The wall start going up, Finally! We signed the lease on the new store 5 months prior to the first wall going up and needless to say we all are getting a little anxious.
Well, we thought the walls were going up until they fell down due to a monsoon storm. Created set back of 6 weeks!
While we wait for the building to be finished there is allot of other work to be done. Show cases need to be made. Work benches need to be built. Vender accounts need to be set up, the point of sale computer system needed to be configured, Here Mark works on one of the three show cases he made custom for the new shop.
Well, this is what a shop looks like when the property management company hands you the keys to your new shop as a "Vanilla Shell" We are now ready to begin the build out process. Most sane people hire contractors to do this, we however, have never claimed to be sane.
See the bathroom on the right. It cost us an extra $8,500.00 after the city of Chandler decided that our bike shop needed both a Women's and a Men's Bathroom. We're going to use it as a closet.
Well we're pretty much over the Bathroom by now, so it's time to paint. Al conveniently becomes sick leaving Mark, Nicole, and Brandee to do all the work. Check out the superior masking job.
Mark paints. It's pretty easy to paint a room or a wall. Try painting a 2000 square foot shop by hand, Remember your taking the wall from dry wall to finished product. Therefore your texturing, priming, and painting the surface multiple times. Mark, Nicole, and Brandee get to know the wall intimately. Al's at home...sick.
The Floor. Knowing nothing about a the process of staining a concrete floor Mark and Nicole spend hours researching the technique. The guys at Cohills must have done a great job educating them because in the end the floor turned out great.
Nicole apply's stain to the floor, boxing herself in.
At some point in the process Mark must scrub every square inch of the floor, looks like fun. I wonder how his knees felt after 8 hours of floor scrubbing without knee pads. When you stop in ask him.
Here Mark's feet are moments away from being coated with floor sealer.
Nicole and her floor sprayer.
Al's back from the sick bed. However in severe pain from a couple broken ribs, caused by coughing? The amount of pain is hindered by mass doses of Codeine.
Al hangs slat wall. Slat wall is hard to work with each sheet weighs about 100lbs. Brandee in the background as she normally is for the day to day operations of Global Bikes. Brandee writes our newsletter, does the books for the new shop and helps with backend operations..
Mark, Think'n its starting to look like a bike shop
Mark acquires shiny metal which quickly becomes a motif of the new shop.
Rocky has his fair share of the build out fun. Here Rocky is mounting the bike rack rails. Not easy to do, but eventually we become proficient at finding and screwing into the narrow metal studs.
The outline of the shop is up. At this point we have had access to the shop for about 2-weeks. We have 1 week left to accomplish our goal of taking the shop from shell to sell.
Mark displays his extreme attention to detail while painting the "pony" wall top. Was a permit needed to build this? hope not.
up with the racks. In the Gilbert store we used steal C-channel. For the second store we had the luxury of being able to use aluminum-much easier to cut and move around.
Nicole paints the top of the wheel rack. So even though no one will ever see the top of this rack this is proof that there is paint where eyes can not see.
Mark checks for roof rats.
We have a sign! These things aren't cheap and cost even more when you tell the installer the wrong side of the building to install it on. We learned the hard way that the average price to move a sign is about $1700.
The window pictures are individually hung by fishing line. They are not easy to get level so if you run by the shop and see a picture out of alignment please give us a break, we specialize in selling and repairing bikes not picture alignment.
Al builds the first bike in the new Chandler store . A 19" Hardrock Sport disc in dream silver. Only 3 more days until our 2-1-06 opening and we're really putting in some long days. Luckily all the guys from the Gilbert shop were able to come over and give us a hand at building the other 99 bike for the floor.
The Helmets are in and ready to sell!
Picture taken from rear shop door. Bikes are built equipment is in. We have a new bike shop!
Now that we have a new bike shop how would you like to come down and buy this Speicizlied Roubaix. We gotta sell a lot of these things to pay the rent.
Or maybe an Epic is more your style. Good looking bike!
The cash register sits, waiting patiently, for the first sale.
The work bench waits for repairs. Work benches made by Mark and Al.
The Global Bikes Chandler Location brought to you by the following important team members.Left to right: Scot Paulsel (Specialized sales rep), Alan Lepak, Josh Beley,Rocky Canelas (back row), Alan Blackmore (front), Scott Hembre (in green), Mark Funicello, and at the far right Jake Cruise.
By the way, we did the impossible, we took the store from the Vanilla shell to a fully stocked and built up bicycle shop in under 3-weeks! our first sale was 2-1-06
Global Bikes, Gilbert Store 835 North Gilbert road #111, Gilbert, Arizona 85234 480-892-1315
Global Bikes, Chandler Store 1055 S. Arizona Ave #9 Chandler, Arizona 85249 480-782-8342
