Curtis Henry runs a straightforward bicycle shop — the shelves and displays at Cannon Cyclery are limited to items “[without] an expiration date or a size run.” Without the distraction of bright sportswear, energy bars and peripheral paraphernalia, both customers and staff can focus on the main event — the bikes. After servicing thousands of bicycles over 10 years at their 11660 Alpharetta Hwy storefront, the bike shop has earned a reputation for their triathlon and adaptive bike fitting and repair, along with their top-notch maintenance of all bike varieties. Now, Cannon Cyclery is upgrading to new location at 1000 Northfield Court, also in Roswell, that is about three times larger than their previous quarters.
The additional square footage, which Henry attained with the help of Commercial Associate Bill Davis of KW Commercial Atlanta Perimeter, will allow the bike shop to cohabitate with their partnering organization, The Kyle Pease Foundation. The nonprofit creates opportunities for differently-abled athletes to participate in sporting events by funding scholarships and adaptive equipment.
Henry was previously a hobbyist mountain biker and professional automotive mechanic before he became disenchanted with the “nasty, dirty, gross environment that most automotive shops are.”
“People in the biking community are very appreciative for the work that you do,” Henry told What Now Atlanta. “For someone to come in and be happy to spend money on their bike was a very different feeling than someone begrudgingly paying to get their brakes fixed on their car — I found it a lot more rewarding.”
Henry shifted careers, working for many of Atlanta’s top bike shops, making roadside repairs for racing teams and learning bike fitting from Specialized, Trek and John Cobb. He became an engineer and product representative for leading adaptive bike company Freedom Concepts, a path inspired by his physical therapist wife. Amid a slurry of fittings for special-made bikes with disabled persons and their families, Henry met Brent and Kyle Pease. Both Cannon Cyclery and The Kyle Pease Foundation opened storefronts in 2011, moving into side-by-side buildings.
Now, The Kyle Pease Foundation will maintain offices in the new Cannon Cyclery building. Along with building and fitting adaptive bikes for the foundation, Cannon Cyclery will store and transport them to events. The shop often sees less common specially-fit bicycles, or “non-traditional bicycles”. They often service recumbent three-wheeled bikes, hand-cycles that are propelled with hand-operated pedals, and tandem tricycles that are often used by the foundation in events. Between Henry and his employees, Dan “The Wrench” Strickland and Bart Mitchell, “there’s nothing that we haven’t seen or fixed,” including kid’s bikes, mountain bikes, antiques and top-of-the-line race bikes with carbon fiber frames.
Cannon Cyclery has also garnered a reputation for its ability to expertly fit triathlon bikes and to treat their riders without the “stigma that most bike shops give triathletes.”
“Bike shops are usually full of people who are passionate about bicycles — triathletes are generally more focused on the sport and less on the equipment,” said Henry. “We’re inviting and friendly… and a tri bike can be very difficult to fit and it’s a very large process, there aren’t a lot of bike shops that can do that well.”
The new shop will open its doors this February, then host a grand opening in March.
“The big thing with us is that we’re a service-first shop,” said Henry. “Bike shops forever have been retail shops that happen to have a service department that supports the retail side. We are a service-focused shop that happens to do a little bit of retail…We know what we do really well, we do those things and try not to water down what we do by adding a bunch of other stuff to it.”
[Disclosure: Bill Davis with KW Commercial is one of What Now Atlanta’s Preferred Partners.]
