This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

For Exeter's eZee Bikes, Spring Can't Come Soon Enough

Tom and Teresa Hemenway are selling a new line of scooters.

Considering New England’s dearth of snow these last few months, it’s shocking to think we’re merely six weeks from the first official day of spring. But for the folks at eZee Bikes in Exeter, longer days and final thaws can’t come soon enough.

Indeed, owners Tom and Teresa Hemenway have been chomping at the bit to begin promoting their brand new line of Sym gas-powered scooters. Widely considered some of the best on the market, the Taiwan-produced Syms are – like rivals Honda and Vespa – renowned for their incredible gas mileage, which typically falls in the neighborhood of 120 miles per gallon.

With gas prices this summer expected to reach the painful highs of a few years ago, Hemenway has been eager to once again promote the wallet-friendly virtues of these two-wheeld wonders.

Find out what's happening in Exeterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“Just last week we filled up our sedan – not a huge car, by any means – and it cost us close to 60 dollars,” recalls Tom Hemenway. “Then you think about these Sym scooters, and it costs maybe six or seven bucks to fill up.”

Hemenway believes the time has never been better for people to invest in scooters – particularly here in New England, where the relative lack of sprawl and more tightly-knit downtown areas had helped spurn a cycling renaissance of late.

Find out what's happening in Exeterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“What’s more green than riding a bike or a scooter?” Hemenway says rhetorically. “We’re seeing them more and more in the cities, and I think they’re only going to get more popular in the next few years.”

Not surprisingly, Hemenway cites Durham, home of the University of New Hampshire, as one of his most reliable target markets – both for eZee’s signature line of gas-powered bikes, as well as the myriad gas scooters stocking his Exeter showroom’s floor.

“We’ve been doing more and more deliveries to UNH, to professors especially,” says Hemenway. “Which is great for the parking issues they have there.”

Hemenway is so convinced of UNH’s bike friendly ethos, in fact, that he’s taken to peppering the university’s heavily used campus bus shuttles as his own billboard, of sorts.

“We’re just about ready to role out our new advertisements in March, and those will be up on the busses for six months after that,” he notes.

In a sense, Hemenway is hoping to help ignite in the greater Seacoast community an inspirational spark not unlike that which compelled him to launch eZee Bikes. A few years back, after discovering he had diabetes, Hemenway decided he needed to rediscover a more active lifestyle. However, a long ride on his son’s 21-speed bike convinced him that doing so would be easier said than done.

Convinced there had to be a better way to ease back into healthy habits, late one night Hemenway stumbled on a television advertisement for eZee bikes, a new company touting bikes that could be both foot-pedaled and rendered electric, depending on what the rider needed.

The rest, as they say, was history.

Today, Hemenway offers six varieties of his flagship eZee Bikes, as well as models from manufacturers including Hebb, Ez Peddler, Curry, and Pedego. Of course, eZee also features a number of standard one or two-person bikes, three-wheelers, beach-combers, and gas-powered scooters.

It’s an inventory as impressively stocked as it is reflective of what Hemenway sees as a growing trend here in the U.S. And, with prices at the pump slated for yet another summer climb, he hopes more and more people will make good on their health-focused New Years resolutions by trying a climb of a different sort.

“I think we all remember pretty clearly the last time gas got real high, and how painful it was,” says Hemenway. “With everything getting more expensive, and especially gas, I’m expecting to see a lot more scooters and bikes out this year.”

 

www.ezeebikes.nh.com

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?