MILWAUKEE (BRAIN) — Ben’s Cycle has acquired Euro-Asia Imports’ inventory following the specialist distributor’s closing in August after more than 50 years selling mostly high-end parts for road, touring, and fixed-gear bikes.
General Manager Alex Zacher told BRAIN on Friday the shop is still going through what he estimated to be “tens of thousands, maybe over a hundred thousand” SKUs that were shipped by rail from Euro-Asia Imports' warehouses in Burbank, California.
“We’re excited, but it’s going to be a lot of work to get through more than a half century of stuff, so bear with us as we get everything sorted,” Zacher said. “It will take months to fully unpack, inventory, photograph, and list the full scope of EAI.”
He said the inventory eventually will be available on the Ben’s Cycle website and on its eBay storefront.
Actually getting the inventory required “a lot of sweat equity,” Zacher said. “Steve Zielke, our inventory manager, (Ben’s Cycle owner) Vince Hanoski, and two friends of the shop here flew out and over the course of two weeks packed and palletized everything. It was a herculean effort on their part. We arranged logistics with a freight rail company. Trucks would head to EAI daily. They would get loaded, head out to the rail yard, and get sent our way. All in, it was about a month to get everything from California to Wisconsin. It was something like 15 or 20 shipping containers, 450-500 pallets of stuff.”
Zacher said the inventory not only is staggering in number but also in quality.
“Every pallet we bring in, every box I open, I'm floored,” he said. “I've been a bike mechanic since I was 15, I'm 35 now, and growing up in the fixed-gear boom of the early aughts, I always pined for so much of the EAI catalog, so it's a real thrill to go through it.”
For example, he noted coming across new in box Campanolo Delta Brakes in the century finish — and Ben’s has the plain silver, too — Campanolo tool kits, 25th Anniversary Dura-Ace groupsets in the briefcase (watch included), Phil Wood spoke cutters, Nagasawa track frames, Mavic hubs, pedals, and seatposts.
“The list goes on,” Zacher said. “Some of the coolest stuff for me are the little things — Dura-Ace/Campy crank bolt covers, Cinelli frame color case, manuals, tools — I feel like the cycling Grinch and my heart is growing three sizes seeing this stuff.”
He said the shop wants to make the Euro-Asia Imports' inventory more accessible to customers seeking these hard-to-find components.
“So much of this stuff was buried, and forgotten about, so no one even knew it was there. At the end of the day, bikes are made to be ridden, parts are made to be used, and this is such a rad opportunity to get this stuff out there and actually being used.”
Ben’s Cycle has been a loyal Euro-Asia Imports customer for some time, and Hanoski has been longtime friends with owner Dede Grajeda, who ran the business that her father, Bob Hansing, founded in the early 1970s.
Euro-Asia Imports closed for a number of reasons, including tariffs, a move toward dealer-direct and consumer-direct sales by many brands, and the realities of settling the family estate. Hansing died in 2001 and his wife Beverly Hansing, Grajeda’s mother, died last July. She said the business was operated as a family trust.
“We were the logical people to reach out to,” Zacher said of the inventory purchase. “It was a little of column A and a little of column B as far as who asked whom since Vince has always been a 'Well, how much for it all?' kind of owner.
So how much?
"Sorry, can't say precisely, but it was definitely the largest check Vince has ever written, and the largest transaction in our almost 100 years of operation — buildings included," Zacher said.
