‘People who make the industry’ – a conversation with Connor Mooney

This piece first appeared in the April edition of BikeBiz magazine – not subscribed? Get a free subscription to BikeBiz.

Following on from a conversation at iceBike* North, here we sit down with Connor Mooney of Cairney Cycles to talk all things bike: Riding them, fixing them, working in the industry,  developing training courses and teaching others. Connor has a story that’s not so typical and is all the more interesting for it. Here, we ask him a few quick questions to open and expand the conversation.

How do you get started in cycling? What does that look like?

I guess if I went back before I started working, I was always into bikes, loved biking, building bogies and all kinds of things, go-karts – mechanicing and working with spanners has always been kind of my thing.

I still think riding is as close to being a kid again as you can feel –  as soon as you jump on the bike, it’s a great feeling. So it’s nice to be able to go back to it in a way.

Where does ‘fixing bikes’ become a job? 

For myself, it was working with Halfords, part-time. To be honest, I never really thought about that sort of work, and yeah, I just loved it straight away – working with my hands and fixing bikes. 

Looking back, I don’t feel like there was a lot of support and training at the time. Maybe that’s where my future passion came from.

So what happens after Halfords?  How do you come to take the next step?

I was at Halfords for about five years doing various retail assistant manager roles, etc. There wasn’t a clear kind of career pathway for me there. I was doing a lot of the training at the time, and it wasn’t being given the credit I think it deserved.

I decided to go back and do my Master’s degree at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). Once I finished, I went and worked for BT Openreach for five years, doing business consultancy. During this time, I also took project management qualifications like Green Belt Six Sigma and Lean Practitioner Certification.

I never thought about it in a bike environment, but all these skills – I’m seeing them in the workshop, reducing waste, trying to think of ways to make it better as a daily working experience for staff, a better customer experience, and as a financially better-performing business.

You’ve just casually mentioned a master’s degree and a well-known project management methodology and qualification.  What was your undergraduate degree?

Business as well. So I did business as an undergraduate, and then I did a business MBA. It was 2015 when I graduated. I got straight onto BT’s graduate program. It was really good for me at the time, for that development. Over time, the role changed, and as it did, I was in a position where I could afford to take the leap into cycling again. And here we are, 10 years later, running my own cycle shop.

Can you share some insights into how you’ve been able to use your project management skills in the bike shop?

To be honest, that’s where I find this side of the work difficult – project management theory in practice. My specialty was change management, and I say that, ironically, the hardest thing about getting anything to change is the human factor in it. 

Whether it’s managing myself or managing a team, over the last year, I’ve found a lot of these different roles have been things I’ve taken on. That’s where I’m finding there are lots of ways where I’m using my time to train. 

The challenge here being, when you’re training, you’re not bringing in the revenue that you need to run the training and operate the shop. So there’s this fine balance – and  I’m sure this happens at a corporate, organisational level as well – between revenue, investment, and training, looking to get that balance right.

Tell us about Cairney Cycles. Give us a sense of who your customer is? 

I’m quite fortunate. We’ve got Clydesdale Colts and a wide variety of other cycle clubs, both road and mountain bike, pump track racers, BMXers, UCI Flatlanders that I work with. So, I have quite a good variety of customers. Experience from a variety of disciplines is important for mechanics.

I love the area we’re from, but it’s quite a poor area, so we get a lot of bread-and-butter bikes – Carrera, Apollo – all these sorts of things.  I emphasise that whatever it is, it needs regular maintenance and needs to be looked after. At any price point, it meets a need.

Now, we’re seeing customers who are racing, and they have different wants and needs. Here, we’re working to deliver high-quality at an affordable community rate. 

I’m trying to bring in the partnership model so that we’re providing young mechanics with experience working with high-end equipment and meeting customers with more performance-based needs.

My focus is that we’re giving training to the kind of younger techs so that when they go into a bike shop in an area that’s selling these sorts of products, they’ve experience with inexpensive and higher price point products. They can confidently spot a dangerous situation, be that with parts, on a frame, or in working situations.

Can you give us some insight into the training you’re developing and delivering?

I’ll start by saying I’m Velotech and Cytech trained, and in November, I spent two weeks at the UCI doing their level three mechanics course. You’re always learning. That’s the workshop skills side of things.

Now, the training that I’m developing and delivering has been created to address a different need and leads to a Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) award.

In Scotland, we don’t currently have a suitable level five award for young adults or people just coming into the trade, so what we’ve tried to do in creating an SQA award is focus on the elements that are valuable for the industry.

This is about the mechanisms which support running the business, how these elements interact, and identifying where the faults and opportunities for improvement can be found. We’re talking retailing and operational skills.

Examples include: How to identify a customer’s needs. Knowing where your skill ends and where your responsibilities lie for handing that over. Documentation. Booking a customer in – delivering a replicable, consistent in quality, experience. Processes can make for more confident staff, a happier customer, and generate more revenue when they work well.

For someone like me, who’s trying to run a bike shop and develop reliable staff, you need to know that staff understand these processes. So that’s what we’ve aimed at.

All these sorts of maybe less exciting, but 100% essential, things that I think sometimes we miss. For younger people, or someone new to the bike trade, who maybe doesn’t realise that this is also a service industry, we can make a difference for them and the business they go to work in. 

In the longer term, the aim is to bring back a Scottish apprenticeship. Here we look to bridge the gap between apprentice training and industry qualifications – Velotech and Cytech, which I believe are geared towards those who have experience working in the cycle industry. 

A significant focus for me is partnering and working with third-sector organisations and groups, providing economically disadvantaged young people with an opportunity – for us, this is more of a community-based thing, providing training,  enabling onward employment in a bike shop where they can add real value. 

The SQA qualification will complement Velotech and Cytech, as it makes a career path from beginner to master, and will allow us, in the community setting, to reduce cost, providing valuable qualifications and an affordable rate.