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Frederick attracts bicycling crowd

County bucks national trend with three specialty retailers opening in 20 months

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Tom Fedor⁄The Gazette Cyclists approach the Roddy Road covered bridge at Owens Creek in Thurmont during the Catoctin Challenge bicycle ride to benefit Habitat for Humanity of Frederick County on Saturday morning.

These enthusiasts were cycling not only to raise money in the Catoctin Challenge for Habitat for Humanity’s local chapter, but for pure enjoyment. And to hear them, the hills, country roads and rolling farmland of Frederick County offer plenty of pastoral pedaling pleasure.

‘‘The ride's so beautiful,” said Phil Heffler, chairman of the annual fund-raiser.

Throughout the mid-Atlantic region, Frederick has garnered a reputation as cyclists’ country, drawing serious and recreational pedalers from afar and spurring a proliferation of biking clubs, organized rides and bike shops, a number of which recently have opened in and around Frederick city.

‘‘Frederick is a great place to ride off road, magnificent to ride on road,” said Neil W. Sandler, editor and publisher of Spokes Magazine of Frederick, a monthly magazine published eight times a year for mid-Atlantic cyclists.

Frederick has two of the state’s best five cycling routes, with the 44-mile Three Covered Bridges Cruise listed as the state's top ride, according to the Web site www.trails.com.

Sandler predicted Frederick will become even more of a cycling hot spot should American Floyd Landis — who grew up in Pennsylvania and trained in Frederick County — succeed Lance Armstrong and win this year’s Tour de France, which concludes Sunday in Paris.

‘‘Frederick arrived several years ago,” he said. ‘‘Floyd Landis learned to race bikes in the mountains you can see from Frederick. Frederick is going to be the center of the world after Floyd.”

The City of Frederick itself has experienced a bike shop boom, with three new specialty retailers opening over the past 20 months, including one expected to open this month. Three of the retailers organize rides throughout the county.

Robert Stewart of Dallas said he was glad he came for Saturday’s fund-raising ride, which offered cyclists their choice of 100-, 65- and 50-mile routes, running through Gettysburg.

Calling the area ‘‘beautiful country” for riding, Stewart said, ‘‘The Eastern Seaboard is just beautiful compared to Dallas.”

Stewart was recruited to the ride by Ronnie Eckert of Waldorf, a veteran cyclist of 27 years who has been riding in the Frederick area for the past five years and has participated in past Catoctin Challenges.

‘‘I do it [mostly] for the ride itself and the people here,” Eckert said. ‘‘It's a good cause. It’s the one fund-raising ride I do each year.”

Heffler doesn’t advertise for the Catoctin Challenge, but riders provide the word-of-mouth marketing it needs to draw participants.

‘‘An associate of my wife referred us to the ride,” said David Lamb of Rochester, N.Y., a newcomer to the ride who was recruited by Eckert.

‘‘Habitat for Humanity was a good connection,” Lamb said. ‘‘We do a lot of fund-raising rides.”

Lamb, in turn, recruited two more cyclists, one of whom, Mark Scheere of Winston-Salem, N.C., said he ‘‘went online [and] looked up Catoctin. The course looked very interesting, especially today, 100 miles. A nice course, challenging ride.”

More riders, more stores

More bicyclists means more bike shops, with Frederick bucking the national trend, in which the number of specialty stores is declining. New shops, eager to tap into the $5.6 billion national market, are opening in the city.

The latest is Bicycle Fix in the Westview Promenade on the Buckeystown Pike, which opened in April and is already building a following, said owners Stacy Trisone and Mark Thompson.

Thompson, an Annapolis native, worked in cycling shops in Salt Lake City for almost a decade before returning to Maryland in 2002. Frederick’s cycling scene was a potent lure.

‘‘I came here in the fall of 2002. I was looking for an area to live and found Frederick,” he said. ‘‘I was really excited about the trails.”

Thompson and Trisone declined to discuss numbers, but Thompson said the store ‘‘is at least on target” to turn a profit.

‘‘I think we're ahead of where we thought we'd be,” he said.

Tom and Danielle Rinker opened the Bicycle Escape store in the Shops at Monocacy in Frederick just before the Christmas rush in 2004.

When Tom Rinker was scouting out locations for the store, the 10-year veteran of the cycling industry had definite ideas.

‘‘I was always focused on the Frederick area,” he said.

Rinker, who lives in Mount Airy, said he hopes to be in the black by the end of next year. The store specializes in custom-built bicycles, which can start at $3,000, about 10 times the price of a lower-end, off-the-rack bike.

Customers ‘‘can spend as much as they like for a custom bike,” Rinker said.

Typically, bike sales account for just under half of a retailer’s revenue, according to the dealers association, with the bulk in parts, accessories, repairs and rentals.

Steve Ruck, owner of a small Maryland chain called Bike Doctor, plans to open his eighth location this month, in the Evergreen Square shopping center on the Buckeystown Pike. The store will be his first in Frederick County.

‘‘I've always mountain-biked and rode out that way,” Ruck said from his Arnold store. The Frederick area is ‘‘just awesome for riding. It's a good area for a bike store.”

And there’s room for one more, Ruck said.

‘‘It's a new market for me, and I don't know what the saturation point is,” he said. ‘‘You have to wonder how much is too much, but Trek and some of our other vendors did a study on the area and they thought there was room to expand.”

Ruck also sees an important market for his products.

‘‘One neat thing about the area is that it has a younger clientele,” he said. ‘‘It seems like younger people are moving out there. People in their 30s and 40s are our target age range.”

Tom Pepperone, owner of Wheel Base on North Market Street in the city’s Historic District, has seen other bicycle retailers come and go in his 20 years as proprietor of the city's oldest bike shop, but also sees room for competition.

‘‘All I can say is that Frederick's got two Wal-Marts, two Home Depots and a lot of other retailers,” Pepperone said. ‘‘I think the [industry] growth we've seen in the county is because it's a nice place to ride. There are a lot of small roads that don't carry much traffic, and there's good mountain biking.”

Sandler, the Spokes editor and an avid cyclist himself, said the Frederick bike shop boom is to be expected.

‘‘One or two bike stores [in Frederick] just don't cut it anymore,” he said. ‘‘Business follows the customers. We used to go down to Montgomery County all the time for shopping. Now more and more people are staying [to shop]. Frederick arrived several years ago. Business is just now catching up.”

And the shops do much more for cyclists than sell and fix equipment, he said.

‘‘Bike stores are so great,” Sandler said. ‘‘They tell you about rides [and] races and are places to go [and] get information.”