No kidding on the boutique shops, an expensive street in Covent Garden is super cool to pickup a bike from but running a specialised servicing department from there was clearly commercial suicide. For profligacy this was topped only by a datacentre I was asked to help decommission that was in an Art Deco building on Strand. Next to The Savoy. Overlooking Cleopatra’s Needle and the Thames.

That said, it is a shame that you can’t have specialised bicycle service shops in the centre of London. VanMoof offered a pretty good bespoke experience and my X2 has had a few issues but it’s going quite well four years in. What goes up quickly comes down quickly, I suppose.