Iid love to hear more about that.
cory,
From when I was 13 through 17 years old I worked at three different bicycle shops; Dependence Bike Shop and International Bicycle Warehouse in Delaware, and at Mike Kolin's Cycling Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
When the gas crisis happened in 1973 five bicycle shops sprung up in Newark, DE, but once the lines ended and gas was plentiful three of them couldn't survive and by the end of 1974 they were closed.
As I had done inventory and ordering at the shops I worked for, along with sales and repairs, I went to the three owners and offered to inventory and buy their entire stock (which they couldn't find any buyers for) at ten cents on the dollar. Surprisingly they all agreed, and I then said, I am 17, unable to legally enter into contracts, but let's write one up anyway and I'll pay $100 a month until I have it paid off. Again, they all agreed!
So in 1975 I started a shop in an empty three bay garage on auto dealer row, with a friend who had worked at the local motorcycle dealership. We did "two-wheeled repairs, motorized or not", and so the name of the place became "Two Wheeled Cycle". While we were getting rolling and cash was tight the local used car dealers on the strip brought us cars to work on in order to make them more easily sellable. My 'partner' had some bad dealings with 'misplaced materials' at a number of construction sites where he was building custom homes with his brothers, so he moved away after about a year and a half and signed over his share of the shop and the debt to me. Each winter for the first three years I laid myself off, as I had the house mortgage and children and was the greatest financial burden on the seasonal economy of the shop. Those winters I worked with two friends doing tree work and climbing and dropping tops out of large trees for an urban logger in our area.
I had two locations, fifteen employees, three banks, 62 wholesale distributor accounts, was the first Trek bicycle dealer in the Middle Atlantic States, and supported a team of from 25 to 30 racers, sponsored in turn over three years by Otto's BMW, Domino Pizza, and Trek (though Trek had an exclusive to provide bikes to the Motorola team, so they gave us Gitane Pro level bicycles for the team which they were importing at the time). We sold Gitane, Trek, Peugeot, Windsor, Bridgestone, Zebrakenko, Miyata, Legnano, and other lines, along with many custom hand-made frames imported from around the world, built up with Campagnolo components and the new at that time Shimano Dura-Ace gruppos.
I can't even begin to count the number of wheels I have laced up and trued in my life, and still have a pair of Phil Wood, sealed-bearing, wheelchair hubs from a period when I was making race wheels for handicapped wheelchair racers. As I had done motorcycle wheels, and had owned a 1962 Jaguar XKE I also had a steady stream of word-of-mouth motorcyclists and Jaguar owners coming by to have me true their spoked wheels. In the early 1980s a team of engineering students at the Univ of DE built a human-powered land speed record attempt vehicle and I accompanied them to the now defunct Ontario Motor Speedway in San Bernardino, CA for the competition (placed sixth if I recall correctly) where the USC team sponsored by General Dynamics Inc took first and second place.
Raeganomics and trickle-down never trickled down (doubt it ever will!) and interest rates were outrageously high for an industry with slim margins, so I closed up the shops and went back to tree work full time.
Still have my Trek 520, and rode it across the country in 2007. Our youngest daughter is making noise about wanting to cross the country, too, so I may be dusting it off and pumping up the tires again
