Local bicycle shops stay in shape during pandemic
When Orlando’s Track Shack opened back up from the coronavirus shutdown last May, the line to get in stretched around the store.
Customers were “holding old shoes with holes in them needing to replace them,” said owner Betsy Hughes. “We were very busy, but remember we had to limit the number of people in the store.”
Central Florida shops selling gear for walkers, runners and bicyclists were buoyed during a tumultuous 2020 by demand from shoppers who wanted to get outside during the pandemic. Some of those small businesses are now wondering what the future holds as more people get vaccinated and begin to return to normal life.
Bicycle shops like Orange Cycle in Orlando’s College Park neighborhood and Wheel Works in Winter Garden saw spikes in demand last year, followed by supply issues that limited their inventory.
“It’s that one thing that everybody can still get outside and do without any real restrictions, is ride a bike,” said Wheel Works owner Dennis Jones. “People were looking to purchase bikes and they were ready to get pretty much the whole family equipped.”
Business at Wheel Works jumped about 18% in 2020 from the year before, Jones said.
“It could have been a lot more, but again there was this supply and demand issue that we had,” he added.
’Discovered nature’
Orange Cycle’s indoor showroom remains closed because of the pandemic, but the Edgewater Drive store continues to draw customers to a setup outside its back door.
Anthony Poveda, a 21-year-old from Orlando, was there recently looking into a bicycle after a trip to Tennessee sparked an interest in the outdoors.
“I haven’t had a bike,” he said. “What inspired me was when I went up there, I kind of discovered nature.”
While he went hiking in Tennessee, he said he prefers biking over walking in Florida because of the heat.
“Because of the pandemic, you can only go specific places. Obviously, a lot of people decided to go to nature. So in a way the pandemic did affect me in that way,” Poveda said. “Even though it wasn’t biking related, it kind of inspired me to go outside.”
The bicycle shop “sold all the bicycles we could get our hands on” after business went crazy last March, owner Howard Larlee said.
But supply issues have kept Orange Cycle from having its full offerings of bicycles, such as getting a full variety of sizes. Business last year wasn’t as strong as 2019, but it was still very good, Larlee said.
“If we could have had the inventory, it would have been a very, very good year,” he said.
At Track Shack, 2020 sales at the store were down slightly compared to 2019 after facing the temporary closure and reduced capacity because of the pandemic, Hughes said.
“All of a sudden we saw folks who had never had the opportunity to have time to exercise,” Hughes said. “We feel like we were in the best business you could be in because it was fitness.”
Her family’s other business manages running and walking events and was not able to have in-person gatherings from March until December, Hughes said.
That business pivoted to create virtual events where participants ran or walked on their own or with people they regularly saw, and still received a medal and shirt.
“We started producing events virtually that enabled us to retain all our staff,” she said of the event company’s 14 employees. “It also brought a sense of normalcy to our running community.”
’The big question mark’
At Winter Garden’s Wheel Works, Jones said the job now is to keep riders engaged.
“We think probably about half of the new riders that started from the boom are going to continue on because they’re invested,” Jones said.
The future is also on the mind of Larlee at Orange Cycle, who wonders how increased travel and people returning to theme parks will affect his business.
“In our minds that’s the big question mark,” he said. “What are people going to do once they’ve been vaccinated?”