Kabuki Kabs is up for sale

After 24 years at the leading edge of the North American pedicab  business, Randal Phipps put the word out earlier this summer that he is looking for a change and the right new owner to take over the successful operation.

"It is time for me to move on and find some new challenges and experiences. I have been doing this a long time," he said.

I told him I was writing this entry, and he asked that instead of calling him Randy – as he is known around the barn – that I use his real name, Randal. I keep wanting to call him Randy throughout, but for him, I will do it.

For me, after 3 months in the barn, I find it hard to imagine the place being run by anyone else but him. Funny, relaxed, and experienced, he truly cares about his drivers and does what he can to help them have prosperous days Randal has been the heart and soul of the operation since he was a 23-year-old ambitious entrepreneur with a bright new idea.

Yet I understand, perhaps better than others, the need to keep things fresh, exciting and challenging as middle age dawns. After all, it was that desire for novelty and challenge that brought me walking into the barn last June in the first place.

He has priced his business at $160,000 for a cash buyer; that's two times '06 earnings with assets included, with the
intent to have this very reasonable price attract the right person who can take the spirit of Kabuki Kabs and make it their own. Randal can provide full details for you via coolopp4u@gmail.com

One of the pleasures of the summer was getting to know Randal. Our bantering conversations were short, usually carried on over the business of paying the lease at the start of the shift or submitting the shift report at the end. We'd talk about our kids, or the news, the crappy weather or our mutual admiration for the interview style of Charlie Rose.

But one day last month I sat and talked with him to get the story of how he started Kabuki Kabs. Sitting with us was his delightful mother, Lee, a former Edmonton high school school principal , a spry and young 80. She pops by the barn now and again to say hi, show off a new hair cut or catch up. The mutual affection and respect - and pure enjoyment of each other's company -- that flows effortlessly between them is a pleasure to observe.

"My mom is a great lady. As an school principal she made an huge impact on a lot of young people growing up in Edmonton. She has really strong values that she has personally infused in me."

Back in 1984, Randal was just 23 and in Slavonic studies at the University of Victoria. ("I wanted to be a spy," he laughs.) He had worked as executive assistant to the UVic student council and been tasked with creating a job data base, linking students with potential employment.

"My mind was really on how to create good, high paying, flexible jobs for young people that would link with their student life."

He saw an item in People magazine about a rickshaw business in some US city - he can't remember where -- but the idea took hold. Victoria's staid city council turned up its nose at rickshaws - too third world. Randal began investigating pedicabs. With start up cash from his mother, the first summer he ran 7 pedicabs in Vancouver's Gastown in 1984. When Victoria saw the successful business model working in a rival city, they gave him license to operate his 15 cabs here in 1985. The rest is history.

Over the last 24 years, many thousands of young people (and not so young) have come through Kabuki Kabs, making good money and having a good time.  In the boom years of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Randal has so many applicants he had to turn them away. The twenty pedicabs were booked solid on the lucrative weekend shifts with a waitlist of drivers eager to get on.

Stories abound about rides and drivers, but one of Randal's favorites is the time a group of celebrating fishermen paid a young female Aussie driver to take a large sockeye salmon (dead) on a tour around Victoria - a beautiful fish's last hoorah before being consumed.

The common denominators among drivers are self-motivation, a love of being active, a sense of humour, and outgoing personality. "It is the people that have made it one of the best jobs in the world," says Randal.

For years one of Kabuki Kab's selling lines to applicants was getting "buns of steel." Many a Kabuki driver has come in the spring a little soft and pudgy only to leave in the fall a lean, muscular machine.

So I have an idea: I've been telling Randal he could make a killing promoting Kabuki Kabs as a new kind of fitness and weight-loss program. Boot camps and spa clinics charge upwards of $4,000 a week to those trying to lose weight and change their figures. Create a program linking a personal trainer using pedicab driving drills, five days a week, seven hours a day with a proven, whole foods diet program, like the South Beach diet. Middle-aged women and men wanting to shed pounds and get fit in a beautiful place like Victoria could come flocking!  

"Great idea Anne. Why don't you buy the business and do it? “ says Randall who has always joked that I had a fear of large couples getting into my cab. (Too true. My forte was the frail elderly.)

“You could solve your phobia: you could sit back there instead and be their personal motivator!" he said.

Hmm, we might be onto somthing. Any investors out there who want to back me?

Meanwhile, Randal is weighing his options and interests. "I didn't complete my underdergrad degree so it's difficult to actually get well paying employment in the area where I have a long history of proven talent -- human resource managment -- so I may go be a ski bum till my knees give out," he says.

But Randal is foremost a responsible Dad. "Considering I have care and custody of two fine teenaged boys I'll likely take a pragmatic path and put my CSC designation into play and become a stock broker," he says.