Gary Selner Biking And Machinist Expertise Combined For A Natural Business Opportunity

When Gary Selner gets a haircut, he asks the barber to leave it long.

Cutting off too much of his bushy black mane would destroy his image and, quite possibly, his business.

Selner, 45, is the person behind Hairy Gary Bicycles. A caricature of his grinning face adorns the frames of custom-made road bikes, mountain bikes and trail bikes built in the basement of his Spokane Valley home.

“I was going to call my company Selkirk because the Selkirk Mountains are here,” Selner said.

A friend convinced him otherwise. Name your company Hairy Gary, said Hazen Audel, a mountain bike racer Selner met while volunteering as a race mechanic. Audel even sketched the first logo, which looked more like a cartoon drawing of a caveman than Selner.

“I thought it was weird, but Tracy liked it right off the bat,” Selner said, referring to his assistant, Tracy West, 23. “Now when I get calls from my magazine ads, it’s always people saying, ‘I like your logo.”’

The business has evolved with the logo. Selner and West have sold increasing numbers of custom-made bikes, a total of about 50 in four years. Their customers are spread geographically from Spokane to Arizona. The bikes are sold mail-order and at Midway Cyclery, 2926 E. 29th.

Selner and West build the bike frames in-house and order the rest of the parts from around the world. Most of their customers know the precise brand of parts they want, such as Campy wheels, Ritchey pedals or Prestige tubing.

“We build most any kind of bikes,” Selner said. “People want bikes they can’t find.”

Business has increased slightly each year, said Selner, adding that he’ll sell 40 to 50 bikes this year alone. The company’s website also debuted recently, at http://www.eznet/ com/bikes/welcome.html.

“I wanted it to be hairygary.com, but that was another 55 bucks,” Selner said.

West, a champion downhill racer, rides Hairy Gary bikes when he competes and Selner gives away a couple of bikes every year to increase exposure.

“My breakthrough will come when I finally have enough bikes out there that people take me seriously,” Selner said.

“We’re right on the edge,” added West. “I feel that all the time.”

Despite increasing orders, money’s tight. The company doesn’t earn enough for Selner or West to give up their other jobs. Selner’s been a machinist for 27 years and works at ASC Machine Tools, Inc. West waits tables at Outback Steakhouse.

Hairy Gary’s customers are measured from head to toe when they order a bike. A bicyclist’s height, weight, inseam, torso length and arm length all are entered into a computer program that spits out the corresponding sizes of bike components for each rider.

“We make a drawing for every bike we build,” Selner said, indicating a huge drafting board showing a pencil diagram of a bike frame.

Everything has to be perfect because of the prices the bikes command. A Hairy Gary bicycle fetches $1,500 to $4,000. Many of Selner’s customers are racers who know a good bike when they hurtle downhill on one. Others are bicycling enthusiasts looking for a specific size that’s not mass-produced.

“We can’t compete with the $300 mountain bike that the bike shops sell a million of,” West said. “The smaller markets, that’s our niche.”

Selner also plans to start manufacturing other bike components besides frames. His goal this year is to make shocks and front suspension forks, which hold the front wheel and help steer the bike.

Selner grew up in Milwaukee, Wis., and moved to Seattle in 1978 to work for Boeing as a machinist. He moved to Spokane in 1983 after tiring of the West Side’s rain.

Selner is a former mountaineer who has climbed Alaska’s Mt. McKinley twice. He was attracted to Spokane for its four seasons and because of its proximity to Banff, Alberta, where he can climb on ice throughout the winter.

Selner started riding bikes when he moved to Spokane and, about five years ago, biking overtook mountaineering as a primary interest.

When he combined that with his expertise as a machinist, custom building bikes emerged as a natural business opportunity.

Selner dreams of expanding his business to include shops in other cities, such as Seattle and Portland.

“It’s my goal to sell them worldwide,” Selner said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo