Colorado cool stuff: Everything for your bike

Eric Peterson //July 1, 2011//

Colorado cool stuff: Everything for your bike

Eric Peterson //July 1, 2011//

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BETTY BIKE BASKET LINERS
Taking a hiatus from teaching after having children, Tara Byrnes found herself riding around Stapleton on a cruiser bike, and “everything kept falling out of the basket,” she says. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be something I can put in there.'”
But there wasn’t. In 2009, she took matters into her own hands and designed a prototype basket liner from colorful fabric, then honed the design with professionals and launched her company. Available in two sizes, Byrnes’ Betty Bike Basket Liners come in all sorts of varieties.
“I switch up the colors and patterns quite a bit – it depends on my mood,” Byrnes says. $65 retail.

Made by Betty Basket Liners LLC, Denver, (303) 895-7494, www.bettybasketliners.com  Also available at numerous stores in Colorado; a store
locator is on the website.

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PAKETA MAGNESIUM BIKE FRAMES
“Nothing has the ride quality of a magnesium frame,” says Dave Walker, director of engineering at Paketa Cycles, citing vibration dampening 10 times that of steel, aluminum or titanium. “Magnesium is in a completely different league. You can ride for 100 miles and not feel like you got beat up.”
Founded in 2002, Broomfield-based Paketa got its start importing magnesium bike frames from post-Cold War Moscow, then got in the manufacturing game three years later when it connected with magnesium-tube fabricator Timminco in Commerce City. (Timminco moved its plant to Mexico in 2009, but remains Paketa’s supplier.)
Today the four-employee Paketa makes frames for road and mountain bikes as well as tandems, doing all the work in Broomfield. The company is the only domestic manufacturer of magnesium bike frames. “The fabrication is not easy,” Walker says. $2,350 to $6,800
(tandem) retail.

Made by Paketa Cycles Inc., Broomfield, (720) 432-5061, www.paketabike.com  

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PRIMAL WEAR JERSEYS
Dave Edwards made his home-based hobby of making colorful bicycling jerseys a full-time business – Primal Wear – in 1994. In 2008, Edwards shifted the focus from flashy design to “technical, high performance gear that a pro team could wear.”
The strategy has paid off: Primal Wear has emerged as a market leader. “We’ve more than doubled our staff and tripled our sales,” he beams.
Primal Wear now supplies thousands of teams and some of the biggest events in the cycling world with custom jerseys, many designed by the company’s 10-person design team.
“It’s pretty cool how it’s transpired,” Edwards says. “Knowing where we are headed has been a huge benefit.”
$60 to $190 retail.

Made by Primal Wear Inc., Denver, (303) 745-8442, www.primalwear.com

ROCKYMOUNTS
After Bobby Noyes left New Jersey for Colorado in the early 1990s, he started crafting his own bike racks – RockyMounts – so he could pedal the state’s best routes. Next he started selling them from the back of his car, then made it his full-time job.
“It just kept growing,” says Nicole Kelly, RockyMounts’ marketing rep.
Honed over the years, Noyes’ proprietary designs are a better, more aerodynamic fit for most cars and trucks and make for a better way to get your wheels where you want them.
In the last year, the company has also moved into ski and snowboard racks and is eying fall 2011 for a “big launch” after dabbling in the market last season. $65 to $140 retail.

Made by Rocky Mounts Inc., Boulder, (303) 402-0190,
www.rockymounts.com
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