The Motolegends shop. Open All Hours. Again

This video is going out on the afternoon of Sunday, 14th. June. And that’s largely because tomorrow, Monday, we’ll be opening our doors to customers again after a break of some 12 weeks. Now that might seem like a cause for celebration, and in some ways it is. We are genuinely looking forward to meeting up with some of our old friends. And to making new ones.

But we are also really concerned. You see, to us it’s this business is all about service. Much of the gear we sell you can buy elsewhere. But a lot of people still decide to buy from Motolegends, often knowing that we’re not always the cheapest option, because they value our advice, the lengths we go to to make stuff fit, and so on. The problem is that, in this brave new world, we’re not sure we can provide the kind of service we used to.

In the old days, there could be 10 or more customers in the store. You might have to wait until one of us became free, but whilst you waited you got to chat with other bikers, drink the finest, Italian Illy coffee or proper Yorkshire tea served in a proper teapot. And if you were really lucky you’d be able to snack on one of Sean’s mum’s delicious, shortbread biscuits.

We’d like to still operate like that, but we simply don’t believe that, for now, we can. We can’t have more than 3 or 4 customers in a shop like ours, and if we spent as long serving people as we used to, we’d simply upset too many people; namely those waiting outside until someone left, so that they could come in.

For us, it’s going to be a balancing act. We still want to provide an excellent service to those we meet face to face, but giving a great service also means not letting down everyone outside, because they too need or want our advice.

Our concerns here are not short-term, financial ones. It’s not for us about getting as many bodies through the turnstiles as we can. It’s about doing the right thing by as many people as possible. We are going to have to learn how to adapt, and to do things differently. But our customers are also, I suggest, going to have to adopt a different mindset too. Now is not the time, in our view, to go into a shop merely to browse or to do some research. Nobody is going to stop you doing this, but it’s only fair on everybody if you’re a bit more focussed when you visit a motorcycle shop than you might have been in the past. By that we mean being fair to other customers. But also to us, because we really, really don’t want to upset those people outside awaiting their turn.

This was a very difficult video for us to make. We are all feeling our way through this situation, and none of us knows what the future holds. We explain our views and thoughts as well as we can, but we know we will invite the retort by some: ‘so you’re saying you don’t want us to come to your shop’. Of course, like every retailer in these straightened times we really want people to come and see us, but everybody needs to understand that it will be different.

In the video, we also talk about the measures we have taken, as well as the measures that we haven’t taken, because we’re not a supermarket, and we’re simply not going to treat our customers like children. The bottom line is that we are attempting to manage everybody’s expectations. Not everybody is going to be happy with how things have changed; how shops and shopping have changed. But we are not the reason for the change; we are merely one more symptom of this new normal, as it is being termed. We are going to do our best to keep as many people as happy as we can. But, yes, if you are not prepared to wait around, and if you’re going to be upset that the world is not as it used to be, then you may be best advised to stay at home, order on the internet perhaps, and wait until things become even more normal!

We hope you enjoy the video. The beginning bit was fun to shoot, but don’t miss the last scene either.