How it all began

Local Bike Shop Day is the one day a year when independent bike shops across the UK can come together to celebrate their distinctive culture. It's the day for local bike shops to showcase their passion, knowledge and personalised service they offer to their local communities.

History

The inspiration for Local Bike Shop Day UK was driven by the success and message behind Record Store Day, Bike Shop Day in America and Bike Store Day in Canada. 

Record Store Day, now a globally recognised event, brings together thousands of record shops to rejoice their individual culture and community within the music industry.

2017

Bike Shop Day, inspired by Record Store Day, was born in 2017 in Brooklyn by 718 Cyclery as a means to connecting independent bike shops and their communities. The first national event was held on 9th December with more than 40 shops taking part.

2018

It didn't take long for the idea to spread, with Canada also conceiving the idea in 2017 when bike store owners and employees came together to celebrate and spread the word about the exclusiveness of the independent bike shops. The first Canadian event was held on 24th March 2018.

Daniel Jones prompted the first ever Local Bike Shop Day UK, on the 6th October 2018, collaborating with the Association of Cycle Traders (ACT) and Deryck Modesto who created the originally used identity of Local Bike Shop Day. The first ever Local Bike Shop Day saw just over 90 shops taking part.

2019

Despite the terrible weather seen across most of the UK the second ever Local Bike Shop Day - 4th May 2019 - was a huge success with over 150 local bike shops getting involved, a growth of 67% from the inaugural year.  

2020 

During the day, the hashtag #supportyourlocalbikeshop had a reach of 360,025, an increase of 380% in comparison to the reach achieved last year, as well as having over 400,000 impressions. The Local Bike Shop Day website had over 5,000 unique visitors with the most popular page being the find a local bike shop search facility indicating consumers actively looking for their local participating shop.

Thanks to supporters helping to raise awareness of Local Bike Shop Day across a variety of platforms, the day reached over 800,000 impressions, most of which were on consumer-facing channels.

2021 - onwards 

Local Bike Shop Day is supported by a record number of cycling organisations, including the All Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW), ZyroFisher, BikeBiz, Cycle To Work Day, Cyclescheme, Cycling UK, Cytech, Freewheel, Insync, Love to Ride, Raleigh UK, Sustrans, The Cycle Show, London e-bike festival, Transport for London, Department for Transport, Total MTB, PaceUp, BikeIsBest, Butterworth Spengler and V12.

We've seen a substantial number of celebrities jumping on board to celebrate Local Bike Shop Day; local bike shops across the nation were praised by the likes of TV personality Gail Porter, Cycling Surgeon Chris Oliver as well as Olympians Katie Archibald, Sharron Davies and Kye White.

Across Twitter and #SupportYourLocalBikeShop has a typical reach of over 2 million on the week of Local Bike Shop Day, with around 1 million of that being from the day itself. The hashtag sees over 4k interactions, 400 mentions, almost 200 shares and around 4k likes. Facebook post reach has hit over 80,000 on the Local Bike Shop Day channels alone.

Around 600 bike businesses engaging with the campaign and with groups like the Department for Transport and influential groups like We Are Cycling again getting behind the initiative. Plus, there have been over 3,000 votes from customers across the UK! A few well-known faces have also got on board such as Jeremy Vine, Gail Porter and Sharron Davies.

We've seen Cytech come on board as sponsor, the largest internationally recognised cycle technical training and accreditation scheme.

This year...

Local Bike Shop Day will be taking place on Saturday 3rd May 2024 and is set to be bigger than ever! Stay tuned across our news pages and socials for more updates and information, plus read about all of the exciting ways in which you can get involved as a customer, bike shop or sponsor here.

Local Bike Shop Day is an industry wide initiative managed by the Association of Cycle Traders.