PARIS, Ontario (BRAIN) — Canadian Cyclist magazine has named Canada’s top bike shops via the results of its second-annual online readers’ choice survey. In 2012, Canadian Cyclist conducted the first Best Bike Shops poll in conjunction with its long-running Canadian Cyclist of the Year survey. In order to reach a broader audience, Canadian Cyclist conducted the 2013 Best Bike Shops poll separately.
“We wanted to conduct the Best Bike Shops poll apart from the Canadian Cyclist of the Year survey because not everyone follows racing,” said Rob Jones, editor at Canadian Cyclist. “More people do engage with their local bike shop, and this is a way to acknowledge and recognize shops all across Canada.”
The survey was on the Canadian Cyclist website for one week. Participants were asked to provide the shop name, province and a short blurb detailing what they loved about their favorite shop.
Jones said that more than 1,000 votes were cast within four hours of going live. “Votes started coming in right away, and before we knew it, both retailers and consumers were tweeting and re-tweeting it,” he said. “We received 3,953 votes in just a week—nearly four times as many as the first year.”
Once the voting period ended, Jones and his team downloaded and tallied the votes, then divided the country into regions. Two winners were chosen from each of seven regions. The full list can be viewed at CanadianCyclist.com.
“We were quite pleased not just with the number of shop votes we received but the quality of what people wrote about their favorite shop,” said Jones. “People were so clearly proud and supportive of their local bike shop, and we are happy to be able to recognize these retailers who are doing such a good job.”
