The beloved community bike shop has been up and down after former owner Dmitri Rumschlag was embroiled in a legal controversy with his landlords at the shop's former location. Earlier this year, Rumschlag sold his business, which he’d opened in 2019. Now the new owners promise to maintain Z Cycle’s community reputation at its lone space at 3217 East Colfax Avenue.
Schoolteachers Brock Schardin and Andrew Richmond teamed with longtime store manager and head mechanic Dan Spicher to form an LLC and purchase Z Cycle in February. Though being a small business isn’t easy, their love for the store and Spicher’s experience ensures no shortage of motivation and confidence.
“Being in that role of employee, then manager and mechanic, really set me up to be a good part of our team of owners,” Spicher says. “It's made that transition a little easier, because I kind of had an idea of what was going on when we purchased the business.”
Z Cycle first opened on the 1400 block of Ogden in 2019 before moving to 1025 West Ninth Avenue in 2021, and then expanded to a second location on Colfax in 2023 — but by December 2023, the Colfax store was Z Cycle's lone outpost after it had been evicted from the Ninth Avenue spot.
The dispute between Rumschlag and his landlords stemmed from security grates Rumchslag had attached to the windows to prevent break-ins following two separate incidents in less than two weeks at the end of 2022, which he said amounted to over $60,000 in losses.
Per the terms of his lease, building modifications required landlord consent and approval and architectural drawings, which Rumschlag did not have. Along with the grates, he made other modifications to transform the former restaurant into a bike shop, like removing old kitchen equipment.
Rumchslag and his landlords ended up battling it out in court, with Z Cycle on the losing end. Although he was evicted from the Ninth Avenue store, Rumschlag promised to keep Z Cycle going.
“People come to Z Cycle because we're chill and we make them feel okay. We can get fancy if you want, but we're just trying to have fun, and we're going to keep that spirit alive," he told Westword in 2023.
By selling the business to people who understand the purpose of Z Cycle, that spirit remains alive. And according to the new owners, being able to keep a bike shop alive in the Collins Bicycles building adds to the excitement.
The inside of Z Cycle has seen some upgrades recently at the hands of its new owners.
Catie Cheshire
The Collins family still owns the building, which opened as a bike shop in 1934 and was an authorized Schwinn dealer while the family operated it, until 2015. Since 2015, there have been two other bike shops in the space: Two-Wheel Feel, which was open for two years, and SloHi Bike Co., which opened in 2018 and closed in 2023.
Z Cycle still has all of the original Collins Bicycles sales records and receipt books in the basement. To leave a similar legacy, the new ownership plans to dedicate itself to serving old customers from Capitol Hill and new customers in the City Park area and beyond.
“This is not a shop that's supposed to make a billion dollars and supposed to be floor-to-ceiling with brand-new, specialized bikes,” Richmond says. “This is supposed to be a shop that serves the community and helps out the people that are hard up, that maybe need a little bit of a boost.”
Connecting with other businesses in Colfax's Bluebird District and seeing families come into the shop with cargo bikes has been “fantastic,” according to Schardin.
“As Denver continues to invest in bike infrastructure, being able to have a shop in this neighborhood where people can live in Park Hill and commute by bike downtown to their office jobs, I think is really important for a growing, developing city,” he says.
But being an urban bike shop also has its challenges.
“That's why we're seeing a lot of Denver bike shops go under, is because of small margins but much more expensive real estate, much more expensive minimum wage — or just wages in general, cost of living,” Richmond says. “That's what we're trying to figure out now, is how do we continue for another 100 years in this shop as a bike shop?”
Bike Shop Struggles in Denver
Across the country, bike shops are experiencing the end of a boom-bust cycle that began during the pandemic. According to the Associated Press, sales at bike shops across the country rose by 64 percent in 2020, but when supply chain issues meant shops couldn’t restock, customers quickly disengaged. Now that the stock is available again, demand just isn’t as high.In 2022, Turin Bicycles announced it would close, ending its fifty-year run in the Golden Triangle because of high rent and low profit margins. At the time, it was the longest-running bike shop in the city. Since then, other Denver-area bike shops have closed, too.
Velowood Cyclery closed earlier this year just down Colfax from Z Cycle, with Z Cycle eventually buying its inventory.
In Englewood, Velosoul Cyclery announced it is closing soon. According to owner Zach Hepner, more customers are buying bikes directly from manufacturers’ websites or parts from Amazon rather than relying on local repair shops.
Richmond says he’s heard the industry is struggling to adapt to the prominence of e-bikes, as well.
“You have this unregulated market where you have a bunch of manufacturers overseas building these things,” he says. “There's no standards. There's no bike shop associated with it. Direct-to-consumer is really popular now, so people get these bikes, and they build these bikes, [but] they don't have much experience, and then there's no accountability from the company.”
Denver's e-bike rebate standards were updated for 2024 to require certain certifications to try to eliminate sketchy products entering the city’s streets, but that hasn’t completely prevented customers from falling for the allure of inexpensive e-bikes without such standards.
Richmond says Z Cycle regularly sees customers coming in with cheap components on almost-new bikes. He says Z Cycle is happy to help, but it’s a struggle to rehabilitate the shoddy work.
“It has been a challenge," he adds, "but it's something we're committed to.”
As another way to keep busy through the slow winter season, Z Cycle tunes up skis and snowboards in addition to bicycle repairs. The basement is full of bikes that the crew is fixing up to sell or stripping for parts as they get organized for next spring.
“We’re really pushing to improve the quality of service and the whole shop feel,” Spicher says. “It's definitely a different feeling walking into this shop than the last one, and we're trying to make it a better environment for people to come hang out, talk bikes, or just hang out and not talk bikes.”
The owners have brought in books and are setting up a lounge area at the front of the store where people can sit and relax to create a more welcoming environment. And for those who have been waiting to start a project like a custom bike build or a major upgrade, now is the time when Z Cycle has the most flexibility to dedicate to those tasks, Spicher adds.
