A week doesn’t go by without female friends asking me about Vancouver’s best bike stores and repair shops. With each and every question like this, I can’t come up with more than a handful of places to recommend.
Whether they realize it or not, many shops give the impression their female customers have no idea what they want or what services their bikes need.
This attitude leaves many women frustrated, often insulted, and in today’s growing bike culture, misses the mark on many different levels.
On countless occasions, I’ve shown up at a repair shop and the male mechanic takes one look me and my upright bike and assumes I couldn’t possibly know what I’m talking about. I don’t profess to be a mechanic, but I understand the basics and I know my bike.
It’s not just customers. Bike mechanics aren’t immune to discrimination either.
Jessica Baba, mechanic and master wheel builder at Dream Cycle on Commercial Drive, has trained and worked extensively in the bike industry for three years. Yet she still meets customers who assume her male counterparts have more skill and experience than she does.
“I’ve had male customers call into the shop asking for the wheel builder, and when I explain it’s me, some have taken some convincing and I’ve even had one hang up on me,” said Baba.
While this behavior may seem shocking, it’s not uncommon for Baba to encounter confusion from male customers. Her experience is the reality of being a woman in a historically male-dominated profession. Thankfully, many other customers recognize her skill and are happy to bring their bike to her for fixing, myself included.
The industry is changing, largely because the number of women riding in this city is growing each year. Data from HUB’s Bike To Work Week 2015 report shows that 45 per cent of Metro Vancouver cyclists are women. What business would alienate nearly haft the market?
It’s time for bike shops to offer products and services equally focused on their female and male clientele, something Sidesaddle hopes to achieve. Co-owners Andrea Smith and Lucas Gallagher opened in late May to combine their previous bike shop experience both as mechanics and salespeople to offer their customers something different and special.
“Women have been underserviced in the industry, and our shop will focus on being approachable, not assuming anything about people and meeting them where they’re at,” said Smith.
They realize a woman’s bike knowledge can vary from person to person, and Sidesaddle offers a space without attitude or intimidation, an ideal mimicked in their shop looking more like a boutique than the gritty, industrial bike shops we’ve grown accustomed to in North America.
Smith is among a preciously small group in Vancouver as a female bike shop owner.
According to an informal count by online magazine The Tyee, of 35 bike shops in the city, only one is female owned and three others are run by husband-and-wife teams.
The bike community at large also needs to recognize the growing quotient of women working in the industry who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that should not be disregarded.
In Baba’s experience, having female mechanics help women feel more at ease. She said, “When I’m repairing a woman’s bike, they appear more eager to learn about their bike and how to maintain it.”
There’s also a lack of female-focused gear, which was the impetuous for Susan Stokhof to start the online shop, Le Vélo Victoria in 2012
“I was so very unmoved by the rain gear, bags and panniers that were on offer,” she Stokhof, who counts stylish female commuter cyclists among her clients. “They want their personal fashion to follow them while they are riding their bicycle.”
Bike shops and their employees, both male and female, need to realize no two bicycle owners are alike. By making novice and experienced riders --- regardless of gender --- feel equally welcome is important in building customer loyalty as well as improving the overall bike culture in our city.
“Society would benefit from more people cycling, and the easiest way to bring that out is to make women feel comfortable,” said Sidesaddle’s Gallagher, adding that he and co-owner Smith feel it’s important to take gender out of the equation.
There is hope. Everyone I have met feels thing are changing, albeit slowly. As interest in bicycles grows with younger generations, there is a noticeable shift from viewing bikes as toys to seeing them as a reliable means of transportation. This is most obvious on Vancouver’s bikeways, where more women can be seen riding daily.
As Smith said, “It’s an exciting time for cycling and women.”
I couldn’t agree more I am hopeful for the positive changes to come, not just for me, but for my daughter, too.
Melissa Bruntlett is a co-founder of Modacity and is inspired to live a happy life of urban mobility. Reach her at melissa@modacitylife.com.
