A wood-paneled section in a back corner of Wheat Ridge Cyclery marks where the original store stood when Eugene Kiefel took it over in 1973. Today the 750-square-foot spot is dwarfed by the business that has grown around it.
The Kiefel family over the weekend hosted a “re-grand opening” of Wheat Ridge Cyclery, which has grown to 29,000 square feet. The store has nearly doubled in size from its most recent iteration.
Eugene Kiefel, who purchased the shop after seeing it advertised in The Denver Post, steadily expanded the business by taking over neighboring storefronts one by one.
The latest expansion – at a cost of more than $1 million – is the most visible yet. A new building was constructed over an alley, connecting the previous store and a service area.
“I had misgivings about expanding since I’m already 75, but the kids convinced me,” Kiefel said. “I’m convinced that you have to go ahead with a business or give up.”
Kiefel has retired from day-to-day operations at the store, which is now run by his son, Ron, a seven-time Tour de France competitor, and Gil McCormick, Kiefel’s son-in-law.
While the store is huge by bike-shop standards, Wheat Ridge Cyclery isn’t the only one to expand to such proportions in recent years. Bicycle retailers, including Bicycle Village and BikeSource, have been steadily increasing the size of their stores as a result of increasing demand for more specialized products.
“There are so many different segments of the market that you need to serve,” said Marc Eisenberg, president of Highlands Ranch-based BikeSource, which has stores in Colorado, Kansas, Ohio and North Carolina.
BikeSource’s Highlands Ranch store – the largest in the chain – is approximately 25,000 square feet.
“Ten years ago, the market was 70 percent mountain bikes,” Eisenberg said. “It was a real easy market to serve.”
Ron Kiefel said the Wheat Ridge Cyclery store had outgrown its space, adding that customers often felt crowded on weekends. The space limitation was hampering the company’s revenue growth.
“Ordinarily you see peaks in your sales, but we were seeing periods where it was just flat. We just couldn’t do any more business,” he said.
The new store offers more room between products, an upstairs bike-fitting area, more service counters and a customer lounge – all part of the evolution of bicycle shops as they adjust to ever- widening demands from customers.
Now, shops must stock mountain bikes, road bikes and comfort bikes. Within each of those groups, there are several more specialized categories, Eisenberg said.
So naturally, bicycle stores are finding they need more room.
Bicycle Village, owned by Denver- based Specialty Sports Ventures, a few years ago embarked on a mission of decreasing its store count by half and replacing the remaining outlets with larger superstores.
Company president Ken Gart estimates its flagship store in Aurora is between 26,000 and 31,000 square feet.
Professional cyclist Dan Schmatz of Louisville said the shift toward larger stores is also due to a surge in interest in cycling by women and older cyclists who demand a specific shopping experience.
“The traditional 2,000-square-foot bike shop with 50 bikes on the floor and a small service area isn’t as attractive to someone who is used to shopping at REI or one of the big stores like that,” he said.
At the same time, Schmatz thinks the smaller stores stand a fighting chance.
“Most of those shops make it because of who they are,” he said. “They have ability to service their customers, and they’re able to make it with the lower overhead.”
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-954-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
