This article is a part of Denverite's Street Week: Tennyson series. We're exploring the area by way of the history, people, carp-filled lakes and weird houses that define it. Read more Tennyson stories here.
On a sunny November afternoon on Tennyson Street, Cynthia and Catherine Wolf rode e-bikes around the block. Earlier this summer, they cut out a paragraph in a copy of The Mountain Mail advertising for the new state e-bike rebates, a climate program aimed at getting cars off the streets.
After a few tries they got the rebates, and came to Denver from Leadville and Dillon to test ride some bikes at eForce Electric Bikes.
"I live, like, two miles from work, so it's a little long to walk but certainly not too far to ride bikes," Cynthia Wolf said. "I definitely would not have spent the money without the rebate."
eForce is a small space, wedged between shops on the first floor of a house on Tennyson. Inside is your typical bike repair shop, crammed full with tools, bike parts and bikes in progress that ascend and descend from the ceiling on a pulley system. Outside, staff do much of their sales and quick repairs in a small yard that faces the street.
Passersby with regular bikes often pop in and ask for spare parts or help with an issue, and the staff is happy to oblige. Potential customers come and go, test riding different bikes.
E-bike sales have surged in recent years, both as bike use grew during the pandemic and as advocates have pushed e-bikes as a climate solution. Denver started city-wide e-bike rebates over a year ago, and the state invested $6.6 million in a program that launched this summer.
All those public dollars have meant good business for Eric Guetterman, who opened eForce Electric Bikes on Tennyson Street in 2017.
'It made business boom. It didn't necessarily make me a rich man. It made business boom.'
Guetterman has lived in Denver since the 1990s. Before opening the shop, he had a career in live entertainment and audio engineering, which taught him how to work with the technology of e-bikes.
Many traditional shops do not service electric bikes, so Guetterman carved out a niche working specifically on e-bikes, and once the rebates started, he began selling bikes as well.
Guetterman would not share an exact number on sales growth. "Gobs maybe? Gobs and gobs, big bunches," he said. "I don't have a percentage, but it's been huge."
As demand has grown, Guetterman has struggled to staff up to meet demand and keep his business profitable while scaling up. He anticipates a future shortage of e-bike mechanics because some shops only repair bikes that they sell themselves.
Guetterman will repair anything, but focuses on selling higher quality e-bikes that can remain affordable, especially with the rebates which can range from $300 to $1,100 depending on the program and income levels.
"There's a lot of good quality e-bikes that are under $2,500, a lot of junk in the market too that's in that same price range, and so it's a weird time for the industry," Guetterman said. "But I focused on a brand that I think really does build a quality bike for just a regular, everyday commuter, most of them in that $2,000 or less price range."
With the rise of rebates, Guetterman has faced growing competition from national companies.
As the vouchers rolled out, Guetterman said companies have come into Denver to take advantage of the program. While many rebates require shopping local, CPR reported earlier this year that the direct-to-consumer Seattle-based company Rad Power Bikes set up a pop-up shop and later a permanent shop in Denver. Between April 2022 and June 2023, Rad Power Bikes took in the most rebate money, with around $2.8 million in vouchers. eForce Electric Bikes came in third with nearly $374,000 in rebates.
"It does make it harder for a small local shop like myself to compete," Guetterman said. "I don't have a lot of sour grapes about it because I'm first and foremost a bike advocate, and I really do think it's making positive change for communities and for the environment and for people themselves. But it makes it hard enough to do business that I wonder about the longevity of my business sometimes."
Even without pop-up shops, direct-to-consumer companies remain a challenge. Guetterman said test-riding a bike before buying makes a big difference, especially because cheaper bikes can get more expensive in the long-term because they are not built to last. As for determining the difference in quality, Guetterman had one answer: "Come to my shop and talk to me."
"They overwhelm you with specs and information, all these different companies, but they don't necessarily focus on the important parts in the overwhelming amount of tech stuff they give you," he said. "If you can find a shop that has time to really talk to you about what's better and why it's better, that just helps a lot."
eForce Electric Bikes staff have also noticed a shift in their customer base.
"The biggest market I think is people that haven't ridden in years, or they look at bikes as recreation, not as transportation," Guetterman said. "Now that e-bikes are out people are using them more for transportation."
Staff said Guetterman works to cultivate a shop culture that makes bikes more accessible to newcomers.
Salesperson Susan Zanone used to work as a kindergarten teacher on the East Coast but moved to Denver to be closer to her grandkids. She lives in the neighborhood and would walk by eForce every day. Around two years ago, Guetterman offered her a job. At the time, she knew little about bikes and was not a cyclist herself, but she now rides regularly.
"I really think that Eric [Guetterman] is very important to the community, because there are so many people who are starting to ride e-bikes," she said. "He's so super knowledgeable about all of it, and so he's helping everybody, especially with the program, having more bikes out instead of cars. And he knows everybody in the community."
Recently, Zanone sold a bike to an older man who didn't ride bikes because he had trouble with his knees but wanted to try an e-bike.
"He ended up getting a bike and he was in tears because he's like, 'Now I get to join my family and go with them,'" she said. "He was telling me about how he went down to Cherry Creek Trail and he's like, 'I finally saw that area that I haven't seen in so many years.' And then he brought his family to come look and get bikes."
Read all the stories from Street Week: Tennyson here. (And dip into the Street Week archives with 2021's Morrison Road and 2020's Bruce Randolph.)
