Mission Bay Multisport is the "busiest" tri store you'd ever visit, and you don't even need to visit to know it. When I get proprietor Bill Linneman on the phone, I can feel in the tone of his voice how many shoppers he's got in the store. He sells more tri bikes in a day than most triathletes ever own in their lives. Wetsuits? Let's just say he could have outfitted the entire Mrs. T's starting field by now. That's amateurs and pros, the whole field.

There are now two Mission Bay stores––the original in Elgin (40 miles outside of Chicago) and the newer store in downtown Chicago. At first the downtown store didn't sell either Trek or Cannondale, because these territories are taken by other dealers. That's still the case with Cannondale, but now the downtown store sells pretty much what you'll find in Elgin: Trek, QR, Cervelo, Felt, Kestrel, Litespeed, Kuota, Guru, LeMond, and a variety of other bikes. You'll also find lots of wetsuits (QR, XTerra, Ironman, T1, Orca), race wheels, accessories, and everything "triathlon," and you'll find them at both stores.

Mission Bay is both a walk-in and a mail-order source. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: Mission Bay has several seasoned sales & service folks to buy from. Also, they sell anything tri, and are the #1 or #2 top seller nationally for a lot of top brands. They Elgin store has been voted top bike store in the Chicago 'burbs by readers of Windy City Sports for the umpteenth year in a row. This was the first retailer to sign up for our first ever FIST workshop. Did they send a mechanic or a salesman? Nope. The two owners decided to get FIST certified.

Cons: The Elgin store sells everything, it's a full service store (the downtown Chicago store is more strictly high-end). If it's the height of the season, don't expect them ever to be sitting around waiting to spend an uninterrupted afternoon with you. If you want to be sucked up to for a few hours before dropping a wad of money, visit them from October thru February, when it's a bit slower and you can really take the time to spec out your ideal bike.

Nytro Multisport is owned by Craig Turner. There are more Jaguar, Mercedes, and BMW dealerships per capita in Southern California than anyplace in the world, and Nytro fits right in. Turner is a connoisseur and not just of bikes. Being a connoisseur is just his nature. He just traded in his Porsche Boxster for a '66 Ford Cobra, if that's any insight into his sense of style.

Anybody else comes to Southern California they've got to go to Disneyland. A triathlete comes here from anywhere in the world the first place he's got to go is Nytro, and for good reason. Does your LBS have a full run of Lotus, Hotta, Beresford, and Corima bikes on the floor? These are the bikes no one else in the hemisphere has. Then there's QR, C'dale, Guru, Litespeed, Merlin, Cervelo, XLab, Colnago (and what a run of Colnago!), Felt, and a dozen more brands.

Wetsuits? Nytro's got everything. Apparel? A deep stock of De Soto, Sugoi,, Garneau, Rip 'n Hammer, Zoot. Wheels? If it goes 'round Nytro carries it.

Nytro also has The Catalog––over 600 items with a listing of what they are, what they're made of, what they weigh, what iterations they come in, and what they cost. Many other retailers get the annual Nytro catalog just to help them figure out what the hell all this tri stuff is. For breadth of multisport-related knowledge and inventory, nobody but nobody beats Nytro, and the prices are right in line as well. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: Craig'srew has built Ironman bikes for most of the top men's and women's finishers in recent memory, has all the hot parts, and stocks deep. When Craig can't find the right part, he has it made himself.

Cons: You can buy a C'dale here, but no Trek. Were you to ask us two or three years ago, we'd have listed a variety of other negatives, such as a difficulty to get salespeople on the phone if you want to buy from them mail order, and the occasional disinteristed salesman when you walk in the shop. We'd have also said that Nytro doesn't expo as often as they ought. But none of that applies anymore. Owner Craig Turner has worked diligently over the past two years to right all of that, and he has. Nytro Multisport is now the San Diego shop most likely to expo, and it has a friendly and helpful staff. The phone is answered, and customers are greeted with a friendly face when walking in. Very few negatives here.

Edge Cyclesports is the shop formed by former Bicycles Etc. manager Hank Iglesias. The old shop was a large dealer of Merlin, Trek, Quintana Roo and other brands, a real pro bike fixture in South Orange County, CA. But it was bought by a large chain, and Hank split off to keep the pro thing alive. He has quickly gained a deep & large following in the region. He is also about the nicest guy you'd every want to know. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: Knows every aspect of the business intimately. Employs a top-notch mechanic. Stocks what he carries deep. Travels to all SoCal races. Is equally adept at selling/fitting/maintaining road or tri.

Cons: Doesn't carry the big flagships (Trek/C'Dale), doesn't ship much out of the area.

R&A This Brooklyn shop is a mega store for pro bikes and probably has more bikes in stock in the dead of winter than your LBS will sell in a decade. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: R&A carries it all. Deep, with shipments to every US state, Europe, Latin America, Pluto and Saturn. Albert Cabbad is F.I.S.T. certified, and this shop has become a big part of the local community, regularly flying in bigwigs from Cervelo (Gerard Vroomen), Quintana Roo (Herbert Krabel) and others, to meet with the New York Triathlon community.

Cons: What was a shop big in volume, small in staff, now no longer emphasizes sales to the excusion of consumer education. R&A has become a more well-rounded operation. The previous rap in this shop — big on sales, less big on service — is no longer valid. R&A is worth a visit.

Keith's Tri Shop is owned by a former schoolteacher (Keith, of course), and he has admirably made the transition from a person who "likes to help people" to rank capitalist, which is to say he is a good businessman. But he hasn't lost the human touch, as any of his customers will tell you. Keith has a strong following of loyal customers far outside his home base of North Carolina, and he is a fixture on the expo scene in the Southeast. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: Keith stocks deep in the core product tri lines, is omnipresent on the race expo scene, and is quite price-competitive.

Cons: Not as experienced a bike operation as either of his biggest regional competitor, Cid Cardoso to the north, but Keith makes up for it by very simply working his arse off to make his customers happy. Keith will probably not be able to match either of the aforementioned shops' ability to expertly build up an expensive race machine; he's better off as a supplier to those who are buying a mid-priced bike or who have their own bike mechanic skills.

Inside Out Sports is owned by Cid Cardoso, Jr. Cid is not simply a very adept businessman, but is a highly regarded ultra-cyclist and triathlete.

Pros: Cid Cardoso has assembled a formidable staff and has truly the most versatile tri shop in America, bar none, when you consider that his is not only a top mid-Atlantic seller of high-end tri bikes, parts and wetsuits, but that Inside Out, with its three stores in North Carolina and Virginia, is one of the prominent specialty sellers of performance running footwear and soft goods.

Cons: Very hard to find fault anywhere with this operation. Inside Out started out as mainly a soft-good store, but has migrated into being a full-service bike shop. Whereas it used to be a full-service soft goods store—running shoes included—that sold some bikes, it has for quite some time been a full bike shop that sells all manner of soft goods—rare. Inside Out is also, as of this writing (early 2003) the official retailer at the North American Ironman races.

Tri Zone is not the place to go if you want to walk in and get fitted for a bike. It is not a walk-in shop at all, in fact, but is omnipresent at race expos in Southern and Central California, and is a force online. It is the biggest customerr in the U.S. for De Soto clothing, which is a testament to how much it sells in the soft-goods arena. If it's a trinket or doodad you need, if it's clothing, wetsuits, and similar paraphernalia, this may be the best place to go. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: They are well-liked by their customers. They are of course a triathlon specialist.

Cons: My usual negative statement against the specialists--their strength is also their weakness, insofar as one will not find bikes on the floor, or a floor at all. These folks are either virtual (internet) or they're mobile (race expo). They're not your local LBS.

Enduro Sport has undoubtedly earned the reputation of being the premier tri shop in Canada. Dan Rishworth is a well-respected and knowledgeable seller of tri-specific goods. This shop is the biggest retailer worldwide for Cervelo, and is a significant seller of Quintana Roo and other North American brands. This store also swallowed up Steve's Bike & Fitness, and now owns and runs both retail "brands." (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: Carries products legitimately considered the best for multi-sport athletes, finds a way to keep pricing very competitive for the Canadian pocketbook, which is hard considering the beating in recent years the Loony has taken vs the US greenback. Stocks deep. Great service.

Cons: It's a Canadian store, so it has it's issues concerning how to get mail ordered products across the border to U.S. customers. But that's the shop's problem, not yours.

Bike Nashbar is now owned by Performance. We suspect––though we do not know––that the reason Performance bought Nashbar is to fold all the mail order business into Nashbar. That makes, perhaps, for an arms-length relationship between the two enterprises, and allows Performance to get out from under the need to charge sales tax to mail order customers in states in which Performance had a store front presence.

Pros: Service and selection are superb; you rarely hear anybody saying anything bad about Nashbar's service, and they have a better selection of soft goods than just about any mail-order company. In general, the praise is a bit more effusive for Nashbar vs Performance.

Cons: Colo Cyclist has them on the frame kit thing. Nashbar just isn't interested in the tri thing; they're more likely the choice for the ubiquitous need.

B&L Bike has a famous pedigree. The original B&L Bike Shop was the official store of the Hawaiian Ironman for many, many years, and remains so. The other B&L location is in Solana Beach, and under various names and owners this store has also been a triathlon mainstay. The two stores are now under one ownership, and the same owner also is a (minor) investor in Griffen Bicycles, which is one of B&L's more important lines. A fair number of B&L employees came over from Nytro Multisport (less than five miles away) and the two shops have always been hot competitors (which makes them both better). (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: The shop is a big seller of Trek and, of course, Griffen bicycles. It also sells a lot of Quintana Roos. Zoot apparel and Ironman wetsuits are also stocked and sold in deep numbers, and the online store is spiffy.

Cons: The store doesn't have the depth of products that its competitor Nytro carries. It might argue that Trek alone takes the place of a half-dozen lesser vendors, and it would be right. Unfortunately for the online shopper, though, Trek doesn't allow its bikes to be sold mail order, so those who might rely on B&L as a mail order source would find its offerings not as broad as, say, Nytro or Mission Bay. This is also the case in other categories––wetsuits, for example. It is up to the buyer to decide whether backing fewer brands is better than having a wider array.

Davis Wheelworks is a large Cervelo dealer formerly owned by former Cervelo-sponsored rider Steve Larsen. It's also a Cannondale seller and has always been a big Specialized shop. This shop has some real pro-type lines like Seven, Serotta and De Rosa. It's also got wetsuits and the other sorts of things triathletes want, and it's got its own tri team, the Mad Cows, with upwards of a hundred members already. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: This has been a good shop for many years, pre and post Larsen, and continues to be. It's got good lines, a good fit studio, and FIST-certified fitters.

Cons: The shop has had three owners, with three sets of philosophies, over the past decade. That lack of continuity means the shop must rebuild its message each time, including under today's owners. But, these owners have been with the shop a long time as employees, and probably represent the strongest management team the shop has had in some decades.

Gateway Bicycles in Portland, Oregon is owned by Mike Healy, who is himself a triathlete (always a good sign). He raced his first Kona in 1985 and has completed the most recent two IM Floridas. His shop is certainly the only one which specializes in tandems and triathlon. He sells over 100 tandems a year and many more tri bikes than that. Gateway is a very large Cervelo and QR dealer, and also sells Colnago, Aegis and Litespeed. Bianchi and C'dale are its mainstays at the lower end. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: They practice what they preach. Also, solid finances help. Healy owns the building he's in, and next door to Gateway (in the same building) is Tri Sport, which is a running store, and a soft goods seller. Tri Sport is where the wetsuits are sold, and a lot of them are sold there: QR and Orca for example. Healy has some form of financial relationship with Tri Sport and the more we hear of what goes on in this building (Orca's U.S. warehouse is also run out of here) the more we think this is turning into the sort of tri-specific juggernaut one thinks of when one hears names like Mission Bay and Inside Out Sports.

Cons: The insularity of Portland might occasionally keep the newest and hottest in ideas and products from this shop.

The Spokesman is the other shop in Louisiana (it's in Mandeville, a suburb of New Orleans, where as Bicycle Sport is up north in Shreveport). The owner is Steve Sperier. He was a principal in another tri-specific store—Playground Earth—which has since bitten the dust. Specialized, Felt, Cervelo, are the flagships. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: FIST-certified as of March, '03, carries tri-specific apparel as well: Garneau, Zoot, and Pearl. Lots of multisporters hanging around there. Even the mechanic, Mark, did Kona in the early '80s.

Cons: No wetsuits as of yet, so you can't get everything there.

Bikesport is in Dearborn, Michigan. Its owner, Tom Demerly, walks the walk and has been an active—make that activist—owner for ten years. He is a regular on this site's forum, he publishes his own product reviews, and writes his own commentaries. He is enthusiastic about this sport and its equipment and technology, and he pays attention to detail. He not only is himself FIST certified, he certifies his staff. His is the consensus best tri shop within a 300-mile radius. (Contact information for the above dealer).

Pros: This shop can take care of your bike needs from A to Z, that is, with regard to bike and accessory purchases, road and tri bike fits, service on road and tri products, pretty much everything. Bikesport carries good tri-specific lines such as Cervelo, Litespeed, Cannonale, Quintana Roo, Felt, and this is the ONLY shop worldwide, as of this writing, that carries Yaqui tri bikes. This shop probably has the most up-to-date and useful website. This is a full service tri shop, with wetsuits, apparel, and so forth. It participates in expos and helps with the local races.

Cons: There is a credo that some smart businessmen live by: "Take care of the downside, and the upside will take care of itself." Tom Demerly has actively gone around rooting out anything that might be a negative in his operation. His time is spent shoring up his weaknesses instead of glorying in his strengths. He learns. He has no blind spots. As a result it is hard to find one negative thing to write about his operation.

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