Finding Their Own Business Cycle

Opening a bike shop let this couple turn their passion into a new career.

- Patricia Mertz Esswein

PROFILE

WHO: Diane Cutler, 53, interviewed, and Andy Zivinsky, 47

WHERE: Bryson City, N.C.

WHAT: Owners, Bryson City Bicycles

Why open a bike shop?

We are lifelong bicyclists. I rode across the U.S. when I was 20, and Andy was an accomplished BMX racer as a kid. Andy had mechanical prowess and friends who owned a bike shop, so he thought a shop would work. I was against it. I’d been in bike shops my whole life, and I was never treated with respect. It was a “boys’ club” kind of thing. But Andy said we could be inclusive.

How did you pick Bryson City?

People come to western North Carolina from all over the world to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and for worldclass mountain biking in the Tsali Recreation Area. But Bryson City didn’t have a bike shop. In 2008, we visited and realized it could be the place.