BOULDER, Colo. (BRAIN) — Pon.Bike's Mike's Bikes retail chain acquired Boulder's Full Cycle on Tuesday. The location re-opened Thursday as a Mike's Bikes store — the fifth in Colorado and 19th in the country.
The store will continue to sell Giant and Pon's Cervélo bike brands, and add Pon's Cannondale, Santa Cruz, Urban Arrow and Gazelle bike lines, Mike's Bikes CEO and President Whitney Tabaian told BRAIN. The location will no longer sell Specialized, Ibis, Priority, Moots or Kona bikes, she said.
Boulder's University Bikes also sells Cannondale and Santa Cruz. "We have a great partnership with University Bikes and we're excited to work in the same community as them. We think rising tides will help both of us," she said.
Full Cycle added Moots last winter, leading Vecchio's Bicicletteria, a longtime Moots dealer located a few blocks away, to drop the Colorado-based boutique brand. Vecchio's now sells Bingham Built titanium bikes. Tabaian said Mike's will reassess carrying Moots next year.
The location also will no longer sell or service backcountry ski gear and its Tune Up cafe and bar is closed, at least temporarily, she said.
"For the moment we are going to take a pause on it, because we run bike shops and we don't know cafés. We will determine if we want to sublet the space or what we want to do moving forward," she said. In the short term, the store will move some bike inventory into the café space, leaving some tables there and on an outside patio. Bagel and coffee trucks will provide some snacks.
Full Cycle dates to 1982, making it the oldest operating bike store in Boulder. For many years it was a mainstay in Boulder's University Hill area, then added a Pearl Street location and later moved to its current store on East Pearl Street. Russ Chandler, an active member of the local cycling community, acquired the store with two partners in 2016. When they acquired the business, it still had a location on the Hill, but soon consolidated into one Boulder location.
Chandler told BRAIN this week that he sold the store in a cash deal and does not expect to be involved with the business in the future. He said he will remain active in Boulder cycling advocacy.
Tabaian said Mike's has retained most of the Full Cycle employees. "Russ built something very special and the store's heritage before that in Boulder is amazing. The team he built is incredible; we really lucked out with how amazing every individual is, so we want to give them more fuel to do what they do," she said.
She said the cluster of five stores in Colorado will be supported by a distribution center near Denver where most inventory will be received and all the bikes will be built. Mike's also has a distribution center in the California Bay Area to serve the locations there.
"We are always looking for opportunities as they come up, but it just has to be the right opportunity. Full Cycle seemed like a perfect fit since it fits with our other Colorado infrastructure and has the same ideals in support of the community that we have. So we are always open to opportunities but nothing in the plans right now," she said.
Tabaian was a partner in the four-store Elevation Cycles retail chain that Mike's Bikes bought in 2022. She joined the company after the acquisition and was named president and CEO in February this year. She delivered the keynote address at the NBDA Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas, last month.
