It has been a year since the conversations began with draisin GmbH. Today in America you can test ride a draisin trike. Today in America you can purchase a draisin trike. Today you can take that trike home. That's progress, but there is oh so much more to do.
My business for the last nine and one half years has been bikes@vienna, LLC. The business is a small, speciality bike/trike store in Vienna, VA. Vienna is a town that works hard to have a small community feel. It is thirteen miles from Washington, DC....our nation's Capital. The store is located on an alley in what was an old garage for painting commercial trucks. It is just a block and one half from the Washington & Old Dominion Trail which is a forty-four mile long paved trail stretching from all most the Potomac River to almost the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The store is in the midst of bad influences....Yaz Bakery next door produces Iranian bake goods and with that comes wonderful aromas......Great Harvest Bread sells bread, cookies, and granola........Nielsen's Frozen Custard provides the richest tasting custards that you can imagine. There are calories galore.
My customers know about these bad influences and many times bikes@vienna is the turnaround point on the rides they take. Let's ride to bikes@vienna and have some ____________ from ____________ while we're there. It has that small town feel and I like that.
Over fifty-five percent of my bike/trike sales are recumbents. I have products from more than ten recumbent manufacturers. Many times I have people visit the store or communicate by phone or email trying to locate the right equipment to allow them to ride a bike or trike. The internet has become a valuable tool in those searches and so I get messages from across this country.
It was the "right" moment when I was contacted by draisin GmbH last year. I had been helping several customers try to solve challenges. I had searched for solutions using the internet. I had found that there was a gap in the products available in the United States.
Further research showed me that draisin had trikes that met many of the needs I was encountering. I traveled to Germany in February to visit draisin. The products were impressive and the people of draisin were even more impressive. I was sold.
Importing products from Europe is not a quick process. It was June before the container of draisin trikes arrived in Vienna.
