local specialists in Campagnolo) and I had a growing list of lovely customers who trusted me to look after their bikes regularly. They’d buy the odd set of wheels or some carbon bits at good prices, and bring their bikes in for overhauls and tune ups. We got some awesome reviews for the shop.
Living in the workshop 24-7 (sleeping on a scaffold platform to save floor space for the bikes) has been fun if not challenging and it’s given Spoon Customs the platform it needed (and a bit of cash back up) to allow the custom bike side of the business to grow slowly, without us having to cut back on quality in materials, design or manufacture.
Now however, to keep that standard with a busier Spoon Customs order book, SC needs me full time and that means it’s time to close the doors of Orange Row Speed Shop, as we move onto concentrate on the main business and more custom bikes.
Good news is, we’re not going far.
Our new Unit in Hove is in a lovely Mews and is part of an artists community on a quieter road better suited to designing and developing the bikes full time, with space for another person to help us serve growing customer demand for our custom made, hand-built steel bikes.
As we say goodbye to Orange Row, I want to say a massive thank you to all of our Orange Row Speed Shop customers and suppliers.
And, heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who’s stopped by, bought something, or helped spread the word. It’s been lovely to help people out, keep their bikes rolling and meet so many people and whilst it’s sad news that ORSS is closing, Spoon Customs is sticking around and our order book is open, down the road in Hove.
If anyone’s still keen on parts or servicing and advice, happy to help out on an appointment basis when there’s not a Spoon Custom bike in the stands, but it’s not going to be the full time proposition that Orange Row Speed Shop has been.
If you need an alternative to Orange Row Speed Shop now; Porteur in Hove are going strong (and do excellent cakes and coffee too!), and if you need someone more local to the Laines, Baker Street Bikes, Rayment Cycles and Dave at Freedom bikes are expert local mechanics and will be more than happy to help I’m sure. Thanks also go to them. They made me feel welcome in Brighton from day one, and have helped out with parts, tooling and the odd seized this or that, and that’s been really amazing too.
Thanks again, Brighton. You’ve been amazing and you’ve made Orange Row Speed Shop a wonderful little chapter in this crazy little journey of ours. Onwards to Hove!