Mom and Pop Bike Shop

By Naperville Magazine
August 2024 View more Shop

By Web Behrens

This Lombard couple rebuilt a family tradition with Retro Glow Cycles

Back during the 2020 lockdown, avid cyclist Brian Kalbfleisch began fixing bikes in the garage of his Lombard home to keep from going stir-crazy. Word slowly spread around the neighborhood. “One day I opened the garage door, and there were four or five kids in line, waiting to get their bikes fixed,” he recalls.

Thus began the realization of a new dream for the software engineer. In February 2022, he attended a two-week intensive training program at the United Bicycle Institute in Ashland, Oregon, to earn bike-mechanic certification. Half a year later, he’d quit his job and, together with his wife, Amy Minster, opened Retro Glow Cycles (309 S. Main St., Lombard), a repair shop that also sells refurbished bikes from multiple eras.

But a gut-wrenching twist awaited the new business. Although the shop is now on the eve of its two-year anniversary, it almost didn’t survive its first two weeks. Several days after the October 2022 grand opening, a customer’s faulty e-bike battery ignited in the early morning hours. The blaze grew so hot, it melted other bike frames and destroyed the store’s entire inventory before the Lombard Fire Department could put it out.

But like the phoenix of ancient myth or the pine trees of the American West, Retro Glow Cycles found a way to rise from the ashes of that catastrophic inferno. Indeed, the store’s historic roots played a role in its regeneration. While it marked a middle-age career change for Kalbfleisch, 49, the store also represented a continuation of a family tradition for his wife, whose grandfather, Jack Minster, owned a Lombard bike shop in the mid-20th century. That sense of heritage helped fuel the couple’s determination to keep going. “Our shop wasn’t even truly real, and then it was gone,” Minster says. She recalls thinking, “We can’t give up, it because we haven’t even gotten started yet.”

Without a physical location to anchor the business, the couple pivoted. “I cleaned out the garage again,” Kalbfleisch says, “and started doing pickup and drop-off service.” He also led Retro Glow bike rides for the Lombard Historical Society and appeared at local farmers’ markets, selling cycling accessories and organizing events like a bike obstacle course.

Now the shop is back in its Main Street location selling refurbished bikes, everything from conventional models (primarily from the 1970s and ’90s) to vintage show pieces, including top-of-the-line old Schwinns. “Our goal is to get people on the bikes that are right for them,” Kalbfleisch says. In the winter, they plan to offer bike-maintenance and bike-safety classes. The shop also displays some crazy two-wheeled creations originally made by Jack Minster and ridden decades ago in Lilac Parades—including the “triple dragster” (think three bike frames welded together) and a bicycle bonded to a bed headboard.

Reusing old bike parts whenever possible is part of Retro Glow’s sustainability ethic, which extends to Amy’s version of her grandfather’s bike art—but wearable, not ridable. She makes prints using bike-gear outlines, and jewelry with excess bike-chain links. “We really are trying to make the business as low-waste as we can,” Minster says.

Photos: Retro Glow Cycles