Sunnyside Bicycles

My name is John McCracken, I'm the owner of Sunnyside Bicycles here in Fresno. Sunnyside isn't your ordinary bike shop. We lead rides throughout the month to encourage people to get on their bikes more. We teach clinics to help empower people to fix flats or small mechanicals so they can have this independence to be able to go out and ride more. What it comes down to is we believe in people, we believe in bikes, and we believe in community. And we do all things, we keep that in mind. I grew up riding motorcycles and BMX bikes, so once I got into high school my mother opened a bicycle shop and sang it real small. It was about 600 square feet, we had about a dozen bikes in stock and me and my mom ran the shop. As soon as I graduated we closed and I went on and did other stuff. I became a welder and then a salesman selling motorcycles and then one day me and my wife were out on a drive and talked about 10 years from now, what are we going to do 10 years from now? Well, something that made me and my mom real close that we got to work together with was owning a bike shop. It was a lot of fun, it's a great experience. I get to work with my hands so I can stay active, get to work with a lot of people and it's a fun job. She thought, yeah, that sounds cool. We sold a lot of stuff, just cashed out, borrowed money from mom and dad and everybody else that would lend us a buck and got a little bit of money from a bank and bought us a store. I ran it by myself for about a year and then Vanessa came on and we've been working side by side, partner since and it's been the coolest thing that's ever happened. Facebook is our strongest media that we use. We have a real strong Facebook presence. Of course, we also do Instagram Pinterest and also calling up and getting on our mailing list. We send out a monthly newsletter that kind of goes over stuff we're doing, not just the rides we're doing but rides locally. So any kind of a bike event we try to put out there. Our n We just recently switched to Saturdays because we're closed on Sundays and Mondays now but on the Sundays, we get close to 100. Now we're settling in about 50 to 75 people. It's the first Saturday of every month. We leave at 9 a. m. We're not just selling bikes, we're selling an experience and we provide bikes to help you live that experience. A bicycle shop isn'the most lucrative business you can choose but it's one full of joy. When these people come in, it's just them coming in the first time and us possibly selling the bike to them or product or whatever they need is just the introduction. We get to go through the whole program. We've had the people come in and got that beach cruiser to ride around with their family that got that road bike to start doing their charity rides, that started racing their bikes and we got to live the whole experience. From day one when they first came in and said, I want to try this out. I'm not sure if I can. I can't believe I did that. I want to try this. I can't believe that. Now I'm going to try this. And then their whole life changes, how they carry themselves. It truly builds their self-esteem. And we've seen it time and time again. We've been doing it for 14 years now. So it'something that we can't, We're in the business of encouraging people and helping people.