When someone forwarded this newspaper story to me I found it very interesting since I have been able to make business contacts while out for a training ride. The idea of a company that is so forward thinking as to offer it’s employees high end bikes for free for only 90 days of riding was just brilliant. I felt that readers of Bicycle.net would not only enjoy the read, but might try to take some of these ideas and incorporate them into their own lives.

A new way to wheel and deal

Seattleites find biking works well as a business vehicle

By ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTER

Look out, golf courses. There’s a new old-boys club in town, with tighter clothes.

A growing number of Seattle business types are shunning the links in favor of biking trails as a place to strengthen work relationships and cut deals.

“For my age, and even coming up a little bit, the golfing way of doing business seemed like something more of my dad’s era,” said Troy Nebeker, 39, co-founder of Hammerquist and Nebeker graphic design in Redmond.

“To me, cycling is more of a creative way of conducting business, whereas golf is more of a businessy, suit-and-tie way of doing business.”

He and his business partner hold meetings while biking.

“You don’t always have to be hammering to the point where you can barely talk and you can’t hear anything,” he said. “It’s a way better way to — pardon the pun — keep things rolling.”

Seattle has a subculture of businesspeople who ride bikes, and it is morphing into a way to schmooze, said Chuck Ayers, executive director of the Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle, which bills itself as the largest bike club in the country.

“Busy people are looking for a time to get their workouts in,” Ayers said. “They are not going out for the two-martini lunch anymore, they’re getting on their bikes, they’re getting physically active, and they are inviting their peers.”

Biking is a fresher way to exercise with peers than hitting the gym, which is sweatier and smellier, he said.

Employees at Seattle law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro recently got a big incentive to take up the sport. Management promised bicycles worth $3,500 to any employee who pledges to bike to work three months out of the year.

Firm managing partner and cyclist Steve Berman said he wanted to find a way to reduce the firm’s carbon footprint and encourage fitness.

Berman said he gets the bikes at cost from Ridley Bicycles for about $1,800.

So far, 35 of the firm’s 100 employees have signed up. Berman expects to hand out the bikes by May, and it will cost the firm $63,000.

The price was worth it, he said.

“As an employer, I was, like, over the moon in terms of the positive reaction that I got for this,” he said. “First, I was worried that some of my partners would think that I was wasting firm money.”

High-achieving businesswomen are pedaling their way into the niche as well.

“Everything about getting older, being in your mid-40s to 50s, to get out there and see really great, fit athletic strong women is empowering,” said Jill Donnelly, manager and buyer for Baby & Co., a high-end women’s clothing store in downtown Seattle.

Accomplished women at her age have the money to buy gear and hire private coaches, said Donnelly, 49, a triathlete who got serious about cycling three years ago.

She cycles with doctors and lawyers in her group, which she says makes sense.

“There’s a golfing type and there’s a sporty triathlete type,” Donnelly said. “You can kind of correlate competitiveness with success. You tend to get those competitive, high achievers in the sport.”

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