Originally Posted by
breth
I worked at Tumbleweed at rather a hard time - when Performance had really established itself with not only online ordering but a local outlet where people picked up "seconds" and other marked-down merchandise and brought it to us to install. The owner couldn't really match prices with them so we were sort of stuck in a hard place - there was another shop in Carrboro that seemed to draw most of the students, Performance handled much of the parts, accessories and clothing (essential to sell if you wanted to stay in business with the miserable markups on new bikes) and we catered to the racers and others needing quality repairs.
You and I might have met at Tumbleweed. I started repping in the late '80s and called on the shop right up until it closed. Owner Michael was a nice guy and I hope he went on to bigger and better things, but I saw a lot of shops come and others go (and some shops come
and go) during my years on the road. I still have some of the oddball things I bought for my stash when the store closed down.
Oh, and I got that Two Wheel Travel sign installed on my garage, as planned.
