- ONLINE RETAILERS who service the tri-specfic community.
- F.I.S.T.-CERTIFIED tri bike fitters.
- CONTACT INFORMATION for the dealers below.
- GUIDELINES for these pages.
- INDEX of all retailer profiles.
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Excel Sports is in that nether region of mail order—it's not a huge enterprise like Performance, but it's a lot bigger than your LBS, most likely. They compete against Colorado Cyclist in mail order, and of the two they might be a bit more technically minded (the latter is big and broad, and therefore has more ground to cover). Excel Sports is both a mail order outlet and a local retailer. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: These guys have a pretty gig going—both walk-in and mail order—and they're technical. No lunch-money college telemarketers here. It's rare to hear anything short of raves about their online customer service people. Co-owner Andy Ames is a very accomplished duathlete and is responsible for making sure both the retail store and the mail order side understands multisport. Excel also sells Cervelo locally (and nationally), and has most of Cervelo's SKUs on the floor. Furthermore, Excel buys mostly frames from Cervelo (at the high end) and because it buys components in such volume, both the price and availability of a Cervelo spec'd just the way you want it is available from Excel, both in Boulder and via mail order. Excel Sports is also a good multisport citizen, sponsoring the Mile High Duathlon Series and the Harvest Moon Triathlon.
Cons: Not a tri specialist, so don't expect a treatise on bike fit. They're going to know a lot about road racing, and is less a tri-specific store than, say, Big Ring. They don't have wetsuits, nor a lot of tri specific apparel and accessories (tho a bit of Speedo, Hind and Pearl). Also, this place is high-end. Ultegra and up. Not much entry-level here.
Colorado Cyclist is in Colorado Springs. They aren't tri specialists. But if you're the right kind of buyer, you should know these people. I might also mention that they are the bane of the bike world so far as retailers are concerned. But that's good for consumers, right? By right buyer I mean if you pretty much never need to set foot in your LBS for bike repair service, if you've got a full set of Campy and Var tools in your garage, etc., you are the right buyer. That's if you're buying mail order. There is a retail store as well, and it's similar to what Boulder has going with Excel—a walk-in customer has access to everything that's in the mail order warehouse. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: These people have cornered the market on good service, good prices, excuse me, great prices (on certain parts, esp Shimano-type stuff), and they've got it all in stock in their 40 gajillion square-foot warehouse.
Cons: Whether you're lucky enough to get the odd tricathalete salesman on the phone who works there, that's the crapshoot. Do not rely on these people to spend hours fitting you up properly on the phone, or explaining the pros & cons of Syntace vs Profile. They don't expo, they don't answer in-depth tri tech questions, and so forth. They don't have many tri-specific lines, except for accessories. They were put on earth to move a mountain of Shimano, etc., and they'll do it by the time UPS comes, if you please. And if you walk into the retail store, again, it's not triathlon oriented.
Big Ring is only 15 minutes from Denver and less than a half-hour from Boulder so, as a destination store, it's nicely placed. This has been the premier tri shop in the Front Range for the five years it's been open. Owners Scott and Kevin cut their teeth working for Bill Linneman at Mission Bay Multisport in Chicagoland. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: Big Ring has gone from a tri-specific store to a full-service shop, and is Cannondale's largest dealer in Colorado. It's got a very competent bike fitter and good wrenches on staff. It is the one store that is evident at all the races with an expo booth. Bike brands include Kestrel, QR, Litespeed, Giant, and a lot of C'dale. You'll also find wetsuits from QR, T1 and Orca. Apparel: De Soto, Shebeest, Louis Garneau, Sugoi, and Zoot.
Cons: This is shop is under a bit of competitive pressure. It used to be a Cervelo dealer, now Wheat Ridge has Cervelo in Denver and Excel has it in Boulder. Yes, you can do well without Cervelo, but you've got to have something to take its place. It has QR, but so does Campus Cycles, Bicycle Village and Bike Source. That leaves Cannondale and Kestrel to take up the slack for Big Ring, and C'dale is not quite ready for prime time as a Cervelo replacement, and Kestrel doesn't have a full enough range of tri-specific bikes.
Campus Cycles (
October, 03) is the Avis of shops in Denver—they aren't #1, but they try harder. At least that's true of its commitment to triathlon. The big, impressive shops in Denver are Wheat Ridge, Bicycle Village and Bike Source. Each of these megastores has a dynamic bike fit element, with fit studios and as many as a dozen Serotta-qualified bike fitters. Campus Cycles is smaller, but it has an impressive line-up of brands and services. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: This shop has made a conscious decision to bite off triathlon as a target market. It carries Giant, Quintana Roo, Litespeed, Felt, LeMond, and Orbea bikes. But this needs further explanation. Giant and Felt are similar companies in their offerings, but they're treated differently here. As for Giant, none of its tri bikes are stocked, only road. It's opposite for Felt. Yes, Campus Cycles parses each manufacturer's line carefully, but manager Bobby Verenna knows what he's doing. When he picks Felt over Giant, there's no ego there. He's the one who built and spec'd each road or tri Giant. He was Giant's road product manager for the last five years. The shop also carries QR wetsuits, and Zoot and TYR apparel. And one other thing: Verenna and longtime shop rat Ned Grant are both FIST-certified tri bike fitters and, as of this writing (for what it's worth) these are the only FIST-certified fitters in Colorado.
Cons: This shop does not carry the flagship road lines like Trek, Specialized or C'dale, nor does it have the Gucci fit studios like Wheat Ridge or Bike Source.
Bike Source (February, 04) is a multi-store chain, with outlets in cities like Columbus, Ohio, Charlotte, North Carolina and Kansas City, Missouri. This particular store is unique, in that it bought and absorbed local retailer Mammoth Multisport, and 2000 of its 21,000 square feet of space is devoted to a triathlon boutique (pretty big boutique). Jason Clark is the store manager, and he was a principal in Mammoth, so this store's gravity is bent in the direction of triathlon. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: Bike lines include Litespeed, Merlin, Giant, Cdale, Specialized, Quintana Roo, Kestrel, Griffen and Cervelo. Wetsuits: QR, Orca, T1 and apparel includes De Soto, Orca and Zoot. This is only speculation, but it would not be a surprise to find out that Jason Clark studied Big Ring's model before making decisions on what brands to carry. In a certain sense, Bike Source has much of what Big Ring has, and it's a few minutes closer if you live in Denver.
Cons: Bike Source is big and flashy, with a nice fit studio, and an attached fitness center. But we've seen big and flashy before, haven't we? Bike Source as a specialty store for tri is a new entity, and the proof is not in the plan, but in the execution. Stay tuned.
Wheat Ridge (February, 06) is one of the truly great bike shops in America. Which makes it one of the truly good tri shops. It's routinely voted best, or near best, shop in America as determined by the bike industry. It's well-managed, well-stocked, wealthy, and committed to excellence. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: It has no fewer—so we're told—of a dozen Serotta-certified bike fitters on staff. They work in a truly state-of-the-art fitting facility. The shop carries Cervelo, Trek, Serotta and Specalized bikes, certainly enough to take care of any triathlete's base needs.
Cons: Meager on tri accessories. No wetsuits. Also, while they are very good at road bike fit, this can work against a shop's ability to see the difference between the needs of a road rider and those of a triathlete. We haven't yet seen evidence that this shop understands the difference. Wheat Ridge is a gorilla in this industry. If there is a Trek analog in retail, Wheat Ridge is it. But Trek only exists in triathlon when its retailers can sell a road bike to a triathlete. Will Wheat Ridge end up the same way? Stay tuned for updates.
Bicycle Village is a 5-store chain, but there are only two stores that bear serious mention if you're a triathlete. These are the Aurora and Boulder stores. The Aurora location is now a superstore, with 30,000 square feet and 350 built road bikes on the floor (and road is only a fourth of its market). We include its Boulder store not because of what it is, but what it will be in 2004. Everything tri in the Aurora store will be floored in Boulder, though not in such numbers. This is a smart move, as the retail landscape for triathletes in Boulder has devolved, even as it has improved in Denver. The time is ripe for a store to make a serious tri-specific move in Boulder. (Contact information for the above dealer).
Pros: Bike lines include Quintana Roo, Litespeed, Trek, Specialized, Felt (tri only) and Guru. Specifically, this store is a very big American Bicycle Group customer (Litespeed, QR and Merlin) and it does quite a lot of Guru business, especially in custom bikes. The Aurora store manager, Scott, owns a QR Caliente. Also stocked are QR and Orca wetsuits, and De Soto, Zoot, and Sugoi apparel. The Rocky Mountain Triathlon club meets in this shop's spacious meeting room, and the store has brought in Chris Legh and Tony DeBoom to speak during 2003.
Cons: Every store in Colorado claims it has the world's fit experts, but they are all pretty sure their competitors give a comparatively sucky fit. Does Bicycle Village have the magic fit bullet for triathletes? Don't know. Otherwise, there aren't many drawbacks to this shop, with the exception that there are a few brands missing (C'dale, Cervelo, Softride). But you can't stock everything..
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