After the financial crash of 2008, Founder and CEO of social enterprise, Peddle My Wheels (PMW), Alper Muduroglu, 56, faced a choice following a spiralling relationship with alcohol and gambling.
With a business in liquidation, personal bankruptcy and a divorce, Muduroglu was at a fork in the road, but with two young kids, he felt an obligation to be present that kickstarted his motivation for life and his future business.
Muduroglu said:
“When I started Peddle My Wheels I’d been off gambling and drinking for a couple of years. […] But in that time, everything had hit a real [gestures a flatline].”
Peddle My Wheels is the broader name for Muduroglu’s enterprise that today, offers key cycling services to local communities.
Among their services include a shared cargo bike scheme called OurBike, a council subsidised bike subscription scheme called Try Before You Bike, second-hand bike markets, and notably – the social prescribing of bikes for transport and wellbeing.
Their social prescribing service allows users to get free training with a bike and instructor, whether one-to-one or in groups, with the potential for a free bike and pseudo-out-patient programme lasting a year.
Muduroglu said the desire to create PMW started amidst his recovery while working part time at a friend’s clothes shop.
Throughout Muduroglu’s addiction he’d always enjoyed cycling. He said:
“Cycling was a choice, because, even when I was going and doing that stuff […] for years, cycling was a constant and one of the few healthy things I did.”
Muduroglu added:
“There’s no difference to the feeling from when I was a kid riding around on a bike, you can’t do many things that give you that sort of, dare I say it – joy. […] Taking that from my past life was a nice thing to do.”
Although starting a business had always been on the agenda, the idea for PMW came while he was thinking about climate change’s impact on the wider economy with the toll of large scale corporations and unsustainable expansion.
Muduroglu said:
“I was looking into the economic system and questions about [its future], and then the whole thing around sustainability and consumerism and the realization of – how’s this going to work? […] It’s insane, this constant push for more productivity – sell more – it can’t carry on, surely. With climate change that whole model can’t work.”
He added:
“[While questioning] that sustainability became a big thing.”
However, he grew into the business more organically, at first, selling off old clutter on Ebay before being asked to sell items for neighbours.
Muduroglu said:
“I was just selling things on Ebay… My old kids stuff (unbeknown to them sometimes) […] and then I just landed on bikes.”
He added:
“It became such an obvious thing, kids’ bikes when they grow out of them. They’re expensive, they get wasted, they get left.”
From there, along with a bike mechanic friend, Pim, they began fixing old bikes and selling them on, before the business expanded to the point where their app based, cargo-bikes-for-hire are now being picked up by local authorities like Lambeth and Southwark.
Although Muduroglu is cognisant of his past self and sees the business as key to his continued success in sobriety. He said:
“If you haven’t got some belief in something, it’s very easy to go do whatever…”
He added:
“The business more than anything has helped me. […] Going into the cycling sector, sustainable transport, the people who I work with and who we cater for – it’s a very different relationship.”
Muduroglu cited the shift in environment as a healthy change, along with the broader reframing of his business goals being aligned with his principles on sustainability.
Muduroglu said:
“I suppose to tie it in with addiction, it was more that I was searching for stuff and that [a business that combined a living wage with cycling] fulfilled that need to have a belief in something.”
He agrees it’s comparable to the ways recovered addicts incorporate faith into their lives, and sees the spiral he found himself in, as a result of a lack of self worth to get better.
However, Muduroglu admits there was a reluctance to seek help initially, partially because he didn’t identify with the stereotypical view of alcoholics he had grown up with.
Muduroglu said:
“By the time I gave up booze and gambling I was 39. 40? […] I was gambling on fruit machines addictively since the age of 13, so my brain was hard-wired for this stuff.”
It’s clear Muduroglu is eager to leave the past behind as he talks excitedly about his future plans for PMW’s expansion, which includes around 90 plus cargo bikes in the OurBike London fleet alone.
Drawing his own comments to a close, Muduroglu said:
“… Without banging on about that as ex-addicts can.”
