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Handsome Cycles in Minneapolis

I just bought a brand new bike in January and I spent a few months researching where I wanted to buy from. I came across Handsome Cycles in Minneapolis when I bought a pair of their hammered fenders for my 1984 Schwinn World Sport rebuild.

I wanted very much to support a USA based small Bicycle company and I started researching Handsome Cycles, Detroit Bikes, Sole Bicycles, Rivendell Bicycles, Surly Bikes, my budget played a role in my decision and the fact I still wanted to stick with a Steel frame.

I settled on Handsome Cycles and spent about 30 minutes on the phone with co-owner Jesse Erickson about the size and type of bike I was looking for.

I ended up ordering a Handsome She Devil 52cm frame. The frame is 4130 CroMoly. Shipping was a flat fee of $50 and my new bike was built at the beginning of January and shipped to me and I received it on January 13th. I finally had the chance to take it out this weekend for a short ride around the neighborhood and I am totally in love with this bike. I upgraded the saddle and pedals over the stock ones.

I felt their prices were very fair and they have plenty of frames in stock now.

www.handsomecycles.com

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Quote:

Originally Posted by chaadster (Post 21947069)

Or it could have been sold a day before, or a month before...who knows? Giant could be relying on stores updating the Giant inventory system, or could be basing it on invoices to stores in the past 60 days...who knows? I’d be willing to bet a lot of money, though, that it’s not real-time in-store inventory, and that could also explain why you cannot search store-level inventory. They just don’t have that information, I think.

In my experience it's pretty accurate. Was searching for a Giant bike and found it in three different shops. All of them had the bike on the floor still. Within a day of my purchase, the shop I bought from no longer showed up as available in stock.

Many shops have bikes but we are out of the cheap bikes that are being bought during the boom. Our shop always had bikes but the ones that were out were the low end stuff. During the 70s people did the same thing. They didn't really want a bicycle but it was the best thing to do so not having a ton of knowledge left them looking for price only, leaving a lot of quality options behind. Though those of us who like bikes and have some knowledge and components and such are in slightly better positions to find what we want. Still major shortages and still hard to get stuff but some dealers are doing a little better especially if they have done well for that brand pre-pandemic.

I went to Walmart to buy oil for and oil change, and walked by the area they sell bike. They too are very low on bike for sale. It seems that everyone is affected.

I have been to several LBS and they all have bikes, just not in the common sizes. If they do have a bike in a common size it usually a top of the line bike like an S-Works SL7 or similar for roughly $10-$12K.