Matt: The bike shop has been around for almost 15 years and we started the store literally out of me losing my last job. The store that I was working at before was making cutbacks and doing different things, going in different directions. My dad and I had already been talking about opening a bike shop and this just provided an opportunity for me to do so, so that’s really where it came out of.

It had always been one of my dreams to own a bicycle store.  I’ve been working in a bike shop since I was 11 years old, started working in a bike shop in Vista, CA because the guy was sponsoring me for BMX racing, and he says hey if I’m going to be giving you stuff, you’re going to learn something too.  So I worked there from the time I was 11 years old until I was 16 and then he gave me a job, a paying job, and then it was about a year later I got a job at a local store in Escondido, CA because we lived in Escondido.

I started mountain biking when I was about 13 or 14 because it was a meld between my two loves, which was road racing which I had done for a while - racing mountain bikes was a mix of the road and BMX.  I started doing that more and more and ended up getting a couple jobs with some race teams as a junior mechanic and getting more experience.

Some of the bike shop owners really took me under their wing and sent me to different schools, United Bicycle Institute, Barnet Bicycle School, UCF training.  So it was really amazing as it progressed.


My time in the industry has been pretty incredible and the industry has been really good to me.  A lot of people, my best friends to this day I’ve met through the bicycle industry. You know it’s amazing and there are so many different people to share so many different passions and it’s an awesome thing to see.

Matt: Our customer is pretty broad based, we’re not a specialty store in any one realm of the bicycle industry, we’re not a road shop, a mountain shop, or a BMX shop, we are an all-around bike shop.  We do anything from your kids first bike, which is a shrinking market because more people are buying WalMart bikes.  Personally I’d never let my kid ride on one of those bikes.   We do top level BMX bikes, we do low and entry level BMX bikes, we do low-end mountain bikes starting at $219 all the way up to 9 to 12 thousand dollar mountain bikes and much the same in the road bike realm you know starting at $450 all the way up to 12, 13, 14 thousand dollars.  We do a vast array of bikes and it takes a lot of expertise and a lot of time and luckily I’ve been able to find people that are very skilled in those areas and just meld them in with my own personal experience through the industry.

You know I’d  have to say in sheer volume, we do more BMX than anything but as far as total dollars, it’s very, very evenly split because BMX bikes, you know, the average is $369 that we sell, so at $369 it takes up a lot  of those BMX bikes to make up for one $11,000 custom Look.  The bike we’re looking at right here, this one’s a $7,000 Elsworth Mountain Bike that I’m custom building for a customer so we have every genre of the bicycle industry in here.  Not so much of the downhill at this time, we do have more  and more people asking us for it but I haven’t really found enough people  to really dedicate the money or floor space

Honestly, there’s downhill courses, yes, more free ride type courses, and up in Fontana, CA - the downhill series up there is pretty big.  There are a lot of people that race that downhill series.  It’s not what it used to be back when Big Bear or Snow Summit was the downhill capital of the world. It’s not what it once was, BMX racing has really fallen off the wayside and been replaced by dirt jumping and the more park riding and just street riding.

Matt: We changed the store around mainly because I saw a serious need for better flow in the store and an updated look.  You know with increasing competition in the Valley the store definitely needed a facelift, it was looking very “old school” and I wanted to set myself apart from the other stores in the area, changing the look and also doing something new that nobody else has done that I’ve never seen.  Just trying something new with the steel on the wall and the way the bikes are suspended and then just doing the little lounge area in the back where people can show up. I had a couple of customers yesterday they actually brought in their own movie because they knew they were going to be here for a while so they brought in Chasing Legends to watch on the flat screen.  So it was partly out of necessity and, you know, partly out of security.  The way we can see the floor now is much better, the layout is much better, people  can see the product much better, people are more apt to get greeted –  the remodel has turned out really good and I was able to do what looks like a lot for a minimal amount of money.  The total remodel cost me very little but a lot of sweat equity in it.

Matt: We really want the people to hang out in the store, we want an atmosphere where they want to come in, hangout, talk, where people help other people is the point.  The more people learn about other things, they become more passionate about it.  It’s a snowball effect, one person hangs out,, another person hangs out, that person talks to another and all of a sudden we have 6 to 10 people all sitting around drinking a cup of coffee and discussing a ride that one person did that now all of them are going to go out and do together, whether it be a mountain bike ride or a road ride or a bunch of kids talking about a new jump that they built down on a greenbelt, so it’s turned very much into that.  It’s been very cool.

Matt: Yes we do sponsor the Tour de Murrieta, and we sponsor a team called Team Dude Girl which is mostly women, it’s also got a section in it called Ride Dude, and I believe there are about 8 men on the squad and I think 27 women so it’s mainly a women’s road racing crew and they actually do quite well.  It’s headed up by Chad  Empy, Ray Miller and Regan Lunsford and they do an amazing  job of keeping that thing going and  Karen is very happy with it  and I’ve been just overwhelmed with the overall success of the team.  So they’ve done really good.  We also offer discounts to all the clubs in the area, we’re not going to discriminate against one club or another.  We offer discounts to all the clubs in the area and just try to help them out.  It’s about growing the sport as a whole not just trying to help out one club.

Matt: Yes, we have organized rides, there are several that kind of springboard off of them but from the store every Saturday morning there are an A, B, and C group of road riders that take off in the mornings and they pretty much do the same loop every week and it turns into a hammerfest, it’s a 42 mile ride. And then we have Thursday night mountain bike rides, we’re working with the City of Murrieta to adopt a trail for this entire loop and then we also have a Saturday morning mountain bike ride as well that does that same loop and others that just organize ahead of time and they say we’ll meet here or there.  There are several rides, as I said, they springboard and do different rides throughout the week.  There’s a group that comes in here every Thursday morning, about 5 or 6 or them, they do their road ride and then come back and go home. So different groups meet depending on their respective schedules and create multiple rides through the store throughout the week.

Matt: We do have a website that we’re continually working on.  A friend of mine helped me built one that is currently up and he did a great job – I can’t complain about the price.  That’s iebikes.com and then we also have a fan page as well as a Friend page on Facebook and pretty much everything gets shared on that as well.  So there are several different ways to get hold of the store, we have the internet, and then we also have the phone lines and fax lines.

(DR:  Facebook, is that i.e. Bikes?)

 Correct, if you do a search on i.e. Bikes it will come up.  There will be two different ones, one a picture of the front of the store and the other one with the logo of the shop.

Matt: Really, what I want to offer people is something that is becoming more and more rare in the bicycle industry, a true professional mechanic, somebody who really knows what they’re doing, not just that can tweek a derailleur, but actually knows what they’re looking at, they can look at a bike and diagnose the problem almost immediately just by looking at it or diagnose a problem that somebody else may have done wrong at another time. And, It may not be a major thing but if it’s not right then it’s not right and I want to make sure that I’m always doing things to the best of my ability, and putting 27 years of knowledge can definitely help that and I want to try and create more of those people and I want to bring in new people that can learn that.

 I just had one of my employees, who went up to the United Bicycle Institute and he was up there for a month and the kid didn’t really have a whole lot of shop experience before that, he’d been a biker since he’s been a little kid but he didn’t really have any practical bike shop experience, oh he was here for 3 months went up to the United Bicycle Institute, which was not a cheap ordeal, comes back and the kids just hungry to learn everything and anything.

I want to make sure we are a store what offers what the customers are looking for.  You know I can’t carry everything all the time but I can try to carry a little bit of everything all the time and that’s something that a lot of shops are missing these days, they’re not carrying the SRAM or the DuraAce, or any of the Campy stuff and I try to keep some of that stuff in stock all the time. People give us a call they say do you have any of the Campy boron brake pads, as a matter of fact we do, do you have any DuraAce rear derailleurs, yes, as a matter of fact, we have one in stock.  I’m not going to stock 20 of those things because you know I’m not a road shop, I try keep a little of everything in the store at all times, where most of the time I can fix a person’s bike and get them back on the road as quickly as possible.

Matt: Um, well, I would hope that when they walk in the door, first off they’re greeted, and not just a generic “Hey, how are you?” type thing or “Hi how are you today?” without any response back. You know, after they may say “Oh, I’m good”, and then there’s nothing there that follows that – hopefully, it’s an atmosphere where we’re trying to build relationships beyond that, as I’ve said earlier, my closest friends I’ve met through this store and I like to continue to build those relationships and not just build customers but build relationships.

To follow up here there are brands, sometimes people shop for brands. Is it brand oriented?   I’ve become less and less brand oriented because when people come into a bike shop anymore, especially the lay person that that doesn’t necessarily know quite as much and even some of the more experienced riders they all shop oh if you don’t have Cannondale, or Giant, or Specialized or Trek you know, then you’re really nothing, you’re not a bike shop unless you have one of those brands and, I was a Specialized dealer for 13 years and I’m no longer drinking the Kool-aid you’d say, and I’m finding values out there in places that you would never think it.

Look Cycles has a road bike that’s a 566 with a 105  gruppo at $2500.  That goes directly, I mean directly against any Cannondale, Giant, Specialized, Trek or any other brand out there on the face of the earth price and quality wise every step of the way.  And if I can have something like that in my store and offer them something that’s a little bit more of a boutique brand, I’m gonna do it. There are brands out there that I think offer a generally better value, KHS is an amazing value brand.  I can’t think of any company that could stack up to them as far as overall value of their bikes.  Bang for the buck is just insane.  Focus is one of my most exciting lines right now. I mean I’m just really excited overall about the line.  The company’s only been in this country for a couple of years,  and the line is really nice and beautifully made bikes, German manufactured, they’re coming on strong, the company’s been around the more than 20 years but in America it’s not known at all.  It’s gaining momentum in a big, big way, and an amazing company to work with and Scott and Chris and Dan have been absolutely phenomenal and they’ve helped me out a great deal for what has been a very arduous time in my company’s history and they’ve been amazingly helpful.  The brands that I’m now dealing with because of what they’ve done for me, I can’t see myself separating from them, they’ve been incredible.

DR: There has been an economic downturn in the Inland Empire. Has it caused a slowdown in your business? If so, have you seen any signs of a turnaround?

Matt: We got hit really hard, I mean not just because of the economy but because of some past decisions that were made in this company and I’ve spent the past three years digging out of that hole, so it’s been a long road and we’re not done with it yet, but we are still working our way out of that - you know the hole is not nearly as deep, I’m only at my ankles instead of it’s like barely breathing through a straw with my head under - it’s only up to my ankles now and I’m very happy with that.

The economy definitely hit us hard and coupled with the economics of the business itself at the time, it was more than doubly difficult ad without the help of some of my vendors, I wouldn’t be here.  I definitely would not be here.  Some of my vendors have been absolutely incredible in helping me out with that along with the help of some of my greater friends that I’ve met, I’ve met them all here so yes the economy has definitely hit us hard but I’ve seen some signs of recovery but I also see other signs that could spell additional disaster – rising gas prices, the weakening of the dollar,  Every single manufacturer I deal with has had a price increase, some as much as 15%.  So with price increases like that across the board it’s going to take a toll.

Now in 2008 when we had the high gas prices, once it reached the $5 mark, all of a sudden people became green conscious, hey, I’m gonna start commuting by bike because I’ve been looking for a reason to do that, and they did.  All the way until the gas prices went back down then they went out and bought another gas guzzler and now they’re driving that.  So I did get a lot of eco-friendly people when the gas continually went up, as they continue to go up, we’ll find a lot more eco-friendly people and there are some people that I sold bikes to that are still riding to this day.

Matt: I have no aspirations, um, I can’t say that, I have looked into it and it isn’t something I have completely discounted, but you know, I’m busy enough with trying to work on bikes and, you know, keep the store rolling, and continuing with daily business right now.  One of the things that on-line shopping can’t offer you is the level of expertise you can go  to./

(DR:  it’s just that a lot of the on-line stores are undercutting the prices that people are - - - )

That is true but, a lot of the companies are starting to kind of put a kibosh on that as far as enforcing minimum retails and stuff like that because if you value the product as a whole, I mean is the product worth what you’re paying for or is it not.  I mean is a Di2 rear derailleur? really worth $1100 or $900, you know, I don’t know.  That’s depends on the customer who’s buying it.  But, it takes a lot of expertise in order to do a lot of this stuff.  And there are some people that are gifted to work on them and they may be engineers but not everybody can.  And even the guys who are gifted to work on them sometimes screw up and sometimes do spectacular work as seen a couple of days ago (DR:  that would be me) no that would not be you.  (DR:  I have a tendency to screw things up). On-line shopping, I know will continue, it actually helps grow the industry as a whole, it’s brought a lot of people that might not have been into it, back into it or into it as a whole.  I can’t condemn it and I can’t say that I won’t join it.  But at this time it’s not something that I’m really chasing after.