The bike swap celebrated its first anniversary successfully and it can get even better next time.
I think there is a lot of pent-up demand for bikes. We had a lot of people come around expecting to see a lot of bikes for sale, but we just didn't get enough sellers! I know they are out there, the items for sale on the Toronto craigslist is huge.
Yesterday was Earth Day and I spent a good 12 hours of it co-organizing the Bike Swap for the Community Bicycle Network along with Steve of the U of T BikeChain and a bunch of great volunteers - all interested in helping out with the small details of bikes and trading them. We also had our local Bike Pirates volunteer their time.
The swap is organized around exchanging money for bikes, not so much trading a bike for a bike. We take a 15% consignment fee for our troubles of connecting buyers and sellers.
The whole bike swap is great because it meets two essential missions of the cycling community, it raises some money to do cycling education and advocacy, and it helps connect people with new bikes. It's a win-win.
Mountain Equipment Co-op was very helpful with giving us the space next to their Gear Swap (a very popular camping gear swap). It generates a lot of traffic for us.
An interesting observation is the value people place on their goods. It's harder to sell the high-end quality goods because there are less people out there who value a chrome plated, Italian hub like some of the sellers. Some people price their bikes according to what they paid for them; a reasonable demand. But once things show up at the swap the presentation is just not such that people value them as much.
We had a couple sellers who just wanted to off-load their bikes so they ended up pricing them very cheap, and donating the money to CBN.
In the end we make money, but certainly not an extortionate amount, especially considering that we have to rely on volunteers completely.
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