photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Keith Muller, owner and operator of Cycle Works, is pictured at the reopened store on Sept. 12, 2024.

Keith Muller walked into the west Lawrence bicycle shop Cycle Works last year and made the most expensive purchase of his life. He bought the entire business after coming in to buy a $2 bike part.

But Muller did so, in part, because he thinks the shop can help bring a trend to Lawrence that will save lots of families money by reducing the number of cars a household needs.

The trend is e-bikes — a traditional bicycle that pedals easier thanks to an assist from an electric motor — and Cycle Works has made those bikes a much bigger part of its business. Muller — along with his wife, Jenny — purchased the business in December 2023, closed the shop for several months to remodel and reboot, and now are celebrating the shop’s grand opening this week.

The shop, which is located just north of the Hy-Vee grocery store at Clinton Parkway and Kasold Drive, has about 25 e-bikes on the showroom floor, and a service shop that can convert essentially any bike that it sells into an e-bike.

One of those e-bikes, in particular, is touted as a machine that may well eliminate the need for some families to have a second car, the Mullers said. It is called a cargo e-bike, and as the name suggests, it is built to haul stuff. The area behind the driver’s seat is designed to be flexible. You can attach a double seat to the area, or you can attach one of a number of different platforms that are engineered to hold a variety of items.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

An e-cargo bike is pictured at Cycle Work on Sept. 12, 2024

Jennifer said she’s used the bike to haul everything from two kids to a keg of beer (presumably not at the same time but I’ve at times sympathized with the thought.) Jennifer said she routinely uses the bike to pick her children up from school, go to the grocery store for quick trips, ride to the library and other such neighborhood tasks.

Keith said he’s not trying to convince most families in Lawrence that they should abandon their car solely for an e-bike. But he said he is planting the seed — one that probably has fertile ground given the price of vehicles — that an e-bike might work as your second vehicle.

“A family that had two cars could maybe get by with one,” he said. “How many trips are less than five miles from where you live. With an e-bike, that distance of a trip becomes easy. Plus, I joke that you always have a front row parking spot.”

E-bikes aren’t cheap by bicycle standards but are cheap compared to cars, obviously. A quality starter e-bike will cost about $1,700 at Cycle Works, while a similar traditional bike would cost about $550, Muller said.

Both Mullers said they think the value of the e-bikes goes well beyond their functionality. As much as anything, they are fun. Jenny said she and Keith recently went on a 100-mile bike ride. He was on a traditional bike and she was on an e-bike.

“He was huffing and puffing on his regular bike, and I was just enjoying it, taking pictures,” Jenny said.

The e-bike does have the effect of “flattening the hills,” Keith said. That can make for a more enjoyable experience both from a physical and a planning standpoint.

“It becomes less of an equation of how you get there,” Keith said. “You don’t have to think about riding up that hill. You just ride where you want to.”

Such rides also are good for the psyche, Jenny said.

“You kind of feel like the Hulk when you are zooming past everyone,” she said.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Cycle Works, 2121 Kasold Drive, is pictured on Sept. 12, 2024, along with a bike that it is giving away as part of its grand opening celebration.

While Cycle Works, 2121 Kasold Drive, is touting e-bikes, the largest part of its inventory continues to be traditional bikes. It has many mountain bikes and gravel bikes — which are machines with wider tires designed specifically for gravel road riding through the countryside.

The shop carries several brands, including Giant Bicycles, Santa Cruz, Tern, Aventon, Osto, and Wilde. The store became an official Giant partner store after the remodel, which rearranged the show room floor and made the shop’s service department more accessible to customers.

“I wanted it so you can see and talk to the mechanics,” Keith said.

Service is an important part of the business because that is what Keith has done most of his career. A South Dakota native who has been in Lawrence since 2016, Keith was the owner/operator of the mobile bike repair shop Cycle Fix when he walked into Cycle Works last year looking to buy a part.

Keith knew Cycle Works’ owner at the time, Gary Long, was looking to sell the business, but Long had no interest in purchasing it. In fact, he had heard Long already had struck a deal to sell it. When Long told him that deal had fallen through, Long asked Keith whether he wanted to see his proposal for the shop. Long said no, but by the time he left the shop he had a copy of the proposal in his hand.

Nine months later, the new Cycle Works was born when the Mullers closed on the deal to purchase the shop and then began the remodel.

“It was the most expensive bike part I had ever purchased,” Keith now says of that trip to the shop in early 2023.

But he said there is no buyer’s remorse. He’s worked in the bike industry since he was 14 years, after his mother bought him a mountain bike and he immediately took it apart. She wasn’t amused, but Keith said he had to know how to fix his own bike, so taking it apart and putting it back together seemed like the best way to learn. He bugged the service shop at the local bike shop in his South Dakota hometown enough that they ultimately gave him a job.

He fell in love with the idea of a local bike shop through that experience, and now he’s intent on recreating it.

“We are a local bike shop,” he said.

Cycle Work concludes its grand opening celebration on Friday and Saturday with special celebrations that include a food truck, a bike raffle and other promotions.