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BOULDER - To hear Pete Shattuck tell it, his brother and a couple of friends took $20,000 and a dream, and transformed their hobby into a million-dollar retail operation.
Colin Shattuck, and his friends Adam Baker and Dustin Gabel converted a gas station into Sportique Scooter at 3211 Pecos St. in Denver in 1998.
"We were - and still are - kids," Pete Shattuck said, sitting on a scooter in their newest Sportique shop at 28th and Spruce streets in Boulder.
Colin was 25. Baker was 28 and had just graduated from X-ray technician school. Gabel, no longer a partner, was in his late 20s. And Pete, who joined the company in July 2001, had been a manager at an auto parts store.
At the time there was no scooter industry in Colorado to speak of, said co-owner Colin Shattuck. Scooters were sold at motorcycle shops. "A scooter customer never felt comfortable in the power-sports arena, next to the 160 horsepower motorcycle," he said.
So the four created a business plan that included selling, restoring, and maintaining Italian vintage and new scooters.
"Colin and Adam were very forward in thinking there could be and should be a market for scooters, both vintage and new," said Pete Shattuck, general manager of the Boulder store.
Since their launch, Sportique Scooters LLC has doubled its revenues nearly every year. In 1998, they logged sales of $220,000. Revenues reached $550,000 in 1999,...