By FIDESMA
Fall 2020 Newsletter
[Our partner of longest standing is FIDESMA, located in San Andrés Itzapa, Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Since 1999 we have shipped them more than 10,000 bikes.]
Besides local people who buy bikes for work, school, errands, or sports, we also have people who travel many kilometers to buy bikes at our ECOLOBICI-FIDESMA store. They buy bikes for their families or to distribute or resell the bikes in their communities to have the same economic impact as we do locally.
Several of these people buy 6 or more bicycles, so we give them a discount. They help us reach families who have no way to get to our store or who live in places too expensive for us to travel to.
We have customers who arrive at our store every 3 or 4 months, sometimes to pick up orders that they have already made, sometimes to look for bikes on hand that they like.
Here are some examples:
- From Quetzaltenango, a distance of 150 kilometers, there is a person who comes to our store and buys many bikes.
- From Cobán, Alta Verapaz, which is 200 kilometers away, a person travels here two or three times a year and carries away many bicycles in his vehicle.
- From San Marcos, 300 kilometers away on the border with Mexico, a customer arrives once or twice a year and buys many bicycles.
- From Sololá, which is 100 kilometers away, we have a person who comes several times a year to buy many bicycles.
All this means that there are many non-local people who benefit from our bicycles: for business, pleasure, and many other everyday activities.
In these times of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the bicycle has been widely used because there is no other transport. Many people are able to buy a bicycle, but there are still many who have not been able to buy one. So we still need more bicycles to help us solve the problems of transportation in Guatemala.