Not a day to repeat; news about our Los Altos store

Today got off to a less-than-stellar start; on the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride, Kevin was lagging pretty badly up Kings due to a pretty severe headache and yes, we actually turned back before the end of the climb, at the archery range. After returning home, Kevin spent a good part of the day in Kaiser ER, where they never could figure out the cause of the headache.

But the least-fun part of the day (and it takes a lot to top your kid spending the day at the ER!) was having to send out an announcement to customers that we’ll be closing our Los Altos store towards the end of September, just 6 weeks away.

We’ve been without a lease for 4 years, 4 very long years in which we’d been working with the landlord for a solution that wouldn’t have us bleeding money, 4 years in which he pitched this and that plan for changes in the shopping center that could benefit us, 4 years in which we saw sales steadily decline, at least in part due to it becoming tough to access our part of the shopping center due to overflow from Trader Joes.

I know nothing about shutting down a store; neither does my brother Steve, who’s basically started that store 24 years ago. Obviously we’ll be moving a lot of stuff into our Redwood City location, and just as obviously we’ll try to sell what we can so we don’t have to move so much. No specifics yet, but if you’re interested in store fixtures, hey, we got ’em!






2 thoughts on “Not a day to repeat; news about our Los Altos store

  1. Hi Mike–I just want to send you and Steve my best. I bought my road bike from you guys (started in Los Altos, ended up being sent up to Redwood City since you had the right size for me there) back in 2002 and I’ve been going to the Los Altos store ever since for supplies, tune-ups, repairs for the occasional crash, etc. I’m going to miss it and I’m only a customer! You guys have really built something special and it’s a shame about that shopping center in Los Altos. It really has become overrun.

    1. Thanks, definitely appreciate the kind words. It’s going to be really tough for us these next few weeks, as we figure out how to wind things down. Thankfully we’re still around; this is all about stabilizing things so the Redwood City operation can evolve and adapt as required, keeping Chain Reaction relevant and in business. –MikeJ

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