A BIKE garage is Swindon has opened a community space for the local biking community to network while they wait for repairs.

Ash Wade, who runs Ash’s Autos Ltd at Rivermead business park, West Swindon, opened the 1,000 sq. ft area – complete with sofas, a TV and Xbox - for bikers to socialise and organise rides together.

The launch of the area on Saturday also celebrated a year since they moved to the new premises and a focus on bikes.

“People tend to meet up in car parks and sit outside and chat amongst yourselves, but there’s no where really offering what we have,” said Ash.

“We’ve got plenty of space, and it’s got a man-cave feel to it rather than clinical waiting area.”

The garage is well known in the community and is proud to live by its mantra of being ‘for bikers, by bikers’.

“We’ll go for a quick 50 miles after work just to enjoy the ride, where as mechanics in other garages won’t get that satisfaction from riding which is a real shame,” explained ash.

“It’s an important point of connection with our customers, we understand why they’re going out on their bike.

“Those other places they see it as a bike with a function to perform, they don’t have that fun or emotional connection.”

“We try and enjoy the bikes as much as our customers do because we feel that’s an important part of keeping the passion for what we do.”

“The products we well here are all products we used ourselves. The oil we’ve got on our shelves is the same that’s in my bike. The security locks are the same I lock my bikes up with at night. We try and only sell products we believe in.

“There are products where we would make a lot more money, but we would rather make less money for a product we believe in. At the end of the day if somebody’s not happy with what they’ve got from us, then we don’t feel like we’ve done what we want to do and have fallen short of what we wanted to achieve.”