Brett Stepanik
Lessons for work and life: Russell (front) and Calmeso, Shirley and Lee (left to right), with a volunteer at Northgate’s DreamBikes shop.
At 4:15 p.m. four north Madison teens arrive for their shift at DreamBikes, a bicycle resale shop whose interior evokes the orphanage Tom Waits envisioned in his 1981 song, Broken Bicycles.
Broken bicycles, old busted chains/With busted handle bars out in the rain/Somebody must have an orphanage for all these things that nobody wants anymore…
The teens’ job: to refurbish and resell orphaned bikes.
But on this Friday, their first task is to fill 20 balloons with helium, finishing each with a ribbon.
“They’re for the grand opening tomorrow,” explains Olivia Lee, a 16-year-old East High School junior who learned about DreamBikes in a college prep course.
Since its first store opened in Verona, in 2008, five others in four states have followed. The Northgate location was part of DreamBikes four-store expansion last year. The business model is simple: turn unwanted bicycles into saleable inventory.
The store technically opened last October, sans bicycles.
“It took us about three to four months to build up our inventory,” says store manager Josh Barrett. “Then we had to strip them down, clean all the parts, and build them back up.”
Those dead on arrival are salvaged for usable parts. Leftovers are shipped to bicycle programs in Africa. “Almost everything that comes into the shop gets channeled out somewhere,” he says.
City residents, mostly north-siders, have donated around 100 bikes since last fall.
“A lot of people donate to us specifically because of what we do,” Barrett says. “So the bikes come in from the community and go back out into the community.”
As its name and nonprofit status suggest, DreamBikes pitches a far more utopian vision than the authoritarian-gray interior of its north-side store lets on. What would be a low-wage job to adults is seen as an opportunity by the teenagers who live in the low-income neighborhoods where DreamBike stores operate.
About 200 opportunities have been created.
At one of four work stations behind the service counter, Calista Shirley, 16, cleans the individual parts of a bike nearly ready for reassembly.
“I had never refurbished anything before,” she says. “It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be.”
DreamBikes is far from her dream job, but it’s accommodating enough for her to take four weeks off to study abroad this summer in the Dominican Republic. Like Lee, Shirley learned of the DreamBikes opportunity from connections through East High School’s AVID program, for students on track to be first in their family to attend college.
Madison school board member and former gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke, whose father founded Trek Bicycle, was instrumental in bringing AVID to Madison high schools. Trek Bicycle was likewise instrumental in launching DreamBikes.
“Our employees learn a variety of soft and hard skills,” says Barrett, an avid cyclist hired by DreamBikes 18 months ago. “They learn life isn’t all fun and games, that sometimes the bathroom needs to be cleaned.”
Bike repairs can be time-intensive, especially for mechanics so green, but Barrett doesn’t set quotas. Though sales are a must to prevent paychecks from bouncing, his teenage staff is similarly unburdened by sales goals.
“Obviously, customer service is our number one priority,” he says. “But I believe that if we focus on the mission, the sales will follow.”
Nearly an hour after the teens begin their shift, six balloons remain unfilled. Customers are trickling in. East High sophomore Bryan Russell, 15, is on deck to greet them. Although he clearly has more mechanical aptitude than the others combined, his heart is in sales.
“I want to learn marketing, too,” he says.
Surprisingly, none of the teens find much pleasure in bicycling as an activity. If Trek had a hidden agenda to cultivate a new generation of cyclists — or cheap labor — it has some uphill pedaling to do.
East High freshman Malcolm Calmeso, 14, doesn’t own a bike. His DreamBikes employee discount is unlikely to change that. “Man, I got other priorities,” he says, “like saving for college.”
Percentage of energy delivered by bicycle riders transmitted to the wheels: 99
Teens employed by DreamBikes: 200
Bikes refurbished and resold: 15,000
Bicycles built by Trek in its first year: 900
