CINCINNATI -- In January 2012, downtown Cincinnati resident Jack Heekin created Pedal Wagon, a business that tours up to 15 passengers on a large bicycle they all pedal.
He started with one wagon, but now has eight in Cincinnati and another five in Columbus. He usually does 60 tours on Fridays and Saturdays, plus 20 during the week, he said.
Such success usually breeds competition. Heekin doesn’t know of any similar businesses in Cincinnati, he said, but that’s about to change with the Sept. 1 opening of Chainging Gears, another multi-passenger party bike tour business.
How does it work?
Interested riders can book a tour online at the Chainging Gears website. Each tour costs $27 per adult Sunday through Thursday, $29 on Friday and Saturday, plus a 3.49 percent booking fee.
Tours leave from the Parkhouse Garage at 1123 Sycamore St. Each bicycle has 15 seats arranged in an oval, so that riders face each other, in order to facilitate conversation.
Each tour comes with a driver, who steers the bike and turns on an electric motor if needed, and a tour guide. Passengers supply the pedal power for the tour, which will last about two hours.
Who are the owners?
Sarah Lark owns Chainging Gears with her brother. Photo provided
Sarah Lark and Steve Poynter, siblings from Somerset, Kentucky. Lark lives in Indianapolis, while Poynter has a home in Batavia.
They’ve been in the real estate business together since 2009 as SLP Association LLC, and Lark also works in the aerospace industry.
They enjoy dealing with people, Lark said, and thought the bike tour business would provide a good avenue for that. They settled on Cincinnati as a starting point for their business because it had a large enough population and many attractions they could showcase, Poynter said.
Steve Poynter grew up in Somerset, Kentucky, and has a home in Batavia. Photo provided
They began kicking the idea around about a year ago, Lark said, and began creating the business in earnest in February.
“We usually work pretty quickly,” she added.
Do they have investors?
Only themselves, and they’ve invested more than $100,000, Lark said. That includes the cost of two touring bicycles, she said, which generally retail for $30,000 to $70,000 apiece, depending on the options installed.
Any employees?
Three full-time and five part-time, with plans to hire an additional three.
How will they differentiate their business from the competition?
By offering a wider variety of tours, Lark said, not just pub crawls. The 15 described on the website include:
- Arts/crafts tours, intended primarily for children, with three stops and fun projects to make;
- Physical endurance tours over steeper terrain, which would use no motor assist except in cases of emergency;
- The Chainging Gears Idol Tour, with a sing-a-long to favorite songs.
The Pedal Wagon’s website lists six tours, three seasonal and three year-round. The three year-rounders involve exploring downtown, Over-the-Rhine or both. The Tavern Cruise features “beer on board” and stops at local taverns.
Who takes these tours?
Most of the Pedal Wagon riders don’t live Downtown, Heekin said, and want to see and experience it. Many of them are tourists, he said, but he also gets lots of repeat business from corporations that use a tour as a team-building exercise.
Some families take a tour as an annual event to get loved ones together from other cities, he said.
Chainging Gears hopes to broaden the appeal, including by taking schoolchildren on field trips for educational tours, with stops at local museums.
What’s next?
For Chainging Gears, the plan is to sell franchises. Ideally, the owners would like to see one open in a new city every year, Lark said.
For the Pedal Wagon, Heekin hopes to start doing tours in Northern Kentucky within the next few months.
Is there other competition?
Yes, from tours on which everyone rides his or her own individual bicycle. Those include Cycling Backroads, which offers a two-hour, guided, OTR tour for $30 and a 90-minute Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum tour for $15.
It’s the second year for the tours, owner Tony Blizniak said. The business began four years ago with cycling events such as a moonlight bicycle ride on Friday nights.
This year has been problematic because we’ve had so much rain, he said, and the tours don’t run in the rain.
