Twin Cities Dealer Tour
Ergon asked me to represent the brand in Minnesota for the Bicycle Retailer & Industry News Twin City Dealer Tour. Let’s see…you want me to ride a bike around a city I have never seen, talk with bike shop owners, make some new friends and pay me for it…..OK. So off to Minneapolis I went.
The gist of the tour is this: we ride from the hotel to preselected bike shops around the Twin Cities area, usually 4 a day. We interview the owners &/or managers about what about there successes and challenges, who their customers are and how they operate their shops to cater to those customers.
The variety of shops and business practices was astounding. There were the shops focused on racers, others on families, others solely on commuters, and still others that covered a variety customers. Some of the shops were so small we had a hard time fitting the group in all at once and another that was in an old bowling alley building (huge!).
Here is a picture tour:
The Hub Coop
A mechanic at work in one of many Penn Cycles locations.
The mayor of Minneapolis, RT Rybak, stopped by Freewheel Bikes to pick up his commuter from the bike locker.
The BRAIN team interviews the owner of Freewheel Bikes, a shop with no car access. Bikes only.
Gene Oberpriller gives us the lowdown on what makes One On One Bike Shop a center for bike culture.
Some bike art in the cafeteria at QBP.
The web articles about the tour can be found here on the BRAIN Blog. Here is some proof I was there…. Look for the full write up in BRAIN soon.