About Continual Cycles

Continual Cycles' main goal is:
To Serve the Customer!

   In today's retail service world, customer service usually takes second place to making a profit. At Continual Cycles we realize that the profits will come naturally if we provide awesome customer service.
   Why is customer satisfaction more important than making gobs of money? For two simple reasons:
   1) A love of bicycles.
   2) Personal satisfaction.

   We love that we have made bicycle repair more personal, cost-effective, and even effortless for our customers! No more worrying about how to transport the bike, dealing with different salespeople, and being without the bike for days. We deal with each customer personally and their individual needs are assessed. We enjoy helping people in a one-on-one atmosphere, and we love everything about cycling!

   Another goal of Continual Cycles is to promote environmentalism & healthier lifestyles by encouraging and enabling others to enjoy the sport...the recreational activity...the love of cycling.

More bikes = less cars = less pollution
= a healthlier population = a happier planet.

About the Owner

   Although he's had one bike or another for pretty mucy his whole life (you can check out the list here), Chris Reid got his first Mountain Bike in 1985. It was freedom on wheels -a Kuwahara, with a "North End Flat-Black paint job" that his uncle bought for him. Unfortunately, it was stolen within a few months. Karma is a hard word for a 12-year old boy to learn...
   Skip ahead a couple of years, when he started fixing his own bike at the tender age of 16 with the gentle encouragement of his mother. (He can still hear her words echo in his ears..."YOU broke it, YOU fix it! We can't afford to replace it and I'm not buying you another one!") Almost two decades later, it turns out that her wise advice wasn't punishement after all because it ended up to help foster a love of cycling that has yet to stop growing!
   Starting by working on his own Miele Astro 12-speed he learned how to maintain a bike, straighten wheels, and swap out components. He treated that bike more like a mountain bike than a road bike: bunny-hopping up & down curbs and over potholes; breakneck sprints for the next stop light; constantly locking up the rear (or both) brakes as a matter of style. (You know how rough kids can be on their gear...) The bike ended up having a premature demise and Chris moved on to other rides.
   Moving onto Mountain bikes, he quickly became the de facto bike mechanic for his circle of friends. They'd buy a part and bring it to him to install. And then they'd go out riding. This carried on for almost 10 years until Chris moved to Vancouver, Canada.
   While in Vancouver, Chris was offered a job as a bike mechanic at The Bike Doctor, which he graciously refused. He was working at Rack Attack at the time, and it paid better. Selling and installing trunk-mounted racks, hitch-mounted racks and roof racks (factory and aftermarket) and accessories, as well as performing custom installations, it was a pretty good job: Good boss, good co-workers, good pay, working with hands & tools. What more could a guy want?
   Eventually, Chris met a wonderful woman, got married and moved back to Winnipeg. Once back in town, Chris got a job as a bicycle courier working in beautiful Downtown Winnipeg. While in the Olympia Cycle & Ski on Pembina Highway (it's since closed it's doors) buying a better bag for work, the owner offered Chris a job -which he initially refused because being a bike courier is too much fun! (Seriously, if you don't need money it's the best job in the world!). As fate would have it, Chris broke his knee less than a month later. Obviously unable to ride a bike, Chris phoned the owner back and asked if the offer was still open. It was, and Chris started working in the shop as soon as he could.
   After a couple of years of working at the shop, Chris noticed a serious shortcoming in the way that the owner treated his customers. He directed his staff to treat people who bought bikes at department stores (or worse yet, the annual Winnipeg Police Bicycle Auction) like second-class citizens, and were to be shunned, if not outright thrown out of the store. "I don't want those damn bargain hunters in here. They're bad for business" was what we were told. We were told in no uncertain terms that if a customer mentioned on the phone that they bought a bike at the Police Auction, we were supposed to hang up on them without an explanation or a good-bye. How rude can you be? This was supposed to be customer service? And the truly sad thing is that this clique-ish atmosphere of "we're better than you" can be found in every bike shop in Winnipeg. Every single one.
   Chris decided that something had to be done. He decided that what Winnipeg needed was a better way for somebody to be able to get their bike fixed no matter what type of bike, without being made to feel bad that they didn't buy the bike where it was brought to be fixed, or because they couldn't afford something better. So Chris started Continual Cycles, hoping to make bicycle repair in Winnipeg more accessable and affordable for everyone.