JRA Bike Shop is closing after 17 years

JRA was born in a 6 foot by 20 foot space in Pioneer Square, squeezed next to a stack of downtown commuter bike parking spots and all the bikes people left on Metro buses. Bike industry veteran Eric Berg saw the tiny spot within the old Bicycle Alliance of Washington headquarters as a chance to start his own business, which soon expanded to a full shop in the Greenwood neighborhood. After several rounds of moving to larger spaces, JRA finally settled into its current location at NW 85th Street and 11th Ave NW in 2016. But with the lease coming up for renewal at the end of the year and Berg turning 63 in a couple months, he has decided to call it quits.

I feel good" about the decision to close the shop, Berg said in an interview this week. It's time for me to figure out what else there is to do. I want to do some traveling, and I want to ride a bike more than once a week." The hard part will be leaving Greenwood, where he has spent so much of the past 15 years. It's going to be tough to leave the neighborhood."

JRA had a customers-only sale over the weekend, and a full-on closing sale starts today (July 16). All bikes are 10% off and everything else in the store is discounted 20-50%," according to a post on Instagram. Berg said they hope to be closed to good in mid-August, though the timeline will depend on how long it takes to clear out inventory.

The shop closing is just the latest in a troubling trend of established Seattle bike shops closing their doors and not being able to find buyers. I had a couple people pretty close to buying it, but we weren't able to work it out," said Berg. Other longtime shops like Counterbalance Bicycles, G&O Family Cyclery, and Velo Bike Shop also closed in recent years without being sold, though Mello Fellos did expand into the former Velo space in Belltown. The Counterbalance space along the Burke-Gilman Trail at 30th Ave NE is now a gym, and I get a little sad every time I ride by. Ride Bicycles closed their Roosevelt location, though they still operate in Issaquah and online. The old tiny Bicycle Alliance bike shop actually spawned two shops: JRA in Greenwood and Back Alley Bike Repair in Pioneer Square's Nord Alley. Back Alley closed in 2024.

Berg wasn't all doom and gloom about the prospects for bike shops, however. The past couple years have been rough," he said, but it appears to turning a corner, the industry in general." He noted many of the same challenges that other shop owners have cited, such as price competition from online sellers that has dramatically reduced the retail margin on accessories. New bicycle sales have long been somewhat lower margin, especially when you account for the labor costs to assemble them, but shops could rely on sales of locks, helmets, lights, racks, bags, bells and other items like that to pad out the bottom line. Accessory sales are still an important piece of the puzzle, but they aren't doing the heavy lifting they did in the past. So as rent goes up, insurance goes up, payroll goes up and accessory margins go down, the business of a traditional retail bike shop is getting squeezed from all sides.

But at the same time, there's stuff that the internet can't do," said Berg. People still need their bikes fixed, and they still need some help picking out a bike." His advice to a prospective bike shop owner is to do the stuff you can, and don't even try to do the stuff you can't."

He also said that perhaps they could have been charging more for shop labor. There's possibly more room on that that we didn't take advantage of." But raising shop labor costs also comes into conflict with bike shops' tendency to want to be a friendly neighbor. On the other hand, wanting to be a part of the neighborhood and keeping people on bikes, you gotta walk that line, too." This is another thing I have noticed over and over with bike shop owners. They know they should be charging more for service, especially since that's the biggest thing they can do that online retailers can't, but they get satisfaction from solving people's bike issues so they can go out and ride again. That is likely why they started working in bike shops in the first place.

Everyone I know who owns a bike shop is kind of a bike person," said Berg. Maybe a business person would have a little bit of a different approach on that."

If you are thinking of starting your own take on a bike shop, Berg had this advice: Take some basic business classes. There was a learning curve on starting my own shop, and it would have been nice to have made that a quicker process." And he stressed a tried and true business mantra, Know your customer, and it probably won't be you. It's going to be people in the neighborhood."