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Business

40 Years of Glacier Cyclery

The bicycle shop will celebrate its anniversary this week with clinics, group rides and burgers in downtown Whitefish

By Maggie Dresser
Bike mechanic Aaron Roberts works on a bike at Glacier Cyclery in downtown Whitefish on April 7, 2022. The bike shop is celebrating its 40th anniversary in business. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

In 1982, a new bike repair shop emerged in the back of a former mountaineering store in downtown Whitefish, offering bicycle tune-ups ranging from $7 to $13 and owner Ron Brunk would often play frisbee in the middle of a sleepy Central Avenue when business was slow.

Two years later, Glacier Cyclery and Nordic moved to a narrow building on East Second Street before moving into the building next door around the year 2000.

Ron and Jan Brunk opened the shop 40 years ago in downtown Whitefish, where it’s stayed throughout its lifetime, surviving multiple recessions while watching the small mountain town grow into a major tourist destination.

Throughout the years, Glacier Cyclery has seen countless bicycle tourers every summer, which is how the Brunks discovered Whitefish more than four decades ago, and the shop has a guest log dating back 20 years.

Mike Meador, who purchased the shop with Vanessa Gailey and Tyler Tourville in 2017, also stumbled upon Whitefish while on a bike tour and he’s been a mechanic at Glacier Cyclery for the last 23 years.

Glacier Cyclery in Whitefish on April 7, 2022. The bike shop is celebrating its 40th anniversary in business. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

“I was the first year-round employee and I kind of lucked into this job,” Meador said.

Meador was working as a bicycle frame builder in Oregon when the Brunks sent him a few frames to work on and later asked him if he wanted to work as a fulltime mechanic in Whitefish.

Gailey joined the Glacier Cyclery crew in 2014 after quitting an office job in town, joining Meador and Tourville, who had also been a mechanic at the shop for decades.

“When Ron and Jan first started, one of their goals was to provide a good place to work and that’s probably why a lot of us stayed,” Gailey said. “They treated us like family, and we try to do the same now.”

Glacier Cyclery has 18 employees during the summer and 12 winter employees to sell Nordic gear and overhaul their fleet of rental bikes. The shop also has an apprenticeship program, offering kids ages 14 through 16 an opportunity to learn how to tune bikes. While the program is intended to create community involvement with the youth, shop managers have also used it to recruit some of their employees.

While the workforce shortage has not spared the bicycle industry, Gailey says they have a full staff, but they are always looking for mechanics who can adapt to new bicycle technology.

A fat bike on display at Glacier Cyclery in Whitefish on April 7, 2022. The bike shop is celebrating its 40th anniversary in business. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

“Things keep getting pretty high-tech,” Meador said. “Being a bike mechanic these days, there’s a lot of adaptation and evolution. There’s new stuff every year.”

With a high demand for bikes combined with supply chain shortages, Meador says the shop has struggled to keep inventory on the floor since the pandemic began.

“For the first time in two years, we have inventory going into spring and summer,” Gailey said. “If you came here in the middle of last year, we had six bikes in this building for sale. That was it.”

While supply chain shortages continue to be a challenge, Gailey says things have improved significantly, but there are still parts and products that are out of stock.

Since the Flathead’s population has boomed in recent years, Gailey and Meador have noticed a significant rise in demand for gravel and mountain bikes and they plan to re-launch community rides this summer, including women’s-only and co-ed group rides with local nonprofit Flathead Area Mountain Bikers.

“We’ve always been about that community involvement,” Gailey said.

To celebrate Glacier Cyclery’s 40th anniversary, the shop will offer a free bike clinic on Thursday, April 14, a weather-dependent group ride on Friday and burgers outside the shop on Saturday.

For more information, visit www.glaciercyclery.com.

Glacier Cyclery’s first newspaper ad, run on April 15, 1982 in the Whitefish Pilot. The bike shop is celebrating its 40th anniversary in business. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon