In the sixties and seventies quite a few bike shops in Holland had their own house brands. Some built their own frames, but more often than not the frames were sourced from specialist builders in Holland or Belgium. The brand names were often Italian, or Italian-sounding. Vittorio, Chinetti, Loverdi, Cascarsi, Cornelo and Colossi are all Dutch brands.
One of those brands is Giovanni. I'd heard of it (I had read somewhere that
Laurens ten Dam still has one - and rides it as a fixie
) so when a nice-looking orange example in my size came up for sale I was interested.
I picked it up yesterday from the original owner, and when he told me that not only
Sportshop Slikker still existed, but also that I would drive right past it on my way home, I made the detour and arrived at the shop near closing time. As luck would have it, both Ria and Piet Slikker, who started the shop in 1976, were there and were kind enough to let me bring in the bike and check it out. It was nice to see that the shop and the Giovanni brand are still very much alive.
Apparently this example is from the late seventies (it has no serial number, but the round shop sticker on the DT was only used for a few years) and the frame is of Belgian origin, supplied by Wout Verhoeven. Verhoeven, who had his own shop near Rotterdam, was not only the Campagnolo distributor for Holland at the time, but also acted as a wholesaler of Belgian-built 'no-name' racing frames to many Dutch bike shop owners who wanted to have their own brand. Even some of the bigger names who did build their own frames (Vittorio, Jan de Reus) used Belgian frames for their second-tier offerings. This was not widely advertised of course, and as the frames carry no builder's marks it's not easy to find out who actually built a frame.
Anyway, here is the bike. I just had time for quick wipe-down with a damp cloth before taking these pictures as the daylight was fading.
The bike weighs 10.7 kgs (24 lbs) as pictured. Not too bad for a 64 cm frame with clinchers.
