XO Bikes - not your regular bike shop

"I started volunteering on a Sunday in Brixton prison. The chaplain at that time had cancer and all the local churches were contacted to ask if anyone could help and so I did," explains Jones about his first introduction to prison life. "So, I ended up going in there and then I was spending Wednesday mornings there too mentoring lads on business before they were released."

At first, it seemed to Jones that all was going well until he started to see familiar faces reappearing. "I started to ask them, 'What are you doing back here?' And it was simply because they were returning to a life of crime because it was the only way they could survive, no one was willing to give them employment.

"I started to look into this and learned about the cycle of reoffending, which traps about half the guys coming out of prison. They're back within a year because they can't get jobs. I looked at the statistics, and it's something like 85% of employers just won't even consider ex-offenders. I then discovered that reoffending costs the taxpayer £18 billion a year and that's aside from the waste of human life.

"It was at that point that I decided I needed to do something to help. A little over two years ago I got rid of the ad agency and started the charity Onwards and Upwards to help get prison leavers into regular employment."

Understanding the situation

It's all very good wanting to help others, actually making it happen can be a challenge as Jones is the first to admit. "You look in the mirror and you kind of go, 'There's not a lot of guys like you in Brixton prison. You're gonna get this wrong. What do you know about this [prison] life?' I had a blessed upbringing and I knew I could easily get this very wrong. I knew I needed someone who understood the situation. That led to the creation of the Gang 4 Good, which is Onwards and Upwards' steering committee. It is a group of ex-offenders whom I found through a couple of other organisations, and I showed them my idea to start a charity to start ventures specifically to train, employ and inspire guys [being released from prison] so that they've got an alternative to dealing or stealing or whatever they do and they went, 'Yeah, we'll help you do that.'"

The original idea that Jones came up with, with the help of the Gang 4 Good, was to get old bikes that could be taken into prison for inmates to work on and turn into a product. Jones explains his initial idea: "My background is in marketing and I wanted to create a brand with a product. However, Onwards and Upwards wasn't just coming to this from a marketing point of view. We were looking at the business metrics and realized that cycling is only going to get bigger. So, you're gonna need more mechanics and that was the nucleus for XO Bikes - bikes built by ex-offenders.

"I know an art director, Jay Pond-Jones, who set up a great bike brand called Colour Bolt a few years ago, and we've worked together on and off for years. And another mate of mine is Guy Pearson of Pearson Cycles. And so I went to those two and I said: 'I don't know my arse from my elbow but does this make sense what we're going to try?' And then we got a couple of guys that I know that have gone into management consultancy and all that and said to them: 'Does this business model make sense?'"

Charitable status benefits

Due to being a charity, the response was positive from all concerned. That charitable status means that XO Bikes does not pay rent on the commercial premises it uses, thanks to the support of its landlord Landsec, which owns and operates the shopping centre in Lewisham where XO Bikes is currently headquartered.

Not having to pay rent is hugely beneficial for XO Bikes as it aims to transform lives; the revenue generated from the sales of the bikes refurbished goes back into training more ex-offenders and while the cycle mechanic training is the main theme, there is other support available too.

"We're trying to transform lives here, not just train guys to become mechanics," Jones explains, "a lot of the guys will have other baggage. So, I wanted us [Onwards and Upwards] to create sustainable businesses so that the profit can be spent on that. For instance, on Wednesday afternoons, we're working towards where we down tools. It's not an afternoon off, you do something. Now, that might be going for a driving lesson because you were in prison at the age of 17. And you never learned. Or you're dyslexic or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or all sorts of things, and you simply need some more help. Or you just want to count your blessings and you want to go and volunteer for another charity and go and help youngsters or whatever."

Obviously, given the nature of the business of XO Bikes, the training to take prison leavers and turn them into bike mechanics is the key focus and, since the project began a little over a year ago, out of the 20 ex-offenders that have gone through the programme 12-13 have achieved a gold-level Velotech qualification, and another four or five have reached the silver within the six-week training plan XO Bikes has put together.

Meeting trainees' needs

Due to the background of the trainees and the additional needs that shape the structure of the training programme it has, out of necessity, changed over time. "When we started it, it was a two-month course but that was proving difficult for a lot of them," Jones explains. "When someone comes out of prison they might have two probation officers, and then there's housing meetings and DWP meetings, and this and that, and they're pulled all across London. Now, if you've been away for five to 10 years or more then you might not know about smartphones or cashless society and that can make even simple things like travelling across town difficult. We take it for granted, we learn day in and day out, but these guys have got big chunks of knowledge missing. And at the other end of where they're trying to get to there's a probation officer or housing person with a queue of people and if they don't make it to those meetings it can mean they end up being recalled back to prison. Because of all of that, we now start with a basic two-week course. Then we follow up with a four-week course if they feel this is the right thing for them, which will get them to the silver Velotech level."

By learning the skills needed to obtain the Velotech qualifications, those initial trainees were beginning to produce a supply of refurbished bicycles and these are how the charity generates the bulk of its revenue. "We started selling the odd bike towards Christmas [2022] in our workshop. And then in the New Year, when bikes really started selling, we started marketing them and there's been a lot of interest," Jones explained. This in turn led to more ex-offenders taking an interest in joining the programme. However, at this stage, XO Bikes was simply a workshop space in a spare unit in a shopping centre refurbishing bikes donated for the most part by the Metropolitan Police.

"I'd imagined when I started that, we would end up becoming a sizable bike business. And I thought, 'Well if we get 1000s and 1000s of bikes, it probably makes sense to take a unit and get a production line going.' And then again, you end up trying to run a bike business and you will know how difficult that is. And then if you layer on top of that, the personnel that you're trying to try and help to begin with that's going to be tricky. So, that didn't make sense. What we need to be excellent at is training and conditioning, getting the guys qualified and used to come into work and producing a really good product.

"We needed more workbenches to train people up. So, we got all the bikes that were finished out of the workshop, bought more tools and work benches so we can run bigger courses." Once again, Landsec was able to help by offering a second unit in the shopping centre in Lewisham which is now the XO Bike retail outlet. "We put all the bikes in there and turned it into a retail experience. And again, the guys can come and get a bit of experience on that side of the business," Jones notes.

Creating a brand identity

With a retail operation now in place alongside the training workshop, Jones was able to call upon his ad agency and marketing knowledge and create a definitive brand identity for XO Bikes. Beside the refurbished bicycles on sale in the retail unit are the XO Swag Black bikes. These are machines from all manner of manufacturers that have been stripped down and had their frames powder-coated matt black. Once fully rebuilt each one is then stencilled with a unique ID of the Fixer, the term used by XO for the trainees, who refurbished it. Jones' thinking is that "customers want our bikes because they're cool and different. They like the ethos and some will come in via the recycling side of it. And others very much, which is my intention, they like to support the bloke who did their bike."

Indeed, the whole philosophy has proven so popular that the original black finish has now been joined by XO Hot Orange for complete bikes. Not only that but Jones has had customers bring their own bikes into the store asking to have them refinished in XO Swag Black.

The distinct branding and the shop's USP doesn't end with the powder-coat finishes. Each bike sold, whether it be original or XO finish, leaves with a complementary 'Handcuff' lock, which was designed for XO Bikes by Brixham School of Communication and Art, and designed to be "a conversation piece". Even better for XO is that the locks have been produced and donated by a lock manufacturer who wants to support the aims of the charity.

Despite the generous offers of help, Jones is all too aware that XO Bikes needs to grow its service offering if it is to continue to train mechanics and this need has seen the opening of a pop-up unit in the London borough of Wandsworth. "I don't know how long we'll have that for but it is giving us the chance to try our hand at servicing, which of course is a very different proposition to producing bikes per se.

"I don't want to really scale the service offering until we have a professional workshop manager and a retail manager. To be honest, I don't want to take over the world. I want to produce a really good honest product. And then look after the customer. And when we've got the workshop manager, hopefully in the next month or two we'll have that person, then I'd like to get into servicing because, again, it's another skill and a different kind of pressure for the guys to learn when they're ready.

"However, I'm not doing this to build a bike business. If I'm really honest, I'm not interested. I'm interested in the blokes and breaking the cycle of reoffending. Most importantly, we need to change an industry because if there's an apparent shortage of thousands of mechanics, and it's going to get bigger, that's a lot of jobs. Now, wouldn't it be great, and this is what I want, for all those companies to come and steal our mechanics, and then we can pull more guys through the training. And then if they end up in bike shops, you know, having a really positive impact on customers and their colleagues, then, yeah, we can change businesses as well as change industries and their perceptions of ex-offenders and prison leavers," Jones concludes.