Amelia Redfern opened Spoke & Wheel in March 2014 in a 600-square-foot unit on Main Street, between a Portuguese bakery and a print shop that has since closed. The first week she had one repair stand, a borrowed truing stand, and a small stock of used parts she'd accumulated over four years working at a co-op shop on Commercial Drive. The first customer was a courier who needed a new chain and a rear derailleur hanger. Amelia had the part on the wall. That felt like a good sign.
The shop grew slowly and on purpose. Amelia added a second repair stand in 2016 and started stocking new bikes in 2017, beginning with a small range of steel commuters and city bikes from a Vancouver Island distributor. The custom build side of the business came out of a waiting list that formed almost by accident: a few customers asked if she could build something specific, she said yes, and word got around. By 2019 the build queue was running at six to eight bikes a year. After the pandemic years, when everyone seemed to rediscover cycling, that number climbed to around fifteen builds annually, and the repair side got busy enough that Amelia brought in a second mechanic, Marcus, who had trained at a shop in Kelowna before moving to Vancouver.