As the founder and CEO of Bike-On, an adaptive cycling and recreational mobility retailer, Scott Pellett knows that cycling is about more than just muscle memory, especially for those who never thought they’d ride a bike again.
Pellett was an athletic, high school freshman when he lost the use of his legs in an accident in 1971. But thanks to some helpful mentors, and what he called “just the right amount of naive optimism and a quest for life’s adventure,” Pellett bounced back.
He helped start a wheelchair basketball league and stayed physically active despite his disability. That included founding, and eventually selling, several small businesses in the fitness industry with his wife, Lynn, in the 1980s. After their son Dan was old enough to ride a bike, Pellet bought himself a handcycle, and it changed his life.
“I’d ride with my wife and my son. … We did a lot of cycling together,” said Pellet. “I knew I could play wheelchair basketball but when I found the handcycle, I realized that I could just blend in so nicely with my able-bodied friends. It was like, who’d have thought I’d be doing this?”
With his newfound love of cycling, Pellet started his online retailer, Bike-On, in 1999, out of a closet in his home. “One of my first sales was to a man in Israel,” Pellett said. “It was the coolest thing to have a store on every street corner in the world. I was getting people into riding handcycles and I felt like I was making a difference. It felt good.”
Today Bike-On operates out of a 10,000-square-foot location in Warwick, with seven employees (including his wife and son) and plenty of warehouse space for Pellett’s most recent venture, Spinov8 (pronounced like “innovate”), an adaptive-cycle and recumbent-trike distributor that he started last year and which currently serves 150 retailers. While the location is not a retail store, it does have a showroom that draws people from across the region, according to Pellet, since most bike shops don’t carry such highly specialized bikes.
Although it does not disclose annual sales figures, Bike-On continues to grow, thanks to new technologies and aging baby boomers. Pellett says a new recumbent trike usually costs anywhere between $1,200 and $5,000, depending on the cyclist’s needs.
His team recently created a custom recumbent trike for a quadruple amputee. They’ve built custom handcycles with electronic shifting for quadriplegics. And they also sell to everyday people with less-challenging physical impairments, such as balance issues, back injuries or problems with their shoulders or wrists.
“They see this recumbent trike that’s very comfortable and it’s very inviting and freeing,” said Pellett. “People just say, ‘Wow, this is so cool, I thought I had lost this opportunity.’ And to get it back – every time you get on your bike, you feel like a 12-year-old.”
OWNER: Scott Pellett
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Adaptive cycling and recreational mobility
LOCATION: 72 College St., Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 7
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1999
ANNUAL SALES: WND
