Ticket to Ride

You never know how inspiration for a business will strike. It could spring forth through innovation, research, travel – any number of ways. For Daniel Russell-Einhorn ’09, it was parking fines.

“I was driving everywhere and getting a lot of parking tickets,” he says, adding that it was his roommate during his junior year at the College who proposed a simple idea: Ride a bicycle to class.

With just $30, the Bethesda, Md., native bought a bicycle from Habitat for Humanity. “This was so much better than the car,” says Russell-Einhorn, who wondered at the time if there were other students like him who needed “a place to get a bike, and a place to get it affordably.”

After doing some market research and remembering what he learned in an entrepreneurship seminar with Tommy Baker, the local auto-sales giant who serves on the School of Business Board of Governors, he and a friend, Griff Ducworth, were ready to embark on a new business venture selling custom bikes. They had the idea to let students pick out the bike parts and colors, and they were determined to offer better pricing than the other local stores – hence their new company’s name, Affordabike.

On the College’s following fall move-in weekend, Russell-Einhorn and Ducworth set up shop at the corner of St. Philip and Calhoun streets selling their bikes to new students. At just $100 a pop, the 130 bikes in his inventory were soon gone.

He opened his first store in 2010, changed the name to Bilda Bike in 2023 and now has two locations: one on upper King Street and another that just opened in North Charleston’s booming Park Circle.

Customers range in age from 6 to 70, and Russell-Einhorn makes the buying experience easy.

“There’s not that many places to ride in Charleston, so I basically say to the customer, ‘If you want to ride on the beach, here’s one option; if you want to ride downtown with no gears, here’s another; and here’s one if you want to do more stuff with gears.’”

Because of Charleston’s subtropical climate, the ergonomically designed bikes are made to be corrosive-resistant with zinc-coated chains. A customer can walk into the store and leave 30 minutes later with a new bike. The store also offers bike rentals, bike repairs and accessories. They’ll even tell you the best places to ride.

Bilda Bike has also drawn some well-known customers, including actors Owen Wilson and Bill Murray, Mike Wolfe of the TV show American Pickers and members from the cast of Southern Charm. Russell-Einhorn also has a photo of first lady Jill Biden on a Bilda Bike.

“It just makes me feel good being a part of the community, connecting with the locals and customers and giving them something, getting them excited,” he says. “I’ve had this business for 15 years, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about what people like to ride in Charleston. And I’ve ridden in Charleston myself. So in that respect, I think it’s a real dynamic approach to providing bikes for this city.” – George Johnson