Does Scott still own it? I know that Tom Demerly was involved with it for a while as well, but I never knew whether he had a stake or not.

They tried legal means to get our URL from us when we opened via trademark claims. It cost us a bit of money (trademark lawyers) and they didn't have a strong claim, so it didn't go very far. While it was frustrating at the time, I later realized I learned a lot through the whole situation and probably would have tried the same thing if I were them.

I genuinely hate to see them go and wish them the best.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

Tom was in the shop when this out of state person stopped in this shop in June 2017. from his blog:
https://tomdemerly.com/2018/05/


He now works as an aerospace and defense columnist for TheAviationist.com, the world’s foremost defense and aerospace blog published in Rome, Italy.

His military background is helping him today.

From what I gather, Tom is no longer there, but Scott is. Tom sold me my bike in 2016 and did a great fit for it, and Scott and other mechanics took really good care of my older bike before I purchased. There was a Facebook review I noticed from earlier this year where a customer was upset about the current fitter's lack of training.

That's a real bummer they went after the URL like that. At some point, they changed the name from The Tri Shop to The Bike and Tri Shop. Perhaps that was after the case ended. Sidenote: can you take care of my Tri gear needs now? :)

They changed the name sometime after. It never turned into a case - just a couple of nastygrams from aggressive lawyers. It is just some of the cost of doing business, I guess.

They really seemed to push online in the beginning, and from 1500 miles away it just seemed like the time and energy required to tend that garden got to be too much. Over time, the online store appeared to become neglected almost entirely.

We just launched our online store after years of promising. I knew I didn't want an eCommerce site with an out-of-the-box engine and template, and I knew that it was a tremendous amount of time and work to get it built correctly. And sure enough, I was right - every layer of the onion I peeled showed me there was a lot more to do. So I waited until we got it right before we turned the lights on. I wish I had done it years ago, but I am also glad I waited until it was ready.

We've got a decent percentage of our inventory out there for browsing and buying, with more on the way. We've got other features in the pipeline too.

We'd be happy to serve you any way we can, but I encourage anyone with a good shop in their neighborhood to steer as much of your purchasing there as you can. I don't think the triathlon world is better without robust, successful triathlon retailers pushing to provide better products and better customer service.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)

I remain thoroughly unconvinced that Velofix is a sustainable model. And I am also quite positive that Service is not how shops of the present or shops of the future will make most of their profits.

Service is a loss leader in the vast majority of shops.

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Trent Nix
Owned and operated Tri Shop
F.I.S.T. Advanced Certified Fitter | Retul Master Certified Fitter (back when those were things)