Cycle of life

Popular Whitefish bike shop for sale as owners ponder next move

It was supposed to have been a Merry Piglets Mexican Grill, not Glacier Cyclery.

Plans were to serve savory burritos in a little sidewalk cafe in Whitefish, not turn wrenches on bikes for customers willing to wind their way through to the back room of the old Glacier Mountaineering shop on Central Avenue.

But that was 1982 and Ron and Jan Brunk still had a lot to learn about the turns life can take.

A quarter century later, life at Glacier Cyclery is poised to round yet another bend.

At the end of April, the Brunks listed their business - a successful downtown Whitefish mainstay that's grown into a long-distance bicycling destination - for sale. As bike enthusiasts who shepherded the shop from its infancy through an exuberant childhood into tumultuous teen years and now a well-adjusted adulthood, it's difficult to think about life beyond the bike business.

"It's still my baby and it's kind of hard to let it go," Ron Brunk said.

But after 26 years of working 60- or 70-hour weeks in the busy season so others can be out happily cycling their way through spectacular Flathead summers, he and Jan are tired.

"It's time for this child to fledge out on its own and maybe let it go," he said.

Closing it is absolutely not an option, he said. And if a buyer, or even the right buyer, does not come along, they'll know that a door has been closed and will hold onto the shop.

IT'S JUST one of several downtown Whitefish retail interests that have been making major shifts.

Truby's Wood Fired Pizza closed and is moving to Columbia Falls; another local cafe is looking at taking over Truby's old quarters. Artistic Touch gallery closed, as did Shades of Green clothing, Stuart Jewelers and Flanagan's night club. MSI (Mountain Sports, Inc.) is going out of business.

Burch's One-Hour Photo closed a year back and Mrs. Spoonover's ice-cream parlor is moving there, leaving room for Back Door General Store to stretch into the old Spoonover's space.

A block north in the Railway District, Bali furniture and jewelry seller Cantik Interiors locked its doors.

Cornerhouse Grill went dark, but will reopen as a Mediterranean bistro. S.M. Bradford Co., a Bigfork clothing store, will open a shop near Whitefish's signature downtown clock tower.

Each downtown change - with its own impact on the bigger Whitefish picture - carries its own story.

This is Glacier Cyclery's.

RON AND Jan Brunk were newlyweds when they left Jackson, Wyo., and headed for Whitefish in November 1981. Armed with their wedding gift of recipes, a business plan and the blessing of the original Merry Piglets' owner, for whom Jan had managed a cafe in Jackson, they scouted for a northern cafe location.

When they pulled into town Ron, a bike mechanic in the past, had noticed an old Second Street building with a path to one side that would make a great bike shop. But a bike shop wasn't on their radar. They continued cafe-scouting but the restaurant never materialized.

To pay the bills, Ron started knocking on bike-shop doors. Nothing came through. So he worked out a deal with Mike and Rhonda Fitzgerald and in March 1982 set up his own back-room bike repair shop at the rear of their Glacier Mountaineering business on Central Avenue.

"The challenge of it was we had repair bikes coming through a clothing shop," Brunk said. "And they were dirty repair bikes."

He was doing "tons of repairs," he said, and sold a few special-order bikes for riders willing to wait out the shipping time.

"Then the second year in business I really went out on a limb and ordered 12 bikes," he remembered with a twist of humor. Somebody told him he'd never make a go of it by ordering only 12, so he boosted his inventory and ended up selling maybe 50 that year.

BUSINESS GOT busier. Jan started doing sales and bookwork. They needed more space than the back room allowed, so they scouted again for real estate. A "for sale" sign went out on the little Second Street building that once was the Great Northern saloon and, in spring 1984, Glacier Cyclery squeezed in between a corner service station and the Whitefish Furniture store.

"We were probably the only bike shop in the country that had shag carpet," Brunk said. "We wanted to mow it."

They tore down an old shed out back and built a storage garage. As it turned out, they desperately needed it.

Setting up shop just at the front end of the mountain bike craze, their timing was key.

By the third year they were selling far more mountain bikes than road bikes, and had hired a whiz-kid mechanic named Pete Kurtz. In the fourth or fifth year, Nancy Persons came on staff. A few years later, Trevor Stolte started as a mechanic.

"In its heyday that was a pretty darn good crew," Brunk said.

Business again got busier. Glacier Cyclery got even more cramped.

Around 2000, the Brunks bought the furniture store that by then had been sitting empty for a decade. They divided it in two, remodeled and moved into the east half around 2001, leased out the other half and tore down their old shop to make way for a courtyard.

Staff expanded again when Mike Meador, then Lee Stanley and Tyler Tourville signed on. Growth continued, so Glacier Cyclery expanded into the west half of their building.

Five years ago, Tim Killen and Clay Morrison joined the staff. Six others have been hired in the past couple years.

IT'S THESE key employees that have driven much of Glacier Cyclery's growth.

"I think the employees make the business more than Ron and Jan do," Brunk said.

The Brunks don't have a job application form. Resumes have been handed in on note cards, legal pads, whatever's handy. What they're going for is the right "feel."

"More than skills, we're looking for the right attitude and personality," he said. "That's more important because it's customer service, it's helping people out."

Sure, they're trying to sell stuff - "if you've seen somebody riding with it," he said, "we probably sell it" - but it's the care for customers, the work ethic, the passion for the sport that count.

"You can learn a product. It's just product, it's teachable," he said.

"On the mechanic end, it's really hard to find a good mechanic. And we've had some really good mechanics," starting with Kurtz, whom Brunk said was phenomenal. "They're attention-to-detail guys."

But the bike-sports industry is enthusiast-driven rather than financially driven, so when mechanics get older and need the income to support a home and family they tend to move on to other ventures. Ironically, it takes years of working as a bike mechanic to lead the pack for quality.

KEEPING GREAT mechanics means finding a way to keep them busy year-round, not an easy task for essentially a seasonal business.

Adding fitness equipment when they added sales floor space helped. Their bike season would be March through September, they figured, and the fitness business would fill the slot from October through spring. Even though March has turned out to be their biggest fitness-sales month, competing with their busy month for bike repairs, Brunk still backs the decision.

Broadening product lines has been something bike shops in the Flathead have turned to in order to stay afloat.

"It used to take a 10,000 or 15,000 population to support one small shop, and now we have several shops," Brunk said, putting the number around 10 or 11 now. He's witnessed the shops ebb and flow over the years and figures five or six probably is the sustainable number here.

Glacier Cyclery maintains good relationships with the competition and teams up on special projects. And they're saddened by failures of start-up shops.

"I always feel bad for them because it's the end of their hopes and dreams," Brunk said. "But I also feel bad by myself because those bikes are going out on the market at cost (in the liquidation) instead of having customers buy mine at full price."

THIS TRANSITION in Glacier Cyclery brings on similar mixed emotions for the Brunks.

After a four-month bicycle mission trip to Mozambique this past winter, the Brunks waited to see if they would come home rejuvenated and excited about their own business.

They didn't. So, once again, they considered selling.

"It's not anything new. We've visited this in our minds off and on for a number of years," he said. Each time in the past, they've found new vigor in an expansion, a new point-of-sale system.

"It's a big shop now; it's a nice shop. This is as nice as any big-city shop," Brunk said. "We've been involved in growing it to a place to where it is now. But we've done it for a long time and we're kind of tired. It needs some fresh ideas, some new ideas."

He says he's a "worker bee" and has no intention of retiring, just moving on to the next phase of life. Or happily staying involved with Glacier Cyclery if that turns out to be the right thing.

"I don't think the shop should change drastically," he said. "It should still be here and do a lot of the things it does. It's a real asset to the community."

The Brunks have been handing over decision-making responsibilities and daily management to their employees gradually, and are pleased with the results.

It only makes the joke he and Jan share between themselves a little easier to contemplate: "We keep saying we sure would want to have a summer free in the Flathead."

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