Owners of George’s Cycles sell Boise shops to former professional mountain bike racer
After 40 years of operating George’s Cycles, the owners of one of Boise’s premier bicycle shops have sold the business.
Mike Cooley and Tom Platt, who ran the company for all but 10 years of its life, are retiring. They sold George’s, with stores at 3rd and Front streets downtown and at 5515 W. State St., to Nathan and Linda Lloyd.
Nathan Lloyd, a brand manager at Audi Boise, became a BMX racer in his teens, worked in bike shop sales and as a mechanic for a number of years, and spent 12 years as a professional mountain bike racer.
Linda Lloyd has a business background and helped her brother start City Center Wines, a wine bar and bottle shop in Boise.
“Nathan has a lot of passion for riding and that’s what it takes: the love and passion for cycling,” three-time Olympic cycling gold medalist Kristin Armstrong, of Boise, said in a news release.
The Lloyds learned George’s was up for sale from a friend in the real estate business.
“It’s such a great-running bike shop,” Linda Lloyd said in the release. “We just want to continue the tradition of making it the best it can be.”
Their vision is to expand on George’s reputation as a destination bicycle shop. “If you come to Boise, you have to go to George’s,” Nathan Lloyd said in the release.
Bob and Joyce Sulanke founded George’s Cycles in 1971, starting in a shed behind their home near Warm Springs Avenue. They named the shop after George Latham, owner of a celebrated bike shop in Lawrence, Kansas, and creator of the motto “Outfitters to the self-propelled.” They knew him when they lived in Kansas.
The Sulankes went into business just as the American bike boom was starting. Ten-speeds were in big demand, and they arrived by train 400 at a time. The couple catered to bike-racing enthusiasts and carried foreign lines never seen in Boise before, such as the French brands Peugeot and Gitane.
Bob Sulanke , then a math professor at Boise State University, started local racing events, including the Bogus Basin Hill Climb and the Tour of the Spud Valley.
In 1981, Mike Cooley and Tom Platt bought the store. They were both members of the George’s racing team. As a seventh-grader in 1971, Cooley rode his Sears 10-speed to the shed to see a bicycle that sold for $300, then an enormous sum for a bicycle.
George’s founded the Twilight Criterium, which attracts racers from across the country. The races is in its 34th year, and Cooley remains the race director.
“The Twilight Criterium brought a huge appreciation of my favorite sport to the masses,” Armstrong said. “I have the Twilight Criterium to thank for all my fans. They know bike racing because of the Twilight Criterium.”
George’s was voted Best Bike Shop in Boise for seven years in a row in the Idaho Statesman’s Best of the Treasure Valley contest. The shop helped the Boise Police Department establish its mountain bike patrol.
