Street style, downsized: Denver Duo finds market ripe for scooters.

AuthorPeterson, Eric
PositionAttitude altitude

IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT WHEN COLIN SHATTUCK SPOTTED ADAM BAKER'S VINTAGE Vespa scooter parked on a Boulder sidewalk in 1994. Four years and a Small Business Administration course later, the pair opened Sportique Scooters in a onetime Sinclair station in Denver's Highlands neighborhood.

"We weren't sure if it was going to be a hobby or a business," remembers Baker. The inventory on opening day: one restored scooter and $3,500 worth of parts.

Sportique quickly earned a reputation for top-notch restorations, at a time when dinged-up old scooters were relatively easy to find. "We'd always fixed scooters in our garage," said Shattuck. "Our garage just got bigger." In Sportique's first years in business, its shop painstakingly restored more than 100 vintage Vespa and Lambretta scooters a year.

Then, after a stale era for new scooters--Shattuck referred to the 1970s through much of the 1990s as "the Scooter Ice Age"--a steady stream of sexy new Italian imports started hitting the U.S. in the late 1990s. After then-Denver City Councilwoman Debbie Ortega helped land Sportique a probationary license to sell new vehicles, Shattuck and Baker ordered a shipment of shiny Italjet Velociferos in 1999 and "immediately" sold all of them, said Shattuck. "We sold 60 so fast it would make your head spin. That injection of capital was a major turning point."

With the Velocifero cash flow, the store started stocking--and selling--more and more vintage scooters. In 1999 and 2000, the Denver store sold 200 used bikes a year. With wave after wave of new imports now hitting the U.S., and the supply of vintage scooters nearly exhausted, Sportique today sells primarily new models, carrying more brands--nine--than any other scooter dealer in the country.

In 2000, the biggest name in the scooter...

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