People are happy to give their retired and little-used bicycles to the Durango Cyclery. In turn, the unpretentious shop is glad to take the neglected bikes, spruce them up and then sell them.
Everyone – former owner, shop, new owner – seems to come out a winner.
It’s a business model that the Cyclery, 143 E. 13th St., has been having success with for a couple of years now. It still sells new bikes and parts, but the ethos of recycling old bikes is making many people, starting with owner Russell Zimmermann, very happy.
“We recycle everything,” Zimmermann said Tuesday morning as he rolled bicycles out for display outside the shop. “Nothing goes to the landfill, including tires and tubes.”
This business model caught the eye of local writer Will Sands, a former owner of The Durango Telegraph, who wrote an in-depth story for Mountain Flyer magazine. The Cyclery is the feature of a nine-page spread called “Building a better bike shop” in the latest Flyer, issue No. 36 for the Gunnison-based periodical.
Zimmermann said the response from the story has been widespread, from locals dropping off their old bicycles to other shops inquiring about how the Cyclery makes the system work.
“It’s been awesome,” he said.
Bikes are priced at anywhere from free to several hundred dollars. It’s dependent on how much work the bike needs and who’s inquiring. Bikes that don’t need labor or parts are free, and the Cyclery has given away a couple hundred, mostly to youths.
Zimmermann said many bikes just take labor in the form of a major overhaul, which runs around $250. If that bike sells for $300, the shop makes money, and the mechanic gets paid. Furthermore, they’ve kept the loop totally local.
“That makes it a local product,” he said.
The concept emerged at the Cyclery several years ago when the shop inherited Melvin Smylie’s bicycles. Smylie had been fixing old bikes and giving them to Durango-area kids for decades until just before he died at age 94 in 2006.
The Cyclery created the Smylie Bike Project, and that morphed into the nonprofit Bicycle Lemonade. But Zimmermann said a for-profit model has proved to work just as well.
“Durango Cyclery can be a business with a conscience,” he said. “I mean, do I really need a board (of directors) to ask if I can give a homeless person a bicycle?”
The current edition of Mountain Flyer, which publishes bimonthly, is available at several local shops. No surprise: There’s a large stack at the Cyclery’s front counter.
johnp@durangoherald.com
