A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas

From Trailhead To Shopfront with Scott Adventure Lab

• Visit Bentonville • Season 19 • Episode 52

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Craig Zedeker with Scott Adventure Lab joins us to chart how a college curiosity became a career shaping how riders buy, build, and belong. We talk about the scrappy early days of Competitive Cyclist, from eBay listings and Rubbermaid parts tubs to pioneering online for riders across the country. Scott Adventure Lab, a welcoming hub where anyone can walk in, rent a cruiser for the Razorback Greenway, or dial in a race machine with pro-level service.

We get into what makes the shop tick: Craig’s partner, veteran racer and bilingual master fitter Ernie Lechuga, brings deep expertise and an open-door approach. The vibe is inclusive and energized—pros brushing shoulders with first-timers during the Little Sugar and Big Sugar week, locals swapping routes, and visitors discovering how easy it is to roll from the Motto Hotel to Crystal Bridges in minutes. If you’re planning a trip to Bentonville, you’ll hear practical tips for stress-free riding: ship your bike to the hotel, store it safely with e-bike charging, and let the team handle assembly and boxing. 

A New American Town is here to help you plan your trip to Bentonville, Arkansas. From guides, events, and restaurant highlights. Find all this and more at visitbentonville.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.

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Nat Ross

Welcome to the bike edition of a new American town brought to you by Visit Bentonville. I'm your host, Matt Ross. Today, pretty exciting, we've got Craig Zedicker in the house in the studio. Here we go. Craig, welcome. Craig Zediker, guest of the show today. We are downtown Bentonville, across from the Motto and the Ledger, and we are ironically straight across from the Scott Adventure Lab, your shop. So, Craig, welcome. You go way back in the sport of cycling, way deep into mountain biking, and really you're an industry vet. So we are lucky to have you in the studio today, and I want to hear a little bit about where you got started in Arkansas with cycling and then into the single track realm, mountain biking, dirt, all those elements, because the expertise that you're bringing to Bentonville now is next level.

Craig Zediker

Thanks for having me, Nat. Yeah, I've been doing it a long time, showing my age. For college, I was at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville here in northwest Arkansas. And um, I guess about my third year in school, started uh borrowing a mountain bike from a from a roommate. Uh it was a 21-inch diamond bike, didn't fit me. He was over six foot. And uh through that, I started working at a local bike shop there, the High Roller, which is a super cool little shop, still exists right there on campus. And at that time it was a really uh, you know, a campus-oriented uh bike shop. And they got a new manager, and I came on and we really started pushing the mountain bike scene. We were uh, you know, we were on the weekends, we're warriors, we were hitting Devil's Den State Park.

Nat Ross

Excellent.

Building Competitive Cyclist Online

Craig Zediker

And at that time there were some really cool trails around Lake Fort Smith, which since the lake has increased in size and swallowed up all those really cool trails. But uh yeah, Devil's Den was kind of like for me the introduction into mountain biking.

Nat Ross

And uh those trails are still there. Well, let's dive into uh where you took this from the retail component and your passion for it, and then your next chapter where you were the owner, uh one of the owners and founder of Competitive Cyclist. So for those that are newer to the sport, there used to be a day where the internet didn't really exist as much. And you would go through a catalog and you would drool over the latest, greatest components, elements, bikes, pieces, and kind of learn where the sport was going. And for me, living in Colorado, competitive cyclist was that what do they have going on there in terms of um, especially for the dirt and the mountain bike side of things? Competitive cyclists, once it was online and those pieces, um you guys expanded. I'm bouncing through the years here. So be came to be a premier uh bike shop, and it was basically the go-to for off-road. And then you guys later on ended up selling to backcountry. So quick blast there. But fill us in on what that success was like and how it set you up for opening the Scott Adventure Lab in Bentonville.

Craig Zediker

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was working, like I said, in a small bike shop in Northwest Arkansas, uh, High Roller, and then uh had the opportunity to move down to Little Rock and started working for a really successful store there called Chainwell, one of the longest running bike shops in in Arkansas. And through that, started my own shop, a little small shop in a strip mall, and that grew a little bit. And then eventually uh Brendan Cork started working for me. And uh he and I just kind of formed a friendship. I was a very people person. I was out there, you know, racing bikes at a local level, regional level. I mean, nothing compared to your success, Nat, but you know, I was out there uh, you know, banging elbows. And um, Brendan was the really he was the business guy behind it. Um honestly, I knew nothing about business. I had a communication degree from the University of Arkansas. And um, you know, Brendan helped me um kind of bring our local business to the next level, but we started selling stuff on eBay, some vintage Campanola equipment. So uh we were literally just finding high-flanch hubs and putting them on eBay, and we realized, wow, there is a massive audience out there. And at that time, uh cycling and golf were huge on eBay. And so what it really did, it opened our eyes to how big the internet was. And and this is, you know, late 90s. And so we started a website, competitivecyclist.com. And um, Bunny, I've I've been quoted this. It was smoke and mirrors, you know, in the sense that we didn't really have this inventory. Um people would get online and they would buy this Pinerello and you know, full Campanola equipment, and then we would get on and and try to, we'd buy the buy the frame and buy the parts and overnight stuff. And we had these, you know, rubber-made tubs sitting around the bike shop full of parts with people's names on them. And um on the front end, what the customer saw was this this very orchestrated, you know, oh wow, they've got all this stuff and they got all this information. In the back end, it was very mechanical, but uh it slowly progressed. And we took a loan from my parents and Brendan's parents and and uh and from a bank and we got a real website and it turned into a very successful internet business. And we were some of the first people doing online bicycle fit um and selling bicycles. And a lot of people were how can you buy a bike online? Because fit is so crucial, which I do believe that. And so we came up with a fit calculator. We were trying to, you know, answer all those problems. And it slowly grew and grew.

Launching Scott Adventure Lab

Nat Ross

Well, I remember being in Moab and I had a friend that was waiting for one of the bikes that he was demoing, the new latest, greatest, to show up, and you guys had got it there in two days. So there he was, and you guys made him really happy back in the competitive cyclist days. But Craig, back to the downtown Bentonville location with the Scott Adventure Lab and your vision for partnering with Scott, but still having the hometown, the one-on-one. I was just in your shop and you guys are literally taking the customers, walking them through the process, very welcoming. And I think that's really important that for a lot of folks to understand how easy it is to walk into your shop. So fill us in on where you're at and then kind of what you guys do. Because I think a lot of folks, if they stay downtown, they can see it, but a lot of folks can just come in and make it really simple. So let's do that.

Craig Zediker

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was kind of bragging about my competitive cyclist days. I explain to people like I've kind of seen it all, started at a small local bike shop, and that's where I'm kind of back. Uh you know, kind of follow your passion. Uh my love is with just meeting people and that handshake. And yeah, absolutely. Nat, that's that's who we are. We want to be your local bike shop. So location, yeah. We're 229 South Maine. We're in the Motto Hotel. Yeah, you heard that right? We're we're kind of uh unique. We're uh in a retail spot inside of a hotel. It's pretty cool. We have people coming from all over the world here in Northwest Arkansas, and a lot of those people stay at the Motto Hotel. Of course, they're here on business with Walmart, but they come in very interesting meeting people from like literally all walks of life and all corners of the uh of the world. And um we rent bikes daily to these people, so it's super cool. But yeah, we're trying to, you know, trying to do everything. We're uh we rent bikes, we service bikes, and we sell bikes. We're exclusively Scott. We have picked up Envy as kind of our little Gucci brand. But you know, I did hitch my wagon to Scott. I sold uh Scott bikes back in the day at Competitive Cyclist. A very interesting brand. You know, they come from a race heritage, they're massive in Europe, as you know. They don't have a massive presence in the U.S. like they do in Europe, but a phenomenal brand. And uh they really innovate, and that's what I like about the brand. But yeah, I mean, we try to be that local bike shop. You know, some shops here in town like really cater the tourists. Well, we we try to cater to everybody, you know, and all walks of life. I mean, we have kids' bikes all the way up, you know, to you know, super high-end race bikes.

Rentals For Greenway And Visitors

Nat Ross

Can you elaborate on like a cruiser bike or someone that wants to explore the greenway that may not even have their cycling clothes in town and what experience they may be able to ride or what they can get when they walk through your doors? Because a lot of folks are intimidated when we're talking mountain biking and all this hardcore Bentonville trail system. But uh you open it up.

Craig Zediker

Aaron Powell Yeah, Nat, we rent a lot of bikes, and it's interesting you bring that up. The Razorback Greenway, uh people uh listening to this probably know, but you know, it reaches basically from the edge of Missouri now all the way down to Fayetteville, and it's phenomenal. You know, it's safe to ride. But our number one rental bike is an E, an electric cruiser bike. It's got fenders, locks, lights. It's super cool. $75, you know, and uh you can grab this. We have helmets and everything, so that's really cool where we have families or business people in town, and they come in, they're like, oh, you can rent a bike here? We're like, absolutely. And uh, you know, we grab a helmet and a bike that fits them and send them on their way. And we've got some great little trail maps of the Razorback Greenway. But yeah, our number one rental bike, it's you know, it's not this pro-elite cyclist, it's just this everyday person walking in and wanting to experience, you know, the trails here and see what Northwest Arkansas has to offer. Of course, you know, venturing down on a bike to Crystal Bridges is only a couple minutes from us. Right. So that's a very common. And now with a Walmart headquarters being open, if people haven't ridden the green way through there, it's absolutely incredible. Mind-blowing the landscaping. It's a small town.

Nat Ross

Well, um, your hours are pretty for a bike shop, they're incredible. Um, especially if you're a customer that has to get up and work early or is busy. And it seems like for a bike shop you guys are more than accommodating with the hours. So when do you open? When do you close? What what can a customer expect to get when they walk in?

Craig Zediker

Yeah, I would say our hours are insane. So uh we're uh we open at 7 and close at 7. Uh so 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the summer. After Christmas, we go to holiday hours, uh, and that's until time changes. So we're eight to six right now, currently our winter hours. But yeah, during the summer, uh 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. So our rental, you know, when people actually rent our bikes, a lot of a lot of shops in town don't open up till 10. Yeah. And as an avid cyclist, uh, you can appreciate like I need that tube, I need that goo, uh whatever, right, for that morning ride. So that's why we decided to open so early. It's is to cater those people trying to get out on a ride before work.

Nat Ross

Yeah. And then let's send folks to the website. What is the website um while we're talking business and accessibility?

Hours, Services, And Accessibility

Craig Zediker

Yeah, Adventure Lab NWA. Right now we're still trying to get our bicycle rental uh program there live, but you can go there and kind of see who we are and what we sell, what we service. You know, uh a lot of people ask me, do we work on e-bikes? Absolutely. You know, and we work on any brand, any make or model. I've been turning wrenches on bikes my entire life, and and so has Ernie. I want to give him a shout-out to Yeah, let's let's hear about your staff. Yeah, so Ernie Lechuga is my business partner. I met Ernie when I was back in Little Rock, you know, phenomenal bike racer, as you know, Nat. But I uh certified in a couple different fit credentials, and um I tell people all the time, I'm like, get a fit from Ernie. He is a phenomenal fitter. But yeah, Ernie came to me, found out I was had moved to Northwest Arkansas. We knew each other back in Little Rock. Every time I'd see him in the grocery store, he's like, let's get something going. And finally uh we pulled the trigger, uh we had the opportunity and had the small space there in the motto hotel. And uh we opened our doors in July, and it's been it's been great. You know, I feel like we're slowly becoming a part of the community. And, you know, we kind of did our rollout pretty slow. Um and uh it's gaining some traction, and I'm really looking forward to uh this summer.

Nat Ross

Well, the one the great thing is that you guys participate in the local events and the community part. So you're there um just passionately at whatever the event is, but also you guys have been known to give grab bags, kind of some surprise, like little hookups, water bottles, those pieces. So you know what the community is all about. And then in your experience too, you have a lot of experience with juniors, with families, and it seems like your gamut of the customer base is insane. So in Bentonville, the opportunities are here, but you guys have really honed in on the spot, the sweet spot that you know you're good at.

Team, Fitting, And Community Roots

Craig Zediker

True. You know, the thing that we hung our hat on at competitive and ever since I started in the bike industry is I do believe bike shops can be very intimidating. When you walk in, we're like surfers, you know, we talk about single track and you know, shredding the gnar and all these things, right? And for someone coming in buying their first bike, that can be very intimidating. So, you know, Ernie and I, I mean, like if you sat in there and watched, half the people that come in, you know, they get a hug or a handshake because we know them uh in some form or fashion. But those people walking in the door, that's what we kind of hang our hat on, is that we want just open arms for everybody. We want to explain cycling. We both are very excited to get people on their first bike. And and I can remember what that freedom felt like, right? But just to say that shopping for a new bike can be intimidating, especially if you're new to cycling. And we try to take that away, you know.

Nat Ross

Well, you guys have done a fantastic job. And I remember in October when the athletes were in town for the back-to-back races, it's kind of like the end of the season party here in Bentonville. You guys were the hub, the place. Like it was happening there.

Craig Zediker

Aaron Powell Yeah, we uh we did. We had a good time. Like you were saying, in between little sugar and big sugar, it's uh it's just a week of cycling fun. Big names are in town. You can just feel the energy, you know. And we did. We had our grand opening that week in between little sugar and big sugar, and there were just these phenomenal cyclists in there. And there were also these just local people that re-ride with daily on uh Ernie does a uh morning gravel ride at 9 a.m. uh weekdays. And you know, all these local people showed up. They didn't know who these pros were. And to me, that's just so awesome seeing people, you know, bumping elbows and not even realizing that this should be a wow factor. Everybody was there for the common thing, and that was the bike, right? Yeah. What brings us all together.

Nat Ross

Well, I do invite everyone to walk through the front doors because Craig, you guys are one of the most inviting bike shops out there, and that intimidation factor really doesn't exist. It is a bike shop, so it's a lot of technical information and stuff in there, but you guys seem to have the breakdown, the way to communicate and make feel like people welcome when they walk through that front door. So anything else you want to uh let the Bentonville community know about or folks coming into town and planning on coming to visit Bentonville, whether it's riding the trails, exploring, or any information that you can help them with?

Craig Zediker

Thanks for those kind words. Yeah, I will say we're bilingual, uh, which is big in Northwest Arkansas. We have a uh a large uh Hispanic population. Ernie is uh is bilingual, which is awesome. And rental fleet, uh touch on that real quick, uh, because a lot of people are coming into town and they can't fly with a bike or whatever. We have uh I know it's hard to hear me say this, but analog bikes as well as uh e-bikes. You know, it's funny that we have to distinguish that we have both kinds, but uh yeah, absolutely. Uh we have all the way down to kids' bikes, we have trailers to pull kids in, we have everything, you know. So we want to be your one-stop shop. And and of course, we have the new shiny ones too. We'd love to sell you a bike.

Nat Ross

Yeah, you got some nice carbon fiber in there. And also people can ship their bikes, and you guys will assemble them and even package it up when they go and uh do take care of that service as well.

Events, Inclusivity, And Shop Culture

Craig Zediker

Aaron Ross Powell Absolutely. Yeah. Uh we pride ourselves on, you know, being able to unbox and box things up properly. That's one thing that I'm I'm well versed in. I've I've boxed more bikes than I can imagine. But yeah, absolutely. A lot of people fly in and stay at the hotel. The cool thing about the hotel is um we do have a bike storage facility uh with charging ports and everything. So the the rooms at the motto are small. I mean, give a shout out to them that they built a huge storage closet because they know people are coming to Northwest Arkansas to ride their bikes.

Nat Ross

Aaron Powell Great. Well, and I think just to kind of wrap up and highlight the Scott Adventure Lab element and piece, you guys have all types of bikes. You can accommodate every single type of rider. What's your favorite type of customer that walks through the door? If you were to describe a moment when that customer leaves an experience for you that you're like, this is why I do this.

Craig Zediker

You know, from the beginning of my time in bike shops, it's really interesting to see someone come in and buy their first bike and then see them come back and you can just tell they're hooked. They tell you about the miles, they tell you about the trails they rode, they tell you about this new widget they want to buy from you. And of course, well, we're there to make money and we love selling them stuff, but it is really cool to see these people who have never ridden a bike, and you can just say these people are going to be cyclists the rest of their life. You know, when you get bit by that bug of cycling, it's just there. You know, you wear it on your shirt sleeve. And I I love seeing that. I love seeing people not just buying a bike, but becoming a cyclist. To me, that's really rewarding.

Nat Ross

You know, well, for all those listeners out there that are on the cusp and it's the new year and they want to explore it, Craig, we're sending them to your front door. So again, where are they headed?

Craig Zediker

Adventure Lab NWA and the Motto Hotel. Come see us.

Nat Ross

Awesome. Well, Craig Zedicker, been a fantastic chat and um so much history with you. We're gonna dive into it some more. We'll see you at the shop, and thanks for coming on the podcast.

Craig Zediker

Thanks for having me, Nat.

Nat Ross

Whether you're looking to demo a bike, get fit for your next ride, learn about cycling, or just talk trails with someone who knows them, stop by the Scott Adventure Lab. This is Nat Ross, your VisitBentonvillehost. It has everything you need to plan your trip or discover what's happening locally. Find us at visitbittenbell.com on social media or sign up for our newsletter. Hey crowd, thanks for listening. See you next time.