New fitting studio and workshop at Unit 9
This whole adventure started in a garage at the top of mountain about five years ago. Since then I’ve made pizzas in a french restaurant, driven a mountain transfer bus over 90,000 miles, run triathlon camps, cycling camps, sold parts, even opened a bike shop in Brighton.
Guests from Sky and Zwift and Media Velo out in Montgenevre on one of my Alps Camps, ran whilst bootstrapping the business from a garage workshop in France.
We sold more bikes in our first year than I planned to, proving the concept. We then doubled that the year after. It was incredibly tight and completely wonderful but ultimately I was working harder and in a more focused way than I’ve ever worked, at anything. Ever.
And so it’s continued, back and forth to the mountains, from here to Italy, to see suppliers, buy steel, find parts, pick up work, test stuff, ride my bike.
In all that time we’ve taken loads of little steps forward. It hasn’t always felt like it and at times it’s felt like the opposite, but we’ve been steadily learning from doing and building.
Orange Row Speed Shop, our first UK place in Brighton. It was small. So much so, this bike rack doubled up as my bed. For two years.
The most significant step this year; merger, covid, and all the obvious aside, has been moving into our new space. It feels like a watershed.
We’ve been doing it up slowly for months. It’s coming together now and with the whole UK team is now on site together, and it’s making workflow and getting stuff done way easier. It feels like a massive step forward.
We wanted fitting to take a more prominent role and now we’ve got the space for it. Everything starts from here, and we want you to know that, so we’ve put it right in the middle of the room.
Double doors at the new place, open up on to the Farm with easy access to the Trails. We’ve room for the first time, but we’ve had to be clever with it; the benches we custom made ourselves in 40mm box.
The space is coming together and working well and feels pretty comfortable too. If not cold just now. It’s work in progress, but it’s honest and we love it. We’ve even got a beer fridge.
Together, we’re all getting much more done. Paint process is detailed and quiet work of course but me nor David really appreciated quite how much at the start and we had a few incidents where we’d burst in unannounced scaring Sam or Luke half to death, usually whilst weeding tiny masks with their surgically sharp scalpels in hand.
The new workspace at Unit 9 is ready for customers, and has way better space for fitting and building bikes.
Jen’s not back on site full time yet, but she will be and it’s feeling like a proper team. We’re certainly doing some of our best work right now, and it feels great.
Reducing space for clothing retail has (perhaps as expected) not really affected sales during or since lockdown. The move to online only, supported with fast delivery and easy returns means more space ‘in store’ for focusing on you and your bike.
Display space within the workspace so people can see what stage their bike is at and talk to us all on one site.
We’re ranging way less non bike stuff too but the Assos WM drop this season sold out in record time, so thanks to everyone that got in on that. That’s the sort of stuff we’re concentrating on for future drops. So sign up to the newsletter if you haven’t already for early notice on that. And keep an eye on the WyndyMilla site, as we’re about to drop a massive clear out sale.
Unit 9 itself feels like the business coming home for the first time since I got my start in Montgenevre. That workshop was just a garage of course and just one room, but I loved that because you could see bikes at all stages. The new space works in the same way. We don’t need to check stock, or ask where a frame is at, we can see it.
Whilst the new place is not at the top of mountain in the Alps, it does have some epic riding straight out of the front doors too, a world away from the hustle and bustle around the interim Brighton shop. That place had to serve so many purposes, including somewhere for me to sleep on top of the scaffold I hung the bike frames from, that it didn’t really do anything that well, so Unit 9 feels like a really special place, at a massive moment where we’re finding our stride.
Head over to www.wyndymilla.com for our kit sale. It starts first weekend in December and we’re giving 10% of all online kit and equipment sales in December to charity.
Our Crowdfund starts soon too, so sign up to for updates right here on our homepage if you want early access to that. You can own a piece of this wonderful adventure and come on the next stage of the journey with us.