Easy bike rider's mantra: Keep it simple and cheap

Many modern bike shops seem to take their cues from car dealerships, offering glossy, high-end models under bright lights, spotless floors, and roving salespeople ready to pounce.

Simple Living Cycles in Framingham doesn't bother with any of that. It doesn't offer anything that looks like a two-wheeled Ferrari. The shop on Route 135 near the Natick line is a cramped space about the size of a suburban two-car garage, with a row of bikes, including a couple of used models, parked out front.

Owner and sole employee Phil Altman doesn't offer any Spandex outfits, which he refers to as "clown getups" that people should know better than to wear. ("Don't they realize how stupid they look?" he asks.) He doesn't offer anything with suspension, any titanium frames, or any posters of Lance Armstrong.

In short, there's nothing on sale that the 53-year-old Altman, who hasn't owned a car since the late 1970s, thinks isn't absolutely essential to riding.

"Here's my philosophy -- I'm big on philosophy," said the graying Altman, sounding more like a political science professor than a bike shop owner. "Bikes are too complicated, too expensive, and the middle, average American isn't riding any more.

"The bike manufacturers are going after the high end, the $2,000-$3,000 bikes. They could care less about the average American riding. They could care less about the environment; they're doing it to satisfy the high-end crowd."

Some folks from that "high-end crowd," he said, have been disappointed by the selection at his shop, which sells bikes for $130 to $500, mostly to people who want cheaper transportation.

In the good old days, Altman said, bikes were simple, and easy to fix. If something broke, you could find an inexpensive replacement at just about any bike shop and install it with simple tools. But over the years, he grew frustrated to find an increasing number of new parts that weren't compatible with the originals on his trusty commuter bike, and that could only be worked on with specialized tools.

"It's like rocket science," he said, "and it doesn't have to be, and it shouldn't be."

While bikes can be found at chain stores for prices lower than Altman's, those bikes are just "junk," he said.

Altman quit his accounting business and began trying to carve out his "simple biking" niche in the world of bicycle retail a year and a half ago.

He's swimming upstream, according to the experts.

Complexity and high prices are increasingly what the industry is about, according to the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based National Bicycle Dealers Association , which represents 1,700 of the nation's roughly 4,700 bicycle dealers, defined as retailers that derive most of their income from bicycle sales.

The average sale price for association members is about $450, according to the association's executive director, Fred Clements .

To survive, smaller shops need to sell more expensive bikes, said Clements, because the per-bike profit margins are bigger. One problem is that bikes arrive at shops unassembled, and putting them together takes the same amount of labor whether the bike costs $200 or $2,000; the same is true for the free tuneups offered by many shops.

Clements said Altman's shop was unusual. "Something that small generally would be a boutique shop that would cater to the higher end," he said.

David Watson , executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition , who has met Altman and checked out his shop, also said the $500 ceiling is unusual at a time when bike sales are down and the average sale price of bikes is going up.

"If you're just looking at things strictly from a business perspective, you definitely want to have a complete range of bikes available, and you would probably skew things toward the higher end," he said.

There is a market for less expensive bikes, added Watson, but he didn't know of any other shop that focused on it quite so exclusively. "I think it's kind of a gutsy move from a business perspective, and it remains to be seen whether it's sustainable."

Right now, the business is sustaining itself, but just barely. After losing money his first year, Altman estimates he's making about $2 an hour these days during his 70-hour, seven-day work weeks.

"My prices are in the suicide zone," said Altman.

But commercial success isn't the point. The real goal, says Altman, is getting more simple bikes on the road, and getting people to recognize that while they need to spend a certain minimum, they don't need to spend a fortune.

"The only way we're going to get people riding is make it easy for them, and not to go into a store and hear a lot of hogwash," he said. "In the old days, people didn't care what components they rode, or this or that, and all these issues. It was simple, so that's what I'm trying to do, make it simple."