It certainly has been a very surreal year for us all & we have all watched our lives change dramatically over the past few months.

We have seen our streets silenced & our shops, bars & restaurants shuttered. We have seen our incredible & resilient NHS support us all as a nation & we have all played our part, in whatever way we have been able, to stop the spread of the catastrophic coronavirus.

Like may businesses we have gone through a kaleidoscope of emotions of the past few months & we would like to share how that has felt for us from the inside.

mono motorcycles came in to 2020 in the wake of not only a general election, but also in the wake of Brexit. It was an uncertain time for many businesses, with many questions being asked about the British economic future.

Having weathered this political storm, we set ourselves on course with our business plan & our aims for 2020. Our main goal for this year was to continue to build our customer base & to promote the motorcycle wiring & electrical side of the business.

As we watched the rest of the world start to deal with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid19), we began to wonder if & when it would catch up with the UK. By the time we held our March Open Morning on the 15^th March, Government directives had already got us repeatedly washing our hands, keeping our distance & touching elbows if we wished to ‘shake’ hands (much to everyone’s mirth)

However, as a business we had already begun to see the tell-tale signs that something was not right.

Whereby when we usually come into March, we are booking between 4-6 weeks ahead with a lot of seasonal servicing work, this year we noted that the phone slowly stopped ringing. In the 3 weeks leading up to lockdown, the phone calls had all but stopped.

As a couple & a business partnership, we had spoken about the global situation & both of us were very mindful when on the 11^th March the World Health Organisation declared that Covid19 was a pandemic. Having never seen anything like this in our lifetime, we were, as was everyone, uncertain what it meant for us. One thing we were certain of, having observed the behaviours of other countries, was that a lockdown was inevitable.

Knowing that the lockdown was coming, we made the very difficult decision to freeze our diary on the 16^th March.

We had to contact all our customers & advise them that in light of the situation & that we did not know what was going to happen next; we would have to freeze their appointments until such time as we were certain our business could continue to stay open. We moved the office & as many tools & projects as we could to our home, converted our dining room into an office/workshop & awaited the news.

On Friday 20^th March the Government shut the pubs & restaurants & by Monday 23^rd March the UK was in lockdown.

For that first week, we simply had no idea what was going to happen to us or what was going to happen to mono motorcycles. We spent days in a daze, not knowing what to do with ourselves. Everything we had worked so hard for, looked like it was going to be lost.

We listened to the Chancellor as he laid out the furlough scheme & the small business grants. We hastily did our homework & thankfully discovered we were eligible for the first wave of SME grants. We also checked the list of businesses permitted to remain open & as garages were one of them, we made the decision to move back to the workshop. As we both live together & work together, we were able to travel safely to & from work, without having any contact with anyone else.

Daniel had got a few projects over hanging from before the lockdown, so he initially continued to work on those. However, as only essential travel was permitted, we still had very few phone calls.

We needed to adapt.

Therefore, first we began by slowly contacting our previous customers & asked them if they wanted their motorcycles booked back in.

We offered a free collection service to anyone within a 10 mile radius & created strict Covid19 protection protocols for our customers & for ourselves. Motorcycles were cleaned with antibacterial agents when collected or taken into the workshop & when returned. We both wore/wear different gloves for every transaction & ensured there was no face to face contact with customers. Slowly, but surely, some of our customers agreed to have their motorcycles collected & we tip-toed through the first few weeks of the lockdown.

As we developed better Covid19 secure strategies & tentatively shared social media posts, customers rang & enquiries turned to more bookings.

During this time we had some very unique ways which people managed to get their motorcycles to us for works to be completed & not always an entire motorcycle.

One job was a set of Virago carbs which were sent to us in the post to be cleaned & rebuilt. We had an entire non-starter Honda shipped to us via courier from Horsham, as the owner did not want it to go anywhere else & we had one of the Malanca scooters sent in boxes via courier from Leicestershire.

We have seen a wide variety of work come into the mono motorcycles workshop these past few months. Some motorcycles which were left with us as non-starters, some projects which were with us before lockdown, huge wiring projects & service work for those using their motorcycles as their only form of transport.

One of the largest group of enquiries we have had over the past few months, has been for wiring, electrical works or motogadget – exactly how we had planned to move the business forward, before the lockdown.

To help support our customers & friends we created a series of social media competitions, built ultimate film lists, added downloadable word searches to our website & regularly went live on our Facebook page to remain in contact with our customers & followers.

On Sunday 26^th April we held our first virtual Breakfast Club. We set up our table in the workshop, Daniel cooked himself some eggs & we had an opportunity to reach out to people, engage with them & say hello. It was a resounding success & it was so wonderful to see so many make contact with us.

Sprocket has been incredible throughout the CV19 crisis & has been a wonderful distraction for us both. He is such a fun & loving dog & brings us such joy & as he hurtles towards his first birthday; we are so very glad he is in our life.

 

We are now booking into August 2020, with a full diary. However, we are not complacent. We know that the pandemic is not over & we have no idea how (in the absence of a global vaccine) Covid19 will behave as we go forward. Nevertheless, we continue to talk to each other, we continue to create strategies to strengthen mono motorcycles from the inside & in doing so; we can continue to provide the excellent level of service & customer service we have become known for.

We know that mono motorcycles is nothing without the support of our incredible customers, our fantastic friends & our loving families. The support we have felt these past few months has been incredibly humbling & we have gathered some real ‘mono motorcycles champion’s’. Some people have promoted & spoken about mono motorcycles in biking circles & amongst their contacts repeatedly to help get us seen & heard & for this we are enormously grateful & thankful.

 

The Covid19 crisis continues to teach us valuable lessons every day. We learn to adapt, to change, to challenge ourselves, to survive & thrive. We are both working hard to ensure 100% customer satisfaction & to support those who need us. We work tirelessly to ensure our customer support & customer service is second to none & we continue to review how we can be better every day.

mono motorcycles is not only our livelihood, it is our blood, sweat, tears & our passion & we are so very grateful to have so many people supporting us & joining us on this incredible journey.

Thank you everyone, thank you all of you for being our champions. All the very best Daniel & Katy & Sprocket too!

 

For all your motorcycling needs, please contact Daniel or Katy on T; 01243 576 212 / 07899 654446 or contact us through our contact page.