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Clint Huff opened Trick Electric Bikes on Hermosa Avenue after buying four electric bikes with his last coronavirus unemployment check. Two years later, his fleet totaled 250 cars. (Photo by Michael Hixon/SCNG)
At the end of 2021, South Bay native Clint Huff was laid off from his job repairing boat engines. He took the plunge when his last few COVID-19 unemployment benefits were coming close.
Huff bought four electric bikes and decided to resell them while sitting on a beach chair on Hermosa Avenue. All four bikes were sold that first weekend.
I did the same thing the next weekend. That was the start of a trend.
The next weekend, more bikes were sold, so Huff rented storage in a building behind the bike shop for $750 a month.
Due to his success, Hough launched Trick Electric Bikes at 901 Hermosa Avenue in Hermosa Beach. The shop has expanded to include his 250 bikes for sale and rental. Business has been so good, he said, that he has hired four people to help. In addition to selling brands like Adventure, Pace and Velotric, Hough also rents electric bikes for 2-8 hours and repairs them.
The Redondo Beach resident took another gamble when he opened his bike shop in January 2022, he said. He told his landlord that he didn’t have the money to pay the rent right away.
And don’t worry about the landlord’s response, Huff said.
“Just move out and we’ll take care of the rest,” the landlord told him.
Not only did Huff not have any rent, but she also didn’t have any inventory when she first moved in.
“We’re trying to string together bicycles to make it look like it’s full,” Huff said of the merchandise arrangement at the time. “But we didn’t really have a lot of bikes.”
The windows of the building were covered with tarpaulins and had not been used by anyone for some time, Huff said. But even though the previous tenant had invested about $20,000 in furniture, flooring, etc., he never moved in.
“The guy had set it up for a shoe store and it was all new and never been used. He just used it for storage,” Huff said. “So I told the landlord this is absolutely perfect.”
The $750-a-month space in the back of Trix is now filled with his electric bikes.
Mr. Huff is used to running a local business.
Huff, who grew up in Manhattan Beach and graduated from Aviation High School in 1980, started stocking shelves at Humbug Imported Car Parts on Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach when he was 15 years old. After 35 years, he closed his parts store as owner.
When that store closed, Huff started the website importcarparts.com. The business worked well for a while, he said. But it closed, and since then he started a granite business, a kitchen cabinet business, a home remodeling business, and then a boat job.
Huff was working on boats at the harbor, repairing engines, when the pandemic upended his life. he was fired from his job.
Huff used his last four unemployment checks to buy four electric bikes that would eventually launch him into a new career.
The entrepreneur said there are many reasons why e-bikes remain popular.
“Initially, people were coming out to the Strand again because it had been closed for so long (due to COVID-19),” Huff said. “And now a lot of seniors can ride their bikes from here to Santa Monica with no problem, and when they’re done, they can ride their bikes up the hill.”
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