After 61 years in business, the Campus Student Bike Shop closed Oct. 9 following the death of its owner Bill Loy. He opened his first bike shop in 1968 on Catherine Street before relocating in 1974 to Maynard Street in downtown Ann Arbor, where he supplied residents and students with bicycles and repairs for generations.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Charles Loy, son of Bill Loy, said his family history and father’s health circumstances led to the shop’s closure.
“(Bill Loy) was a longtime member of the community and business around Ann Arbor,” Charles Loy said. “If you’re around for that long, everybody knows you. He and my mom both ran it, and then they were divorced about 14 years ago, so she separated from that.”
Charles said the shop faced a decline in sales in recent years as bicycle customers have turned to online shopping options rather than physical stores.
“In the last probably five, six years, sales really dropped because everyone buys everything on the internet,” Charles Loy said. “And that’s what we heard from a lot of other shops going out of business and stuff. A lot of people are sad because it seems like the bike shops are a dying breed, which is kind of strange because Ann Arbor is a big bicycle town.”
Joe Bollinger, owner of Sic Transit Cycles, a bike repair shop on Pontiac Trail, Ann Arbor, told The Daily there is a need for communities to have local bike shops, but acknowledged the Campus Student Bike Shop’s recent decline in customers and hours of operation.
“Ann Arbor is committed to making this town one of the more cycling-accessible places in Michigan,” Bollinger said. “So Ann Arbor really does need to have a bike shop downtown. I’m sorry to hear of Bill’s passing, but it did seem like that business had been fading. Over the last four or five years, it was open and shut more sporadically. So it didn’t come as a sudden shock.”
Bollinger said he admired that both Charles and Bill Loy were committed to their business, even in difficult times.
“I know that Bill got ill, and then his son sort of took up the reins for a minute,” Bollinger said. “But I feel like I have not seen that place open in years. However, it’s not an easy business, and the fact that he pulled it off for so long —you know, I got to give the man a lot of respect for that.”
In an email to The Daily, Taubman junior Bella Mazzarese, outreach chair for Wolverines on Wheels, a University of Michigan cycling club, wrote that while Bill Loy’s death is tragic and local bike shops are important to the community, the local cycling community had mixed opinions on the shop.
“While many of us work on our own bikes, shops are still important for access to parts and knowledge, and are important anchors for the community.” Mazzarese wrote. “Campus Student Bike Shop was infamous in the local cycling community for their shady business practices, so we recommended that our club members avoid it. Unfortunately, being close to campus, Campus Student Bike Shop brought many unknowing students through its doors over the years.”
Outside of the family shop however, Charles Loy reflected on his father as a mentor and a strong businessman who supported his community and prioritized the people within it.
“(Bill) always just really kept everyone going around town for probably 60-65 years,” Charles Loy said. “If somebody really needed that part, he would go find it, get it for him, take it off and sell it to him dirt cheap. It really wasn’t always about the money. It was about just building that relationship with the community and keeping everybody riding. I own my own business now, and I really learned all my skills from him. He was a great businessman.”
Daily Staff Reporter Anjali Budhram can be reached at abudhram@umich.edu.
