  his bicycle store
dates back to the 1940's - before Mike
Cookson was born even! It was managed by Don Cookson for a
man called Frank Walker from 1946 until
the 1960's when the business was bought
by the Cookson family. Mike was born in
the upstairs flat in 1951. In the 1980's
in Mike's hands it became one of the
first specialist mountain bike shops in
the U.K.
In those
days Muddy Fox and Specialized were the
top names; then came Kona, G.T., Saracen,
M.S Racing, Scott, Ridgeback and others,
but by the early '90's Marin and Trek had
emerged as top selling brands. On the
back of the rapid market growth around
the turn of the decade, manufacturers
have progressed
from the 80's pattern of offering a
choice of a mere half a dozen totally
rigid mountain bikes between £200 and
£800 to their current huge ranges. There
are 35 Marins this year, over 70 Treks
and another dozen models from Klein and
Lemond. This is partly accounted for by
the appearance of the hybrid and the
suspension bike and the re-emergence of
the road bike and partly by other factors
such as the growth in popularity of
aluminium and alternative materials. Even
a relatively large retailer needs only a
few good brands to give plenty of
customer choice.
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