Longtime Georgia retailer to retire in December

DECATUR, Ga. (BRAIN) — Fred Boykin, founder and owner of Bicycle South outside of Atlanta, has announced that he is selling his shop to manager Brian Dunne and will retire at the end of the year.

After 43 years in bike retail, Boykin, 64, said he is ready to turn over promoting the joys of cycling to the next generation.

“It’s a good time in my life to do it and move on to other things,” said Boykin, who opened the shop in 1972 when he was a junior at Emory University. “It just makes sense to do it now. I’ve been doing retail forever and I need to step back from that.

“I love the industry and I’ll definitely miss parts of it,” he added.

The cycling bug first bit Boykin in the early 1970s when he visited his then-girlfriend’s family in Iowa. “They were from France and very into bicycles,” Boykin said. “Her father got me a Peugeot road bike and I joined their Sunday morning rides out in the countryside.”

Boykin and Bicycle South have won numerous awards for their support of local cycling, including Bicycle Retailer’s BRAINy Award for retail advocate of the year in 2005, QBP’s Clay Mankin Award in 2007 and Boykin’s namesake award, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition’s Fred Boykin Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2014.

Boykin said he is most proud of the work he has done with the Safe Routes to School program and the positive impacts it has made on Decatur. He plans to stay involved with the program and is currently serving his fourth four-year term on the Decatur city commission.

Dunne has worked at Bicycle South for more than 20 years and plans to continue the store’s dedication to supporting the local cycling community. He was a 5 percent owner for a number of years, and Boykin said that not much will change in the day-to-day store operations following the transition.

Bicycle South occupies a 4,500-square-foot space and employs about eight people year-round. It was one of the first Giant dealers in the U.S., and also carries Raleigh, Diamondback and Brompton.