Working within cycling

How about operating a bike wash? The local shop charges £15. Providing you do a lube and shine job I'm sure you could pick up work. Our club has at least 20 out on a Saturday, increasing to 30 or 40 in spring, road and mountain bike. A sound garage, a farm barn or an outhouse behind commercial premises would do as a base.
You build up clientele as you go along. Custom would come from word of mouth testimonials. I know there's a recession on but I see plenty of big cars with Thule racks and two grand bikes on them parked outside the shop. The club's full of professional business people too, most of them accustomed to spending a fortune on gear and likely to be comfortable with spending £15 a week for a bespoke service. All they would ask is that the bike's clean and ready for the following weekend's cycle.

Given that I still am unable to ride due to injury (yes, still! for those that know me) this is something I keep thinking on.

I'd love to be involved with cycling right now.

Ideal world choice would be my own bike company. I have the name, model range, etc all in my head already!

you could try looking at www.bikebiz.com it is the bike trade magazine, there is a job section on the site.

Something that strikes me about cycling is the number of smaller outfits. Most of the bike shops are independents, I've just seen a bike fitter who is a one-man band, in the past I've seen a sports therapist that was a two-person family business. So I guess I'm saying that employment with a company is maybe less likely.

However, I think there is definitely space in the market to make yourself a go-to person. Maybe learn about bike fitting? Train in sports massage? Breakdown recovery? How about advertising yourself as a cost-effective support vehicle for group rides? Charge, for example, 10 people a tenner each to be at pre-determined points on a big ride with drinks/spares/food etc. Combine several of these skills to maintain a rider profile for each customer that documents their spec, position, kit preferences, riding style, routes etc, then charge a monthly subscription fee to keep them riding happily in the knowledge they can turn to you for help/advice/maintenance/massage etc.

I used to work in motor racing as a fitter for a tyre company.
This involved extensive UK and world travel to circuits throughout the year.
My only qualification at the time was an HGV license.
Not sure how tyre companies work within bike racing but it could be a good avenue to look into becuase if it's like motor racing you get to attend many different types of racing not just e.g. formula 1 if you are a F1 team fitter.

The other option is of course working as something for a bike racing team.

+1 on that 25years for me (not a one-upmanship thing). I would love to get into the industry, even as a spanner monkey or frame builder as I have a mechanical background, but as yet the response’s I have received have only ever been “No” or “Not yet”. I am not disheartened and will keep going at it but any insider info would always nice.