Our Staff | Corporate Social Responsibility

Bike It Now! has a vision of providing the highest quality bike retail, tour, hire and workshop service for those wanting to enjoy the cycling trails in the Central Otago, Southern Lakes, MacKenzie and Waitaki regions of New Zealand, as part of their next holiday or if they are lucky enough within their own surroundings.

Bike It Now! is 100% locally owned by Duncan Randall, Kathryn Fletcher (Fletch) and Lisa Joyce.

Duncan and his family relocated from Dunedin in mid 2012. Duncan is a well respected member of the Outdoor Retail Industry. He was the manager of R and R Sport in Dunedin for 11 years. He and his family have now moved to Wanaka, enabling him to oversee the setting up in June / July 2022 of our shop at Three Parks. He has a passion for retail and enjoys the time he spends with customers, whether it be discussing what type of tube to purchase or whether that Specialized Levo is really what you want.

Fletch and Lisa moved from Dunedin as well.
Lisa was working at WHK (now Findex) in IT support, she then worked for Contact Energy based at the Clyde Dam for 3 1/2 years, ensuring their IT systems where running smoothly. Lisa deals with the financial, HR and bike hire aspects of the business but is very good at turning her hand to retail and can often be found in the Clyde Workshop. Golf is her passion, however she is not getting many opportunities to play.
Fletch left her job at St Hilda’s in Dunedin where she was HOD Physical Education and Outdoor Education. She rode the Otago Central Rail Trail for the first time in 2000 – with great company, Lindsay Dey and Sir Eion Edgar. She then went on to ride it another 12 times with students. She is based at the Clyde shop and looks after the tours, drivers and marketing aspects of the business.

Bike It Now! significant dates

Late August 2013 – Clyde based Bike Hire and Cycle Tour Business purchased from Petrea and the late great Ross McRobie

Late September 2013 – Bike It Now! reopened in Clyde with full workshop and retail in an expanded location.

September 2015- Gained our first Qualmark award – Silver

September 2016 – Moved next door to a bigger space at 25 Holloway Street

February 2019 – Gained a Qualmark Gold award, the first self-guided cycle company in NZ.

July 2019 – Opened our 2nd Retail shop in Cromwell within the Mall

July 2022 – Opened our 3rd Retail shop in Wanaka at Three Parks

December 2023 – Moving our Retail shop in Cromwell to a new build at “The Gate”, 6 Barry Avenue

Our Staff

Tour department

Jan Barnie; Jan is involved in office administration and tour planning. Jan has a love of cycling and when the chance of working in the industry came along she jumped at it. Able to turn her hand to anything, Jan enjoys riding as much as possible.

Lois Mulvihill; Lois is an Itinerary Planner and is focused on putting together trips for our wide ranging clients. She enjoys the challenge of putting together very personalized itineraries. Her positive attitude fits in well. She is riding and enjoying a range of bikes

Claire Seaton: Claire joined our very experienced itinerary planning team in 2021. She has made an immediate impact with her work ethic and very very infectious laugh.

Kate Hines: Kate began working for us in December, she is our girl Friday who works on a Sunday. Her previous job running the Alexandra I site has made her a perfect fit for this role, she can turn her hand to anything.

Jeremy Hogue, Warren Lees, Dave Murray, John Haig, Stu Cameron, Andrew Hunter and Neil Heathcote all cover various driving roles. These guys just live and love Central Otago and our clients benefit from their knowledge (stories) and enjoy the great sense of humour they all possess.

Chloe Robertson / Mischa Kitto; are our high school students who come in after school during the week and on Saturdays to assist in the office with getting resources ready for our tour clients. Chloe has worked for us since year 8 and has just left us to head to Dunedin to University. She will be back during the holidays to help. We now have Mischa as her very able replacement.

Clyde Staff

Deb Attfield: Deb has been with us since May 2019, she is a Clyde local and loves riding her two bikes, one E and one Scott Genius. Her roles include; hire allocations, hire bike fittings, and developing her retail knowledge and selling skills. You can always be guaranteed to be welcomed with a big smile and hi! from Deb.

Gary Perkins: Gary has relocated from Invercargill with his wife Anne and we have been very lucky to benefit from this. He is new to the industry, but being a keen cyclist he is soaking up everything that comes his way.

Carl Waddick: Carl is a Clyde local who has joined us after a career in the motor industry. He is enjoying the chance to put all his long-term tinkering with bikes to good use. His contribution to the hire team has been instantaneous.

Hunter Stirling: Hunter has joined us from school and hopes to make a career in the bike industry. His passion is BMX.

Jack Sole, Ryker Throw and Harry McRitchie are our high school students coming in after school during the week and on Saturdays and Sunday to assist the hire and workshop teams.

Back up team; Augus Kenny and Kaleb Chapman – both fully employed but happy to step in and do the odd weekend to help us out

Cromwell Staff

Andy McDonald: Our Cromwell Shop manager, Andy joined us in June 2019 from the Otago Polytechnic (he was the tutor in the bike mechanics course) when we opened our shop in Cromwell, his longtime experience in the Cycle industry has been a huge benefit to us and to our Cromwell clients. Andy is passionate about cycling and is a big supporter of all things cycling in the area being a very active member of the Cromwell Mountain Bike Club. With living in Bannockburn, he and his family have great riding on their doorstep.

Ashton Oliver: 

Louis Harrison-Aydon :

Josh McLaughlin

Ross Wilcocks: Ross is our hire legend in Cromwell.

Gary Merkel: Gary is our other hire legend in Cromwell.

Oliver King, Hailey Petrie and Ashton Turnbull are our high school students coming in after school during the week and on Saturdays and Sunday to assist the hire and workshop teams.

Wanaka Staff

Cam Wallace: Our Wanaka Shop manager. Finding himself in Wanaka around 2019, and after working in the bike industry for a while, Cam had heard rumours that Bike It Now was coming to town. Through a stroke of luck Cam came by Duncs business card and the rest is history. Cam enjoys working in a place where he can talk about bikes and share his love with other people.

Jordan Castle: Jordy is a washed up track cyclist with passion for the outdoors and good people, and through a mixture of serendipity and stoke ended up working with the crew at Bike it Now!

Steve Earl: Harking from the UK, Steve has found himself in Wanaka with his wife Lou, and 2 dogs. He’s relocated from Nelson, after working for R&R / Torpedo7 since ages ago, and his love for bikes has bought him to us!

Simon MacFarlane: Too many bikes? Four children? An ex-engineer? Two of everything? Simon is a wealth of knowledge about most things bike related. Simon came to work at Bike It Now! after he was introduced to us through our Specialized Rep. James.

Jemma Manchester:

Zac Randall:

Mark Horrocks: Mark is in it for the love. Draughtsman by day, and Bike Enthusiast by night. He bought his first mountain year 30 years ago has been loving it ever since. Mark needed something to break up the draughting work and rekindled his passion for bikes at Bike It Now!

Garth Milicich:

Hannah Randall: Hannah brings energy and enthusiasm to the shop and is a connoisseur of liquid grapes. Hannah has been involved with Bike It Now! since forever ago as Duncan’s fairer half and helps keep Dunc in line.

Emily; come in at weekends, school holidays and after school to assist the team. Emily has been working for Bike It Now! after school and in the weekends. Her enthusiasm for anything bike related knows no bounds. Emily has been known to pedal from Luggate to the summit of Bike Glendhu, which is a huge mission!

So this is a little bit about all of us, please feel free to call us 0800 245366 NZ Freephone, 034492228, 1800 446356 Aus Freephone or call by our bike shops that have everything. We are located at 25 Holloway St, Clyde,  6 Barry Ave in Cromwell and Three Parks, Wanaka.

Bike It Now! Corporate Social Responsibility

We have always been very aware that our business is part of a very vibrant community and one that we want to give back to. The three of us who own the business all live in Clyde and we are all actively involved in the community. We want people to be proud of the job we have done and will continue to do.

Qualmark Gold Sustainable Tourism Business Award since February 2019

This means; A Gold Award recognises the best sustainable tourism businesses in New Zealand, with the delivery of exceptional customer experiences an integral part of everything they do. A Gold Sustainable Tourism Award identifies those businesses leading the way in making the New Zealand tourism industry a world class sustainable visitor destination.

We are also signatures to the Tourism Industry Association – Sustainability Commitment

Details around what we do;

Waste and Recycling:

We have a very effective recycling programme in our shop and we have worked with Wastebusters (The leading exponent of recycling in the Queenstown Lakes / Central Otago region) on this for the last 9 years. With the Alexandra facility closing in June 2023, we are sourcing new providers – all to be revealed at a later stage.

Initially, our recycling was just bike boxes, now we have recycling for all cardboard, plastics and glass. 

 We have made our recycling centres available to all our neighbouring businesses, as they do not have CODC bins.  We only use the CODC collection for rubbish, no recycling goes into their yellow and blue bins as they cannot guarantee it will not end up in Landfill.

Our metal eg chains, cassettes, old bike frames and wheels go to Dunstan Automotive, which is regularly picked up by Southern Metals a Dunedin Company. With Rubbish we are unable to recycle, we have a skip that again all our neighbouring businesses use and we pay for the hire and emptying.

One of the biggest issues in Bike Shops is old tyres and tubes. We have a wheelie bin full of used tubes, as we are regularly asked by local clients for used tubes, as they are great for staking trees and shrubs, also farm gates.  We did have an arrangement with a customer to take the tyres to be used on a tool called a Slammer Tool but this has stopped. At this stage they go to rubbish.

We had a thorough Waste Audit completed which was offered by REAP to businesses in the Alexandra / Cromwell area. The Community Sustainability coordinator completed this. We received a detailed report on what we are doing well and what we could do better, also some great ideas re what we could do – the metal going across to Dunstan Automotive was one of the results of this.

Another outcome of the audit was our move to all staff having their own keep cups, after discovering single use cups are in fact unable to be recycled.

We have operated a Worm farm that our surrounding businesses contribute too.  The by-products of the worm farm are available for everyone to use on their gardens.

We provided funding to enable Clyde primary school to do native plantings at the beginning of the Clyde Alexandra Anniversary trail (very well used by Cyclist’s local and visiting Rail Trailers).

As a continuation of this project, the Clyde Primary Schools environ school group made and delivered donation boxes to encourage donations from visitors to our area and trails for more plantings to reduce Carbon footprints.

We have worked with Dunstan Automotive to provide a brand new trailer to the local Native Plant Nursery run by the HaeHaeta Natural Heritage Trust.  We had meeting late 2019 with one of the Trustees and asked what we could do to assist and they said the problem was not having their own trailer and always borrowing one. After a meeting with Butch and Mandy from Dunstan Automotive, we had a plan. A trailer was built and delivered to the Trust.

We are also donating annually $1000 to the HaeHaeta Natural Heritage Trust for their ongoing costs and purchasing of new seedlings for the Nursery.

We hope in 2023 to begin a major project in Clyde with HaeHaeta Natural Heritage Trust coordinating it, again all revealed over the next few months

Clyde Primary School came to us for advice when they decided it was time for their own bike trailer. We worked with them, based on one of our current trailer designs and liaised between the school and the supplier.  This trailer is utilised by other schools and community based groups as well.

In our Workshops

In both our Clyde and Wanaka workshops we have Ecosafe Parts cleaners  serviced by Alsco. These provide our clients with the best possible product and one that is using biodegradable cleaning fluids and very safe to use – also the bike parts nameless cassettes and chains come up looking like brand new. We are one of the few cycle businesses in NZ with these.

We use products in both workshops that are biodegradable.  We also try to encourage all our clients to use biodegradable products particularly from the Muck Off brand.

Educational

For the last 4 years, we have worked with the “Journeys” programme; this is a programme set up to offer opportunities to young girls in our area to develop their confidence and leadership skills in an Outdoor context. We have provided the bikes for their cycling activities, a range of cycling apparel; and also a van and trailer to enable ease of transport, when required.

We provide our overseas clients with safety notes in four different languages; Dutch, German, Spanish and French

We have provided cycle maintenance courses at various levels at both our Clyde and Cromwell store also some pre event preparation

We provide our locals and tour clients with information around Cycle tour opportunities on other NZ Cycle Trails. We are part of a group of  Cycle Operators based in Clyde, Twizel, Christchurch, Greymouth, Nelson, Mapua and Napier who cover 8 different trails, so we are able to provide information and great deals.

We have also given our local clients the opportunity to hear from experts about Overseas Cycle Tours, arranging for them to present to them at the local bowling club – excellent venue and great supper afterwards. In 2020 this was Escape Adventures from Nelson. We hope with Covid in tghe rear window we can look at further opportunities in this area going into late 2023 and 2024.

We have employed Secondary school students since we started our business. This has been in the Bike shops and in our Cycle Tour area.  We have seen these students have grown in confidence and develop great skills.  One of our current mechanics had started working for us after school and is now full time. Even though some have taken different paths now, they always consider themselves part of the Bike It Now! team and call in regularly when they are home.

During the present Covid-19 situation our mechanics and retail staff have engaged fully in online training, including; Trek University, Sram, Shimano and SBCU (Specialized).

Our tour staff regularly watch webinars to upskill on software we are using Tourwriter (NZ developed product). All Tour staff spend at least 3 days in August and September each year visiting our accommodation providers to ensure we are up to date with changes and also have an opportunity to check-in on how the season has gone and discussions re the following season.

We gain feedback from clients by a variety of formats online and offline, we send a personalised email to every tour client asking for feedback either via email or via several online platforms including TripAdvisor, Google and the various Cycle trail surveys we also ask for feedback to be sent to DOC via  link as well. 

Bouquets

With taking part in the Waste Audit completed by the “Community Sustainability Facilitators” we went into a draw for a Worm Farm and we won!

We provide all tour clients with a Bike It Now! drink bottle which is NZ designed and manufactured by Sistema.

Sponsorship (Locally and Regionally)

Naseby 12 Hour Endurance Event
We have been the major sponsor for the last 5 years and will continue this.

Otago Cancer Society – for the last 5 years we have combined with “Olivers Lodge and Stables” to provide a weekends accommodation and cycling trip as an auction prize at their annual fundraising Ball

NZ Mountain Film and Book festival (Sponsor since 2017)
In the Book section we are the major sponsor of the Mountain and adventure heritage Award. Check out the previous winners.

Homework books for; Clyde, Omakau, Poolburn and Millers Flat Schools

Skool loop App: Clyde, Millers Flat

Clyde / Earnsclugh Rugby Club

Clyde Golf Club

Clyde Theatre Group

Cromwell Primary School Fair

Dunstan High School Rugby

Individuals; Fletcher Sharman, Jack King, 

FINALLY – Something a little different

Every year for the past 6 years we have supported the Lifeline Trust in Sydney and have provided an OCRT trip as an auction item for their annual Black Tie Sapphire Ball. You are asking your selves why Australia. Well it all came down to a wonderful couple completing the OCRT with us in 2016 and them wanting the opportunity for others to experience it but also use it as a fundraiser for a very worthwhile cause. We have had same accommodation providers working with us every year, so thanks to; Dunstan House, Pitches Store, Marchburn Country Lodge, Tussock Lodge,  The Waipiata Country Hotel and Dunedin Railways.