Bike man comes full circle: Changing gears to stay in the peloton

By NANCY KIMBALL

The Daily Inter Lake

Jim Lekander wasn't fond of the idea of a 13-year-old kid cutting into his bicycle-repair business.

Lekander had founded Bikology on some prime North Main Street real estate in Kalispell in 1972, at a time when the only other bike-shop competition in town came from Wheaton's. By 1974, Lekander caught wind of a popular back-yard bike mechanic named Bruce Evans, who just happened to be one of his regular customers.

The "back yard," in this case, was the sun room of young Evans' family home.

"I had been doing bike repairs in my own house," Evans recalled as he looked back over a career of selling and wrenching on bicycles that had its start more than three decades ago.

Now, with the purchase of the original Bikology building last winter and the opening of the revived shop this spring, he and his wife, Dawn Duane Evans, brought that career full circle.

Evans was a familiar sight on two wheels around his hometown back in the early 1970s, and had figured out how to fix a flat and make other repairs. Friends and neighbors who knew he liked bikes took to dropping their own bikes off at Evans' home for a quick fix.

"I lived in kind of a big house on the east side, and we had this sun room," Evans said of his folks' home. "I usually had 10 or 12 bikes in the sun room."

It was a typical kid operation, the kind in which a rock glued to a bike stand worked just fine for holding bicycles being worked on. But he was getting his hands on more of Kalispell's bikes as time passed and word spread.

So the next time young Bruce Evans popped into the Bikology shop for a bag of brake pads, Lekander cornered him.

"Are you taking my business?" Evans recalled the shop proprietor asking him, probably with a bit of humor. He didn't think he was, Evans replied. In fact, it wasn't anything a 13-year-old kid even thought about.

Lekander took a pull on his pipe and asked Evans another question: "You want a job?"

With that, Evans launched his formal bike-shop career.

He would mop floors, break down cardboard boxes and assemble bicycles for Lekander, then leave his Bikology job to help his parents clean up at Leo's Lazy Lion, their drive-in restaurant.

The bike career eventually gave way to dreams of becoming an airplane mechanic. In 1981, Evans headed for Helena to train for an air frame and power plant license.

But college students need cash, so he took a job at Capital Sports and Western selling bikes, skis and more. As he recounted it, the store had sold 36 bicycles the year before Evans hired on; his first year, they sold 150. His second year, it was 250.

He credits his own enthusiasm and the industry's timing in the market. It was on the front end of the mountain-bike craze.

As he sold bicycles, accessories and repairs, Evans honed his sales style.

Even today when a customer ambles in, he admonishes his employees, never approach them with, "Can I help you?" It nearly guarantees an automatic close-down, he said. Instead, say hello - an almost sure-fire opener, he insists, that sets the shopper at ease. Then follow it with lots and lots of service.

It worked for Evans, and helped launch him into a time when he was the guy in charge.

At Capital Sports, he had gotten to know the Peugeot bike dealer. That dealer then bought Wheel Sport in Spokane and, in 1987, hired Evans to run the store that sold 3,000 bikes a year.

He stayed there until 1990. Family concerns outweighed other options then and drew him back to Kalispell.

Once home again, he bought the Bikology business from Lekander, who had developed a stronger interest in his sailboat and harbor business than his bicycle trade.

Bikology's dollar sales volume doubled in Evans' first season. He credits, in large part, his "powerhouse staff," including young and energetic local bicyclists Caleb Jordt and Craig Eff. His employees during that period averaged a 4 1/2-year tenure at Bikology.

"All my staff has come back in and helped" later on, he said. "They were young, sharp, just nice people."

Other good things happened at the shop.

He met his wife when she overcame her fear factor and walked into the shop that she had assumed was for elite cyclists only. She was on a quest for a Yakima roof rack. Evans offered his help and, eventually, his hand.

At one point, Bikology was in the mix with 11 local bike shops. But what distinguished his, Evans said, was its long-standing name, its location and longtime customers associating the teenage Evans with his role as grown-up owner.

It wasn't all roses, though. Evans said the business had dwindled over the years and needed some scrubbing-up to rebuild it.

When he took over, with his experience gained in Spokane, "the place had a pulse," he said.

"We had really sharp young people," he said. "It's extremely important … Customer service - with a small business like what we have - it's the edge you have over" big stores.

With a staff "really excited to be working in a bike store," he sharpened that edge. Location helped, too.

"In the '70s and '80s when cycle touring was in a huge boom," Bikology was listed in all the brochures along the national routes, he said. "When they were heading east, this was the last stop before … Minneapolis."

Nine years after buying the Bikology business, Evans was ready to buy the building it was in but couldn't agree with Lekander on a price tag. So in fall 1998 he moved from the corner of North Main and East First Street over to East Idaho Street beside Mailboxes Etc., now the UPS Store.

Despite the move and a fire season in 1999, business stayed at a typical level. But when the Department of Transportation rebuilt Idaho Street the next year, business tanked. Only three customers found their way to Bikology from mid-July through mid-September, he said.

He closed shop, ran a handyman business for a couple years, then sold advertising and did production duties for KOFI Radio for five years.

But those bicycles never went away.

He'd come home only to find random bikes lined up in his driveway, with notes attached explaining the repairs needed and leaving a number to call when he was finished.

It was inevitable, he and his wife realized, so last year they started mulling a re-open of Bikology. They targeted a pre-Christmas opening date as they looked for a building which, among other criteria, was on the east side of Main Street so they could access Woodland Park for test rides.

Serendipity stepped in when the old Bikology building - on the east side of Main - came up for sale.

It added six months to their timeline, but it made for the perfect fit. They retrofitted the shop to give it the feel of Bikology's early days, slapped on almost 60 gallons of exterior paint, and unlocked the doors a week before their May 1 target just to take advantage of the great biking weather that came along right then.

Evans admitted he wasn't ready for the onslaught, but sold 22 bikes and took in 68 repairs in the first three days.

It hasn't slowed since.

More than one customer, he said, was surprised to learn that Bikology's original location had closed for a number of years - then went on to swap stories of their first bike bought there, or the 10-speed bike Evans built for them years ago.

It's just a part of the community to them.

And it's the way Evans likes it.

"The fact that we're back is testament to the fact that we want to be here," he said. "I think this is what I was meant to do."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com