On Apr 12, 2006, at 4:33 PM, Bianca Pratorius wrote:
> Someone commented that there were bicycle boutiques and chain store
> shops back in the 70's. I can not remember seeing any chain stores
> for bicycles in New York or in San Francisco or in San Diego. Two
> stores do not a chain make. Furthermore the boutique buying I am
> describing has nothing to do with poseurs in the 70's spending way
> too much for Nouvo Record and Paramount and the like. Of course
> people have always desired to possess something which seems
> incredibly well crafted, and of course people back in the day
> bought racing bikes when they probably would have been better
> suited to an English three speed. The point here is that the
> present day boutiques have been perfectly modeled after women's
> high end clothing or shoe boutiques. Women's clothing stores are an
> exercise in absolute fashion and total appeal to the "look". The
> modern stores I am seeing involve total commitment to selling
> cycling equipment as a fashion statement. There were always stores
> that placed Campy stuff in showcases for us to drool over. The
> difference was that the staff was motivated more by function and
> less by fashion than the current crop of merchandizers. Ask any of
> our shop owners like Dale if he ever hired a salesman based on his
> European hair cut or his French accent. Ask them if they
> deliberately purchased carpeting to create a venue wherein ultra
> high prices would seem less out of place. Ask them if there were
> backers for their grand opening so that one could drop a half mill
> for advertising, stock and interior construction. I remember the
> old shops as having been started on a wing and a prayer of a single
> dreamer, without the obvious guiding hands of investors hovering
> over the operation. I am telling you that Bike Tech in Miami is a
> dead ringer for the old clothing boutique "Charavari" in New York,
> if anyone recalls it.
>
> Garth Libre in Miami Fl.
I guess it all depends on your definition of chainstore and boutique... you weren't ever in L.A. back then? For the ultimate late 70s L.A. bike boutique there was Taylor Platner's Ernie's Bike Shop in Brentwood. They had De Rosa, Merckx, Pinarello and literally not a single clincher or inner tube in the store, only tubulars (sewups) for sale. They were happy to be called elitist.
And of course even back then Bikecology had three stores on the Trendy Westside that carried Masi, Colnago, Mercian, Bob Jackson, Ron Cooper, Allegro in the late 70s early 80s.
Then in the mid 80s there was the famous "Bike Shop Wars" on Warner Blvd. in Huntington Beach, California where Bikecology (5 stores), Buds (five stores, one called BikeTech), and 2 Wheel Transit (three stores) went toe to toe. Alan Goldsmith, Bill McCready, Paul Moore had an old fashion throw down and it made for some interesting case studies in the trade publications. These were the life-style stores you're talking about... LA SoCal style! There were three flagship style bike shops in a two block area (Performance was around the corner in the 90s).
Example of the SuperSale from the Bike Shop Wars:
http://www.friedman.co.nz/
Conrad's in NYC next to the United Nations was another 70s boutique style store; they had nothing but the best of the best (is Sara still around?)!
The more things change the more they stay the same...
Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California
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