1975-1984:
Original "hippie shop" on Spring Garden St.
It was right beside a Natural food commune and had  great old tin ceiling tiles and plenty of atmosphere!

     In 1975, cycles de ORO Bike Shop began it's business life as "Toga Bike Shop" The name "Toga" was chosen because founder Robert Kraus had helped start the successful Toga Bike Shop in NY and he thought the name was pretty neat and unusual. There was no financial or organizational connection to the NYC shop.

      Recent Masters Degree graduate from UNCG and cycling buddy Dale Brown shortly joined Robert and through their shared enthusiasm for all aspects of bicycling, they together created a shop that fostered a high level of cycling activity and an absolute dedication to quality service & products.
"Toga" organized and sponsored Greensboro's first bicycling club in modern times and welcomed members from throughout the region. The club, now evolved into the Greensboro Velo Club, is one of the largest and most active in the mid-Atlantic region.
     
      As the Greensboro shop gained some a good regional and even national reputation, there started to be some confusion about "which Toga was which?" and in the early 1980s, (after a lot of agonizing over which name to choose) the shop's was changed to be cycles de ORO, which literally means "Cycles of Gold."  This was in reference to the Olympic gold medals and the prevailing bike culture's tradition of using the gold "ORO" color to designate the best components (for instance, there was the popular Italian Regina company's top-of-the-line "ORO" chain and "ORO" freewheel.) There also was the neat coincidence that there is an "ORO" at the end of Greensboro, and that there are two "Os" that sort of look like a bicycle (?)
 

  The small shop to the right was the result of a move when the lease ran out on Spring Garden Street. This diminutive shop did a huge amount of business and spawned a second location across town on High Point Road (anyone have a picture of that spot?)  That second location lasted 5 years,  until the opportunity arose right across the street for one larger single location ->

1985-1994:
Our tiny Huntington Road location.
Originally this had been a "Lil General" convenience store.
We rolled as many as 150 bikes every day to maker room inside for business!

1994-2001:
1721 Huntington Road

Click for larger view...        See what's left  (demolition)

 Take a tour of our store!
 HERE

 2001- present
1410 Mill Road
Finally we have achieved our dream shop! Convenient to Greensboro colleges and neighborhoods yet access to riding areas. And a huge display area and certainly the largest and best equipped repair facility in North Carolina or beyond.


Just moving into our new digs on Mill Street!