Hi everyone, JUS here.
Ah, this feeling... it’s been a while.
Straight to the point: today I’m going to write about the time I bought my first Surly Cross-Check.
I bought that first Cross-Check six months before I joined Circles, back when I was still just a customer who frequented the shop. That was seven years ago. I believe it was right after Circles moved to its current location.
Back then, I had only just started using Facebook, and it wasn’t an era where the latest information was uploaded to social media for everything. There was no Instagram, either.
It was still a time when you had to fumble around to gather information.
In those days, magazines were still everything to me when it came to research.
I remember buying up every single bicycle magazine and book I could find. Among them, it was a magazine like this that pierced my heart instantly.
"PEDAL SPEED," published on May 20, 2011. The shop featured in this magazine was "Circles." I learned from this feature that there was an amazing place just 10 minutes by bike from my parents' house...
I decided, "I want a Surly bike!" and it wasn't long before I opened those red side doors—the same corporate color they use today—for the first time.
As a side note, even looking back at this magazine now, every article is so interesting and moving. (And I don't mean things like: "Tomoyan is so young!" "Gishi-kun hasn't changed!" or "Yanack, are you still wearing that sweatshirt? Haha.")
When I think about how our boss already had a vision of "now" back then and was building his image toward it, it goes beyond amazing—it’s actually kind of scary.
Anyway, that was a long intro, let’s get back to the story.
When I bought my first Surly, how much of a final image did I have in mind? Practically zero. I only had the knowledge from my research that it could take fat tires and be built as a single-speed, that a Chris King headset was the way to go, and that I wanted to try drop bars. That was it.
I was completely ignorant otherwise. So, the way I ordered it from the staff member at the time was: "I’d like a Surly Cross-Check. Drop bars, fat tires, single-speed. And I don’t really know what else, so I’ll leave it up to you. Oh, and my budget is 200,000 yen—can you build it with that?"
Then, the staff member replied, "Oh, sounds good!! We can do that. Do you have some time? Hang on a second."
Parts were lined up on the counter one after another. Then, as he tapped away on his computer, an estimate was completed before I knew it.
"How about something like this?" he asked, showing me the list and carefully explaining each part one by one.
I had no idea that buying a bike could be that exciting, and needless to say, the Cross-Check that was completed was far beyond what I had imagined.
Seven years have passed since then, and now I’m the one standing on the inside of the counter, just like that day.
When a customer tells me to "leave it up to you!" I don't say it out loud, but just like that staff member who helped me (some of you might know who I mean, haha), I’m shouting the same thing in my heart: "Oh, sounds good!! We can do that. Do you have some time? Hang on a second."
If you want a bike but don't know what to do, or if you want to build a bike by picking parts one by one from the frame up—please, feel free to talk to any of the Circles staff in the shop. Just tell us, "Leave it up to you!"
To us as the Circles crew, "Leave it up to you!" is a magic phrase. We always do our best, but this gives us some mysterious power that makes us want to work even harder.
We are standing in the shop today carrying on the same pride we’ve had since our founding, in hopes that we can provide that same excitement I felt back when I was a customer to as many people as possible.
JUS on the day I picked up my Surly Cross-Check 7 years ago (from Facebook)