Marquette bike shop is one of America’s best

MARQUETTE — Marquette recently received an international award for mountain biking excellence, and now, one of the city’s bike shops has received similar recognition.

The Quick Stop Bike Shop has been named one of America’s best bike shops for 2014. About 200 stores around the country receive the honor from the National Bicycle Dealers Association. There are about 4,000 member shops, so the award represents the top 5% of those members.

“One of the things they’re looking at is a dealer that’s involved in different things in the community,” Quick Stop Bike Shop owner Philip Ott said. “One of the big ones is Start The Cycle. It’s a YMCA program with kids. It’s a really cool program. They were excited that we were a part of it.”

The shops are also judged by their efforts to promote the building of new trails, and there’s a customer service component as well. The dealers group has sent a mystery shopper to each winning store.

“They did send a mystery shopper around,” Ott said. “We were wondering who it was after we got the award, and we’re happy that they had a good experience in the shop. We pretty much got the award and that’s how we found out we were getting it!”

Ott thinks the fact that the Quick Stop is the oldest bike shop in Marquette may also have helped. The store has done business at the same address on North Third Street for 35 years.