The new Vancouver owner of beloved downtown Squamish bike shop Corsa Cycles isn’t going to make a lot of changes now that he is at the helm, he says.
Rob Venables, who also runs Vancouver’s long-standing Dunbar Cycles, bought Corsa this fall.
“We have a great location here in the city, but we were a little detached from the trailheads and trail access,” Venables told The Chief last week.
The Corsa location will become the demonstration centre for his bike businesses, he said.
“We are moving all of our demo bikes from Dunbar Cycles up to Corsa,” he said. “So we are going to have probably the biggest demo fleet anyone has ever seen.”
Customers will be able to try out bikes on our local trails and then purchase a bike either up here or back in the city, he said.
Venables said his dream was always to open up a bike shop in Squamish, but the market was saturated with Corsa, Tantalus Bike Shop and Republic Bicycles. When Corsa went up for sale, it was the perfect opportunity to get into the market here, he said.
He added that the transfer of the business has been smooth because former owners Sandra Brull and Dave Heisler, who had owned Corsa since 1995, ran the store in a similar way to how Venables runs his in the city. The stores even offer the same brands of bikes for sale.
“It was a no-brainer,” Venables said.
There was no question of not keeping the Squamish store’s name or staff, he said.
“We aim to continue everything Dave and Sandra did and then some more on top of that,” he said, adding customers are likely to see prices go down a bit and there will be more access to inventory. “We get a little better pricing because we are a little bigger enterprise,” he said, acknowledging that a previous complaint amongst some riders has been that Squamish bike shops are more expensive than the city.
“Now they can pull from Dunbar’s inventory as well.”
Venables is a downhill mountain bike racer, and trail rides in Squamish often, he said.
“Squamish is an ideal marketplace,” he said. “And it’s probably where we will end up raising our family at some point. All my friends are moving up there.”
**Please note, this story has been modified since it was first posted to add the Tantalus Bike Shop, which had inadvertently been left off the list of bike shops in town.
