Solicitor gets on his bike in new calling

A HIGH-FLYING solicitor has discovered there is more to life than the law business after he abandoned his job with Morton Fraser to become a bike courier.

Neil Bon, a former corporate law specialist, has launched Pronto Pedal Power, a cargo bike company in Edinburgh.

“I got bored sitting in an office and the law I was doing was not the sort where you get out and do stuff,” he said. “It was grim in commercial property and in banking. I thought it was time to do something else.”

Bon delivers fine wines and French fare for firms such as delicatessen Henri, which has shops in Stockbridge and Morningside. But his business is not limited to food deliveries.

“You get some strange requests. The company has only been live for a few months and I have already delivered a toilet and a massive coffee roaster,” he said.

Bon was inspired to launch the service after he took a month off to do a charity cycle trip along the west coast of America. He said he has sufficient capital to keep his business going for a year and found a distributor of the sort of heavy-duty bike he required in Manchester.

“It is mainly the Danish and the Dutch that produce these bikes. It is pretty flat over there so it works well. But I have not failed to get up a hill in Edinburgh yet,” he insisted.

Currently he is running as a one-man band, but he said demand has been such that he expects to bring on four staff in the next 18 months.

“I definitely do want to get bigger, no doubt about it,” he said.