Shop Talk

Holly Anzalone takes over a long-standing Bentonville shop.

Story and Photography by Kai Caddy

How did you end up buying Mojo?

We’ve been here for 17 years with Walmart. 
I’m originally from Minnesota. I was a stay-at-home mom for the past 20 years. And with my daughter, who’s 16, with her starting to drive, it was time to find something to do. 
I didn’t want to go into, like, a conventional job. I heard about the shop coming up for sale. We’ve been giving every single bike shop in town so much money throughout the years with my son’s cycling. He started with NICA, and then the OZ Development Team and then moved up to Gravity Academy, which is one of the bigger national teams, and now he rides in college. So we’ve been living in this world for 10-some years. 
My husband was a NICA coach at Lincoln. And I just didn’t want to say in five years, ‘Man, we should have taken that chance,’ so we bought a bike shop.

I have a graduate degree in public policy from Purdue and I went to undergrad at Wisconsin. When I was in the workforce, I did nonprofit research. So it’s totally not anything I ever saw on the horizon. It’s funny, because my neighbor was laughing at me, and he’s like, “What do you know about running a bike shop?” I’m like, “more than I did six months ago.”

There’s nothing in my background that says I would have owned a bike shop. At all.
Every part of this has been a positive experience. 
And, you know, retaining all of the staff, I think, is a testament to everybody being bought-in and aligned to the vision that we have. A lot of it is just empowering them to do their job. I joke that my answer’s always gonna be yes. “What do you need to do your job better?“ And I’ll stay out of their way.

We’re having a good time. Honestly, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. The best thing I could have done for myself. We’re a good shop. Bring your dog, bring your family.

“I just didn’t want to say in five years, ‘Man, we should have taken that chance,’ so we bought a bike shop.”

How are things going?

We’re just in such a great position here. The rental center can function by itself, the service center can function by itself. We just hired a new general manager. We set it up so it’s just a really well-run house.

It’s going really, really well. We’re beating last year already, six months in. We have a guy that comes in two days a week just to build bikes. We’re just really trying to become very, very efficient. Our initial investment was service, holding a lot more inventory than the shop previously held, more mechanics to try to have a 24- to 48-hour turnaround.

What are some of your goals for Mojo?

I want to have Mojo just get more community involvement. I want to expand offerings for women and grow our kids’ business. 


We just want to be a really solid family bike shop. We want people not to be intimidated to come into a bike shop. We don’t want people to be intimidated to come in here and say, “I know nothing, but I want this.” We got you.

There was a young woman that was in the shop a couple of weeks ago, and she had just relocated here. And she’s like, “OK, I’m meeting people, and they’re telling me I need a bike, and I went and rented one. And I want this.” She left with the biggest smile and her new bike.

We’re going to be the friendliest. We’re going to win on customer service. We’re going to win on creating those interpersonal relationships with every single person who comes to the party. I would say, based on the feedback and the Google reviews we’re getting, we’re doing a really good job.

Talk about your role in the community.

Our location is amazing. Being right here on the trails, we get so many people who leave the rental center and just ride right to the park. And that’s really fabulous. 
I mean, we’ve been part of this community for so long. We want to expand our NICA offerings because that was such a profound organization for our family. We want to partner more with community events and just get the Mojo name out there. And we’re just starting to explore working with different nonprofits in town.