Cycle2worknow.com launched

www.cycletoworknow.com has launched, offering consumers a way to get heavily discounted bikes via their employers. Using the Cycle to Work scheme, employers can help staff obtain a brand new bike and safety equipment worth up to £1,000. The employee then signs a salary sacrifice arrangement to pay for the bike monthly, meaning they can save up to 50 per cent of the retail price of bike and equipment. The employer also gets a tax break to encourage them.

Rob Howes of Mercury Square, the company behind the scheme, said: "Holcros Cycles are the retailers we’re working with. They will normally assemble the bike and make sure everything works before re-boxing it and delivering to the end user.

"The major plus we offer as opposed to the likes of Cyclescheme, Halfords etc. is that any size business can use our platform and it’s much quicker. There is no reason why a business can’t run the scheme on Monday and the employees be cycling by the weekend."

The website has a extensive list of commuter bikes, electrics, folders, hybrids, mountain, road and touring bikes from brands such as Dawes, Claud Butler and Izip, to name a few. Accessories and helmets are also listed on the website.

Howes added: "Until now C2W wasn’t really available to the employees of small to medium sized enterprises and it wasn’t really visible to anyone who didn’t have cause to go into a bike shop. We think CycleToWorkNow.com changes that and brings all the benefits of cycling to many more people who maybe rode a bike in their youth but gave it up long ago. If we can do that and make C2W more visible to the 12,000,000 SME employees then that has to benefit everyone in the bike business."

The bike-buying tax break is explained fully here.