Merchants of Fine Goods for Traditional Road Bicycling, Randonneuring, and Cyclotouring.

About Tullio's

Once upon a time, Tullio’s Big Dog Cyclery was our area’s main family bicycle shop.  We sold kids’ bikes, mountain bikes, road bikes, tandems, comfort bikes, and recumbents.  Today, Tullio’s is a small, one-person internet retailer specializing in unique items for traditional road cycling.  Here, you will find items from companies like Nitto, Carradice, Stronglight, Tubus, Berthoud, and Heron Bicycles (which I also happen to own).  I also offer wheels handbuilt to your specifications.

Tullio’s is currently located in the old retail shop on US Route 6 in LaSalle.  Visitors are welcome, but I no longer have a regular showroom to display product.  The building is for sale (investors, entrepreneurs, and developers:  check it out!).  Once it sells, we will move to a smaller location.

A Bit of History

I opened Tullio’s Big Dog Cyclery in 1995.  We were a full-line shop offering a good selection of bikes, parts, and accessories for families and enthusiasts.  Back then, our county of some 120,000 residents had four other shops.  Today, there is one regular shop.

In early 2001, I acquired Heron Bicycles, a line of hand-built lugged road frames.  Since that time, Heron has grown as a business in parallel to Tullio’s.  There are currently fourteen dealers of Heron frames nationwide.  Shortly after the acquisition of Heron Bicycles, I began importing unique goods from overseas that typically were not available from US distributors.  These included items from companies like Carradice, Berthoud, and Nitto.  The internet allowed me to reach a market for these goods that we could never access from our traditional storefront.

As our Heron and internet businesses grew, it became more difficult to devote sufficient time to them.  Our store in LaSalle was still busy and required a good deal of our resources in time, inventory, and facilities.  In September 2003, my wife and I were blessed with a beautiful baby girl, Mary.  In 2005, our little boy, Jack, arrived. Running Heron Bicycles, our growing internet sales, and our LaSalle store meant working 6-7 days a week and little family time.  Something had to give.

So, I made the decision to close our retail store in LaSalle as of Christmas 2004.  This would allow me more time for my family as well as the ability to focus a bit more on Heron Bicycles and the internet.  The result of that decision is the Tullios.com website.  I am looking to import more hard-to-find traditional products as well as some produce some new ones here in the US.  So, keep checking back to see what is new.

-Todd Kuzma