Two Manhattan Trek Bike Stores–One in Bowery, One on UWS–To Close & “Consolidate”
Employees at the affected stores told Straus News that their staff will collapse into two other active shops in the borough; Bowery workers will end up at Trek’s Stuyvesant Town location, while W. 96th St. workers will merge with the W. 72 St. shop’s workforce. Trek’s store on the UES will ostensibly remain as is.
| 27 Aug 2023 | 05:17
The Trek store at 231 W. 96th St. will be closing on August 27. The staff there will merge with the location at W. 72nd St., until a new central UWS hub reportedly being planned for the future is complete. (
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The Trek store at 303 Bowery, which will have its last day of business on Sept. 3. The staff will “consolidate” into the Stuyvesant Town shop. (
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Trek Bicycles, the nationally recognized bike franchise, will be consolidating two of its Manhattan stores. The store on the UES appears to remain untouched for now, meaning that the total number of available locations will drop from five to three.
Firstly, the 231 W. 96th St. store will be no longer be in operation, although a slackening in bike demand doesn’t appear to be the culprit. “The building we’re currently located in is no longer renewing leases, due to them tearing down the building,” a employee at the store explained, adding that “temporarily, we will be bringing the entire team [at the W. 96th St. store] and be stationing it at the [156 W. 72nd Street] store to do business with their team.” A new centralized location for the UWS is reportedly being finalized by Trek’s corporate operations, he noted, and everybody will ostensibly end up at one “larger building that will be built out.”
Trek’s HQ–located in Waterloo, Wisconsin–could not be reached for comment about development plans for a new UWS hub. John Burke, the longtime CEO of Trek Bike, also did not respond to a request for comment by Straus News.
The final day of business for the W. 96th St. store will be on August 27.
Meanwhile, the store at 303 Bowery is also shutting down, and its employees will head slightly north to the Stuyvesant Town store on First Avenue. That location’s final day of business will fall on September 3.
In a report from May of last year, the World Economic Forum noted that bike industry revenues are still high compared to pre-COVID levels, although consumer spending has come down somewhat. Citing the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the report said that “Americans spent $7 billion on bicycles and accessories in 2020, up from $6.1 billion the year before.” The report pegged peak sales as occurring in the second quarter of 2021, when “consumers bought bikes and equipment at an annual rate of $8.2 billion compared to pre-pandemic spending.”
As the pandemic ebbed in the third quarter of 2021, the report found that this spending started to “decrease.”
John, an employee at the Stuy Town store, chuckled as he realized that the W. 96th St. store “has been there for longer than any of us have been alive.” Indeed, it appears that Trek-heads will have to plot out new commutes if they want to patch up their bikes in the near future.