CycloChrome is a social enterprise specialized in bicycle mechanics. Since its founding in 2008, the company has promoted school perseverance and fought against dropout by leveraging its bicycle fleet maintenance activities to offer a supportive work environment to trainees, allowing them to acquire specialized and sought-after skills in the job market. Another key element of CycloChrome’s social mission allows employees to complete their high school studies while working at the company thanks to the CREP program, a branch of the CSSDM. From the beginning, CycloChrome has handled the maintenance of the BIXI fleet. Over the years, many clients and departments have been added, always with the goal of keeping people in the saddle and encouraging active transportation.
Since 2018, the company has worked on a large number of electric-assist bicycles (e-bikes) for its various clients, reflecting their growing popularity in North America. While e-bikes are widespread in Europe, they have only recently broken into our market in significant numbers. More and more Quebecers, recognizing the advantages of the electric bike as an urban mode of transport, find that it greatly facilitates commuting to work while arriving refreshed and ready. Many also buy them for leisure! To meet popular demand, CycloChrome will soon offer trainings focused on e-bikes and how they work at its brand-new Campus, which opened this summer.
The CycloChrome Campus is a new space entirely dedicated to providing professional-quality training, both to cyclists who want to learn more about their favorite mode of transport and to professional mechanics who want to improve or specialize. It offers a range of turnkey trainings from puncture repair to hydraulic brake maintenance, and troubleshooting of all kinds of electric-assist systems. The instructors, highly experienced mechanics, can also deliver custom training if the roughly ten existing offerings do not meet your needs. It is also possible to organize on-site corporate trainings if the number of participants or the professional context requires it!
However, CycloChrome is much more than the sum of the company’s projects and missions. CycloChrome is a team of dedicated, engaged, and passionate people who work together to make tomorrow a better day. A fine example of this entrepreneurial spirit is Karl-Alexandre Lalonde Houle. He joined the team in 2014 while he was undertaking vocational training in Industrial Mechanics. Initially working as a bike mechanic on the evening shift, he worked his way up over the years and now supervises BIXI fleet maintenance operations. In the meantime, he also completed a second vocational program in Electromechanics, not one to be satisfied with what he has already accomplished. He now also oversees continuous improvement operations in the company thanks to his extensive technical expertise. Karl-Alexandre is a great example of what can be achieved when willpower and the desire for personal growth are combined in the bicycle industry."It's my thirst for learning that brought me to where I am today. Stagnating isn't for me!" Karl-Alexandre Lalonde Houle
In the years to come, CycloChrome expects that e-bikes will continue to occupy an increasingly prominent place in the bicycle industry, just as the electric car has in the transport industry. It is in this spirit that the company is actively developing its expertise in e-bikes through battery and motor reconditioning programs. It is essential that these new electrified modes of transport, which our society now favors more than ever, be implemented in a sustainable and eco-responsible way.
This partner content was produced as part of the En route! project – The destination for careers in electric and intelligent transportation.
