We were lucky to catch up with Brian Lindsay recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Just over 20 years ago a couple brothers in Amsterdam made a float for the Queen’s Day Parade, which is the largest party in the city each year. Since The Netherlands is the world headquarters for the bicycle it was only natural that they incorporated bikes into the float. What they ended up with was what is now known as a Pedal Pub – the combination of a Pub and a Bike! The float was such a hit the brothers were asked by people if they could ride it in traffic on a normal weekend. That soon became every weekend and resulted in the brothers starting a manufacturing company to produce bikes for the entire globe. Their company would be called “Het Fietscafe” which translates to “The Bicycle Pub” and is still printed on all bikes they produce.
In 2012 my brother, Stephen, saw a Pedal Pub and texted me a picture of it with the comment, “We’re doing this”. We looked into it and it was a very new concept in The United States. After a lot of discussing, looking into laws and regulations we kept coming to the same answer to each and every question, “Why Not!” Nothing was leading us to a good enough reason to NOT to do it.
We drew up a business plan and plopped down our entire savings to purchase a Pedal Pub. “Het Fietscafe” was the manufacturer’s name and the last thing we had to do was come up with a name. We decided that we’d call our company “The HandleBar” as a play on words combining a bicycle Handlebar and the word “Bar”….
Even our best friends gave us strange looks when we told them what we had done. After some our discussions with friends/family we were starting to question how people would perceive our business – were we overly confident how many people would love it ? Several weeks after that it arrived in a shipping container and we got to work finishing the build adding wheels, lights, signage and branding. And we sold out for the summer within weeks; we had a hit on our hands!
Brian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Stephen and myself (Brian) went to college to earn degrees in mechanical engineering. I worked at Toyota designing car headlights and Stephen was at Rolls Royce working on Jet Engines. Our jobs were very rewarding, but we had always hoped to start our own business someday. Corporate America was wearing on us and we started to realize that the most fun we had at jobs were when we were in the service industry.
Growing up we didn’t look at the service industry like it could be a career. After ‘growing up’ we realized we wanted to make an effort to be around fun people more and thought back to our years in the service industry where the co-workers and customers were quite a bit different than engineers in an office setting. We realized that we were living for the weekend when we could be around friends family and realized not enough people were prioritizing spending time together. The HandleBar gave us an excuse to make that a focus and it was super rewarding. We really enjoyed serving people and hearing and seeing that we were the reason they were coming downtown to get together.
We consider ourselves super lucky to be a part of a business that allows us to literally surround ourselves with fun people. Our customers are usually celebrating something and even if they aren’t, everyone is happy to be listening to music and being outside with friends. Our employees work for us because they ENJOY it. We attract fun and outgoing people who literally want to be there. And we get to be outside in the best city in the country! There’s really no comparing that to your typical corporate america job!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When we started The HandleBar we were full time engineers with zero employees. I was working at Toyota, which is a Japanese company that expects workers to work well over 40hrs a week. We invested everything we had in the bank and I couldn’t afford to quit my job that had benefits and security. I also had no employees so not only were we learning how to market and run a business, but we were driving all the tours and soon learning how to hire/train them. 100+hour weeks became the norm and it honestly went on for years until I can remember we looked at what we’d accomplished – At that point we had 8 Pedal Pubs in Indianapolis, 8 in Detroit, 4 in Toledo and I remember my brother saying, “what the hell are you doing still working at Toyota…” I laughed and it was never more clear, “I need to focus on HandleBar” and shortly after quit and haven’t looked back. It seems silly, but when you’re in the middle of it, I had my head down and had spent so much effort making things efficient that it became the ONLY focus. There were a lot of sacrifices I won’t go into on what it took to build the business and definitely things I made harder than they had to be, but I couldn’t be more proud. I’ve met a lot of small business owners over the years and they seem to say the same thing; the sacrifice was worth it. I have nothing but respect for ALL of them. And it’s always fun to talk with them because we all have that shared experience of what it actually takes to build and run a business. Our parents owned a furniture store for 43years and a quote that sometimes makes me laugh that my dad once told me is, “Brian, had I known how hard it was going to be before I opened, I would have never done it. But, I’m so glad that we did”. Anything worth doing, probably won’t be easy!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Delegation! I’m an engineer and I feel like I’m pretty capable and can solve any problem if I put my mind to it. Toyota expects that mindset and rewards you for long hours where you excel at it. It’s what I was used to and I wore the hard work like a badge of honor. I was proud to have created super efficient systems that allowed our company to be lean with operations. We had grown from 1 bike in 1 city and now have 3 cities with 23 Pedal Pubs on a staff of HandleBar drivers. Our eyes were on growth and efficiency and as we grew we started to let our eye off the ball on what we enjoyed so much in the first year – Have fun! When you’re working IN the business you can’t be working ON the business.
We needed to promote from within and create a management team. Just because you can do a job doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And with that said, we needed to make sure that our expectations were in line – get 80% of the job done and move on. It won’t be perfect. We’re not engineers designing a perfect vehicle, we’re a party on wheels, we’re a small business!
We learned the hard way, but at least we learned!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.HandleBarDetroit.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/handlebardetroit/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/handlebardetroit
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-handlebar/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/handlebardet
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehandlebardetroit52
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/handlebar-detroit-detroit
- Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@handlebardetroit
Image Credits
Ty Rogers, Kat Stevenson, Brian Lindsay