Healdsburg cycling institution opening second location in Cloverdale
Starting in 2018, there will be new name in Cloverdale, but it will be a familiar name to north county cycling enthusiasts and Healdsburg residents. Spoke Folk, Healdsburg’s cycling institution will be opening a second location in the Silverwood building, 111 East First Street in downtown Cloverdale.
Owners Richard and Liz Peacock have owned Spoke Folk for 11 years, although the business has been around for about 40 years. The idea of adding a Cloverdale location originated with a conversation Richard had while out cycling at Pine Flat. He was told about the pending closure of Cloverdale’s current bike shop, and several of his fellow riders encouraged him to consider opening a second location.
However, he didn’t take it seriously until he was approached by Ron Pavelka, representing the owner of the Silverwood Building Barry Hoffman.
“He said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a client that has some retail space why don’t you consider opening a shop,” Richard said. “He said that Barry, the owner of the building is a cyclist and a current customer of ours and he wanted a bike shop in Cloverdale, so he offered to build out one of the retail units to our spec for a bike shop. It’s kind of like a harmonic convergence.”
The Peacocks didn’t want to be hasty, so they worked their social networks to see if Cloverdale was a viable location.
“We have close personal friends in Cloverdale. We spoke with them and they said Cloverdale is changing, its like Healdsburg was 25 years ago,” he said. “Some friends of ours have Savvy on First and they took a chance on Cloverdale five years ago, so I chatted with them and they said, yeah there’s a market.”
Their current market was also part of their thought process. “We realized that a lot of our customers are in Cloverdale and a bike shop is needed up there, and because (the current one is closing), somebody was going to open a shop and I felt that it may as well be us. As perhaps we could end up losing some of our customers.”
As they prepare their second location, the Peacocks are being deliberate in their planning process. “There has been a bike shop in Cloverdale off and on since the mid 80s, and he was successful serving that market so we intend to keep that,” Richard said. “He did hybrids and children’s bikes, and were going to do the same thing. We’re going to make sure we serve the market that is currently there and also expand things.
“We aren’t going to just take Spoke Folk Healdsburg and move it up there, that’s not the intent,” he continued. “We want to make sure we serve Cloverdale’s current market as well as offer a subset of what we offer here. It’s a smaller space — only 1,000 square feet — so we can’t have everything we have here.”
Initially Richard plans on using his Healdsburg staff to get the Cloverdale location up and running, before expanding his hiring for both shops to include additional part time staff. But he is mindful of not adding stress to his current staff and operations as he develops the second store. “I spoke with my staff and they were very supportive,” he said. “There’s always a risk of expanding too quickly and dragging resources from one store to open another. We don’t want to draw resources from this shop.”
Peacock also says a final consideration for them was Cloverdale’s continued move toward increasing bike-friendliness. He cited the various shared bike/vehicle lanes throughout downtown and their creative take on bike racks.
“The art theme on the bike racks is quite fun,” he said.
As they prepare for the new store, the Peacocks are moving with a lot of thought and deliberation, which has been part of their secret of success to this point.
“It was a bunch of things coming together at the right time,” Richard said. “It wasn’t a snap decision and it wasn’t, ‘Oh yeah, let’s open a bike shop.’ It was, ‘Let’s think it through and see what market we’re going to serve.”
