Azor Bikes assembles bicycles in Hoogeveen, continuing the Dutch business founded by Jan Rijkeboer and also operating Bakfiets.nl. Amsterdam's Roetz Bikes rebuilds bicycles using salvaged frames and forks, with a training programme supporting its refurbishment work. Van Moof sells electric bicycles through third-party retailers under Lavoie ownership, following the Amsterdam-founded brand's acquisition in 2023.
What makes great bicycle shops?
This plate lists 34 shops in 10 countries. Amsterdam has the most with 5, followed by Bern with 3. Among these shops, 6 offer repairs, going by their own descriptions.
Ask for a fitting: frame size matters more than model, so ask the shop to fit the bike to you.
Ask about servicing: ask whether the shop services what it sells and how soon a first check is due.
Ask how to take it home: ask about boxing the bike for a flight or shipping it to your address.
Explore bicycle shops
Use the city plates when they appear below, or open any store for its official door and related ORBIS city and craft links.
Founded by Jan Rijkeboer, who began hand-assembling bikes with one partner; production is now based in Hoogeveen, Netherlands, and the company also runs cargo-bike brand Bakfiets.nl.
Best for Classic sturdy Dutch city bikes.
Azor Bikes was started by Jan Rijkeboer, who trained as a bicycle mechanic and worked in a bike factory before beginning his own operation with a single business partner, handling assembly by day and bookkeeping and orders in the evenings. The company takes its name from the Spanish word for goshawk, chosen after Rijkeboer wanted a bird-of-prey silhouette for the brand's logo. Production is based in Hoogeveen, in the northeastern Netherlands, where bikes are described as craftsman-assembled rather than mass-produced on an anonymous line. Azor's core range covers the classic Dutch 'Oma' (grandma) and 'Opa' (grandpa) step-through and diamond-frame city bikes, alongside work and transport models built for a multi-decade service life. Buyers can choose a ready-made bike from the Collection range or build one component-by-component through the MyAzor configurator, paying only for the parts they select — frame, gearing, brakes, and finish. The company also owns Bakfiets.nl, one of the best-known Dutch cargo-bike brands, extending the same Hoogeveen production base into two- and three-wheeled load-carrying bikes.
Amsterdam bicycle maker founded in 2011 by Tiemen ter Hoeven and Mark Groot Wassink, who rebuild new bikes from salvaged frames and forks pulled from the roughly one million bicycles abandoned in the Netherlands each year; staffed partly through a refurbishing-skills training program.
Best for Circular refurbished bicycles.
Roetz-Bikes was founded in 2011 in Amsterdam by Tiemen ter Hoeven and Mark Groot Wassink, who adapted remanufacturing practices borrowed from the automotive industry to bicycles. The founders' starting observation was structural: the Netherlands has a large surplus of discarded and abandoned bicycles — by some estimates roughly a million are abandoned each year — many of which still have usable steel frames and forks even when other components have failed or been stripped. Rather than melting that material down, Roetz salvages intact frames and forks and rebuilds them into new bicycles, pairing recovered steel with new components, including electric-assist drivetrains on its e-bike models. The company built a social dimension into that circular production model from early on: its workshop team includes people with limited job prospects, who are trained in bicycle refurbishing skills as part of the production process, tying environmental reuse to workforce reintegration. Roetz frames its mission around 'riding toward a better world,' combining the circular-economy angle with the social-enterprise structure, and has been documented by organizations including Circle Economy as an example of applying automotive-style remanufacturing to a different industry.
Amsterdam-founded e-bike brand that filed for bankruptcy in July 2023 and was acquired weeks later by Lavoie, the e-mobility unit of McLaren Applied, which now sells and services the bikes through third-party retailers.
Best for Sleek theft-proof e-bikes.
VanMoof built a following for sleek, connected, anti-theft electric bikes designed and engineered from Amsterdam, raising more than $180 million in venture funding since 2020. That growth outpaced the business: court-appointed administrators took over in July 2023, and the company was declared bankrupt in the Netherlands on July 18, 2023. Weeks later, in August 2023, Lavoie - the e-mobility unit of Formula One engineering firm McLaren Applied - acquired VanMoof out of bankruptcy. Under the new ownership, VanMoof retained some former staff but also cut jobs, and it abandoned its previous model of operating its own retail stores in favor of selling and servicing bikes through third-party bike shops. VanMoof continues to design and sell e-bikes today, but under different ownership and a different retail model than the one that built its original reputation.
Amsterdam city-bike brand founded in 2012 by Ferry Zonder, selling direct-to-consumer retro-modern bicycles; added e-bikes (Ivy, Ace) in 2021 and was acquired by Pon.Bike in 2022, with Zonder remaining in leadership.
Best for Minimalist Dutch city bikes
Veloretti was founded in Amsterdam in 2012 by Ferry Zonder, who started the brand after being unable to find a lightweight, stylish, timeless city bike for his own daily commute and decided to design one himself. The brand built its identity around minimalist, retro-modern city and children's bicycles sold direct-to-consumer. In 2021 Veloretti entered the e-bike category with its first-generation Ivy and Ace models. In September 2022 the company was acquired by Pon.Bike, the bicycle division of Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings, though Zonder has continued to lead the brand.
WorkCycles has built Dutch transport bikes and cargo bikes from its Amsterdam workshop since 2003, designing and manufacturing models like the Fr8, Gr8, and Kr8 in-house. Customers can buy directly by visiting the flagship workshop and store in Amsterdam, ordering through the company's international dealer network, or having a bike shipped to their door.
Styled 'Dirt + Snow,' this independent shop at 18 North Main Street sells and rents e-bikes, gravel and mountain bikes, and skis and snowboards, with tuning, service, and boot fitting through the seasons. A second location sits near Grand Targhee on Ski Hill Road in Alta, Wyoming.
Best for E-bikes, mountain bikes and seasonal rentals
Fredy's Bikewält offers bike and e-bike sales, rental, repairs and accessories. Production is associated with Switzerland, while the range centers on bike rental, repair and e-MTB support.
Milan cycling-eyewear brand founded in 2017, built around a revived 1980s frame mould; frames are designed and handcrafted in Italy for road, gravel and outdoor sport use.
Best for Cycling sunglasses, interchangeable lenses and gravel eyewear
Alba Optics is a cycling and outdoor-sport eyewear brand based in Milan, founded in 2017 around an original eyewear mould from the 1980s that the founders sourced and rebuilt using contemporary materials. Their first model, the DELTA, launched from that revived mould and set the retro-futurist visual language the brand has continued since. The company is based on Via Ponchielli in Milan, with manufacturing in facilities north of the city, and describes every pair as handcrafted in Italy. Despite investor interest, the founders have kept the company self-funded and independent.
Bicycle marque founded in 1954 in Cambiago, near Milan, by Ernesto Colnago, who pioneered cold-bent fork tubes in 1956; its frames carried Eddy Merckx through Tour de France, Giro and World Championship wins from the early 1970s.
Best for Road bicycles
Colnago began in 1954, when Ernesto Colnago opened a small shop at Via Garibaldi 10 in Cambiago, north of Milan. Colnago had been working at Milan's Gloria bicycle factory but, after a cycling-training accident forced him to work from home, he started building wheels and assembling rims, hubs and sprockets on his own. In 1956 he changed fork manufacturing by cold-bending fork tubes - clamping and levering the metal between two pieces of wood on his workbench rather than heating it first. The company's reputation went global through its early-1970s partnership with Eddy Merckx and the Molteni professional team; riding Colnago steel, Merckx won five Tour de France titles, five Giri d'Italia, and three World Championships, and used a sub-6kg Colnago for his hour-record ride. Colnago has continued supplying bikes to elite professional racing in the decades since, including more recent riders such as Tadej Pogacar's teams. The company remains based in Cambiago.
Open since 1983 as Lake Placid's original outdoor and multisport store, it sells bikes, ski gear, paddling and camping equipment while running a rental fleet that swaps between road and mountain bikes in summer and alpine, nordic and fat bikes in winter. The shop also services race day for IRONMAN Lake Placid athletes and shuttles riders along the Adirondack Rail Trail.
Best for Bikes, ski and paddling gear, and rentals
Minimalist urban bicycle brand with lightweight, beautifully designed city bikes. Flagship showroom with test ride area. The 'Tokyo Bike' has become a global symbol of urban cycling simplicity.
Best for Minimalist urban bicycle brand with lightweight, beautifully designed city bikes
Tokyobike frames the bicycle as a way to notice ordinary city life rather than only as a fast means of transport. The brand describes the bike as a small prompt for change in everyday routines and repeats the idea that the city is enjoyable. That outlook is carried through several distinct programmes. Tokyobike Shop and Tokyobike Plus identify the direct retail network, while re tokyobike appears as a named programme. The brand also lists rental services and staff-led my tokyobike stories, connecting products with actual city riding. Product development remains specific. TOKYOBIKE PORTER is identified as the company's first electric-assist cargo bicycle. A separate collaboration with こども ビームス created a special little tokyobike 18 to mark ビームス' fiftieth anniversary in 2026. Tokyobike also records the succession of Pep cycles' bicycle manufacturing and sales business. These facts show a company working with children's bicycles and cargo transport. Repair programmes and urban culture extend the remit beyond a single minimalist model. Features on Kanazawa, ワルシャワ, 京都 and 清澄白河 reinforce the city-centred viewpoint, while the named products establish the practical range behind it.
Backcountry is a large online outdoor retailer for climbing, camping, skiing, cycling and technical clothing. Its deep catalogue supports brand comparison, while remote gear advisers can help narrow specifications before ordering.
Sitting on the TransAmerica bike route, this shop outfits touring cyclists and locals alike with road, gravel, mountain, and fat bikes plus backcountry ski gear, and has won the National Bicycle Dealers Association's Retailer Excellence Award every year from 2014 to 2023. It also runs a full repair, tuning, and rental service for bikes and skis.
Michael Salvatore opened Heritage in a 1900s Lakeview storefront in 2012, pairing hand-built steel bicycles with an espresso bar pouring roughly 300 drinks a day.
Best for Espresso bar pouring roughly 300 drinks a day
Michael Salvatore, a fifth-generation Chicagoan, opened Heritage Bicycles after moving back to the city in 2012, building it around a straightforward mash-up: a coffee bar and a working bike shop under the same roof. The building itself is part of the pitch — an early-1900s brick storefront on North Lincoln Avenue in Lakeview, kept largely intact rather than gutted for a modern café fit-out.
On one side, mechanics hand-build steel-frame bicycles to order; on the other, baristas pour roughly 300 drinks a day. Neither side is a sideline to the other — the shop's identity rests on treating cycling craftsmanship and coffee craftsmanship as the same kind of hands-on work happening in the same space, rather than a bike shop that happens to sell coffee.
Salvatore and his wife, Melissa, later expanded the concept into additional Chicago locations — Heritage General Store and Heritage Outpost — carrying the same combined bike-and-coffee format into new neighborhoods. The original Lincoln Avenue shop remains the reference point for the format: hand-built bikes, a busy espresso bar, one storefront.
Founded in 1984, this locally owned shop on Patricia Street sells and rents bikes, skis, snowboards, skates and camping gear, plus National Park fishing permits. It also runs a repair and tuning bench for bikes, skis, snowboards and skates alongside its retail floor.
Best for Locally owned outdoor gear sales, rentals and repairs since 1984
Founded in 1951 in Nevers, France by engineer Jean Beyl, originally making ski bindings including the 1950 Look Nevada. Pivoted to cycling in 1984, introducing the first clipless pedal, adapted directly from its ski-binding release mechanism.
Best for Ski bindings, cycling
Look traces its origin to Jean Beyl, an engineer who ran a rubber-manufacturing business and broke his leg in a 1948 skiing accident while wearing a rigid binding that failed to release. The injury pushed Beyl into the safety-binding business: in 1950 he patented the Look Nevada, a dual-pivot ski binding designed to release under impact, and the company he built around it became a fixture of French ski manufacturing through the 1960s with the follow-up Nevada II. The company, based in Nevers in central France, stayed in ski equipment for three decades. In 1983 businessman Bernard Tapie bought Look, and the following year the company pivoted into cycling, launching the first clipless bicycle pedal in 1984 -- the PP65, which let riders click in and release with a twist of the heel, borrowing the automatic-release logic directly from Look's own ski bindings rather than developing a new mechanism from scratch. The design displaced traditional toe-clip-and-strap pedals across professional and amateur road cycling within a few years. Look followed with the industry's first carbon-fiber bicycle frame in 1986, cementing its move from a ski-safety company into a cycling equipment maker, a transition few binding manufacturers of its era survived intact.
On car-free Mackinac Island, Mackinac Wheels and its sister Bike Barn sell, rent and repair bicycles from brands like Giant, Schwinn and Felt. The shop fits rentals for island rides and handles parts, gear and repairs for locals and visitors alike.
One On One Bicycle Studio has been Minneapolis's destination for mountain, gravel, and road bikes since 2003, carrying brands like Santa Cruz, Yeti, and Specialized. From its retail store on Bryant Avenue South it sells bikes, parts, and apparel online and offers service and custom builds.
Osprey makes backpacks for hiking, travel, cycling and everyday use, with fit systems varying by activity. Its repair guarantee and replacement parts extend the value of choosing the correct torso and harness.
Best for Mike Pfotenhauer's Anti-Gravity backpack harnesses and the lifetime All Mighty Guarantee
Serving Ocean Isle Beach for more than 25 years, Scooter's Surf Garage stocks surfboards, paddleboards, kayaks, bodyboards, skimboards, bikes and accessories from brands like Donald Takayama, Catch Surf Odysea and Victoria. The shop pairs retail sales with a busy board and beach-gear rental operation.
Best for Surf shop, surfboards, paddleboards, skimboards, beach gear
The House is an online outdoor retailer spanning snow sports, cycling, camping, watersports and technical clothing. Its breadth supports price comparison, though specialist fit advice and local servicing may require another retailer.
Zanzibar Bike Shop sells, rents and repairs bicycles for Stone Town and coastal riding. Local route knowledge and mechanical support make it more useful than a simple equipment counter for visiting cyclists.
Best for Bike sales, rentals, and repairs for exploring Stone Town and the coast
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