The second annual Calgary Bike Swap is coming up the first weekend in May.
The 2012 Calgary Bike Swap is happening on Saturday May 5th at the Shouldice Arena (1515 Home Road NW). This is the place to safely sell your old bike and to buy a bike. Sellers check their bikes in with Calgary Bike Swap volunteers who look after the rest. The goal is to have all bikes in the Swap able to be safely ridden away, so they are all tech checked for safety. Sellers pay a rack fee to get into the event and then a percentage when their bike sells. Bikes are taken in from 8:00 AM-12:00 PM. The Swap runs from 12:30 – 4:00 PM. A change this year is a $2 admission for adults, while kids 12 and under are free.
Space for relevant community organizations is still available. Tables for selling cycling based goods are almost completely booked.
The Calgary Bike Swap is presented by the non-profit, Alberta Bike Swap Ltd., where 50% of the proceeds go to support cycling based initiatives in transportation, health, and recreation.
I went..
Submitted by Scott on
I went for the first time and luckily found a bike. I was about 40 deep in the line and had been waiting over an hour in it for that spot. So... warning... if you come late... not much left. Within 15 minutes the place was cleaned out of anything of quality. My beef with this setup was that you ran around, if you found a bike you were interested in you usually waited while someone else was looking at it and hoped that they changed their minds. If they didnt, you ran around looking for another and again, you waited while someone was looking at it first and again, you hoped they didnt buy it. Many people didnt get lucky and many people took the first decent bike they could get a grip on rather than the one that was right for them.
If I could suggest... you let 20 people in at a time and once 10 leave, you let in another 20, and so forth. This allows a "chance" for the people who came first and suffered the lineup wait to possibly get a bike that is right for them rather than grabbing what they could get a hold of.
Just my 3 cents.
Great idea
Submitted by winterrider on
I was there last year as well and I know exactly what you mean. Limiting the number of people in there at once is a great idea.
Great input, thanks
Submitted by calgarybikeswap on
Those are very valid points, and we really appreciate your input. To keep it fair, and by only letting in 10-20 at a time, we just hope people don’t leave the line-up. To keep it fair, and by only letting 20 people in, how long does a person get to shop? We heard a lot of people left the line-up because it wasn’t moving fast enough.
With a couple thousand buyers - how do we get more quality bikes? We’ve gone to nearly every bike store in Calgary again, and asked them to participate. We gave all bike stores the same deal, any person who has spent $100 at their store, that person gets to sell their bike at a discount at the swap.
We can’t guarantee the number of bikes or the weather. Since we funded the event out of pocket, we want to do right and make it a positive event for everybody.
Alberta bike swap, ltd.
Submitted by calgarybikeswap on
We were asked to put a swap on in Edmonton and Lethbridge too, still funded out of pocket and with volunteers. We just returned from Edmonton, and the cool thing was how the bike shops all jumped on board. Every single shop put up our poster, tweeted out the event, then looked around for bikes to put into the swap. It was an eye opener to see how biking is supported in Edmonton. The City of Edmonton Marketing department, Waste Stream management, and Parks are all helping us put on the swap in Edmonton. Their police department is pretty cool too, not that we ended up behind bars, but they were keen to see the swap too. If anyone knows of City of Calgary staff who can help us promote the event, this would be healthy competition.
bike swap
Submitted by 2wheeler on
The reason there aren't more "quality bikes" is because the cost of selling increases with the value of the bike. If I bring a $1000 bike to the sale the charge is $160, for $2000 bike the cost is $ 310. Not for profit or not, that's pretty steep. I'd like to see a ceiling on the commission, like $40 or $50.
I got there late last year so
Submitted by winterrider on
I got there late last year so I don't know what the initial selection was like. But when I did get there there were still plenty of nice bikes (although only 1 that met my needs), and I saw a handful of high end triathlon bikes in the corner with a few people looking them over.
Although it would be great for the seller to get lots of dough, I don't think the commission structure limited the amount of bikes available.