Is This Australia’s Biggest Bike Shop?

Ivanhoe Cycles has been a landmark on Heidelberg Road, in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe for many years. The shop has gradually expanded to fill about four small shop fronts in a row, plus an old house at the rear, but it was still relatively small and bursting at the seams with stock, staff and customers.

A few years ago, owner Ken Frank opened Bicycle HQ, a much larger second store on the other side of town in Dandenong Road Carnegie.

Now he’s gone bigger again, opening Ivanhoe Cycles Megastore, just one suburb to the north of their original store. It’s at 72 Bell Street, Heidelberg Heights. This is one of Melbourne’s main arterial roads and significantly busier than Heidelberg Road.

In contrast to their original store, the megastore is over one thousand square metres in area with open spans and high ceilings. It has 600-700 bikes on display.

“Our original intention was to shut the old shop when the new shop opened,” explained Ivanhoe’s manager, Greg Griffiths. “But the new shop has taken a little longer to set up than we originally thought and we’ve had sufficient sales at the old store to keep both stores open. We also didn’t want any of our customers to think that we’d closed.”

Greg said that the new store was trading well. All of the bike building is now being done at the new store with only sales and repairs at the old store.