By spending the day with the Lang Toun Cycles Team, we learnt about the history and growth of the social enterprise. This was a key outcome from the exchange. We were able to discuss pricing strategies for products and services and also the scope for introducing new products to our range. We also identified a new source to purchase bike tools and equipment from that is saving us money and so reducing our costs.  Toun Cycles shared their volunteer policies, which have been useful in developing our own systems. Toun Cycles shared their refurbishment and quality assurance checklist documents, which we have used to develop our own records. Their documents have been fine tuned through trial and error and sharing these documents has meant we have saved time and potential mistakes.

This was a new contact for us and as well s sharing buying contacts and other cycle networks with us we feel that as an organisation we would be able to reach out to Toun Cycles in the future if we needed a critical friend to discuss something with. The sharing of ideas and discussion of common solutions will enable us to develop our enterprise more efficiently because we have been able to tap into the knowledge acquired by a relevant partner organisation. As a result of the visit our team of staff and volunteers that took part were strongly motivated to put into practice the learning and come back to the shop with lots of new ideas and inspiration. The face-to-face visit has enabled a stronger partnership of support and sharing which we hope will be long term.

A really brilliant benefit was the huge uplift the visit made to our staff and volunteers. Being able to go and visit another organisation was very good for morale and for reinforcing our team spirit to build a stronger more resilient team!

Learning Outcomes

• Detailed understanding of how the Toun retail model has developed.
• Stronger understanding of how their learning (what has worked well and how they have overcome challenges) can support our own retail enterprise development.
• Expanded partnership networks and valuable peer support.

"It was valuable to share their pricing structures for work to ensure that we are pricing/pitching ourselves at the right point in the market. We had quite extensive discussions around working with diverse volunteers and some of the mutual challenges we have experienced. It was comforting to share these experiences and share some of our own ways of supporting vulnerable volunteers with often high support needs."