For the past 100 years, A&B Cycle has been a mainstay in Springfield, Missouri. Its continuous commitment to serving its customers—from loyal cyclists to new riders—has solidified its spot providing 417-landers with a way to get outdoors.
May 2025
In 1994, Christopher McNeese started working part-time for a local shop assembling bicycles. Two decades later he purchased the company. “I graduated from SMSU (MSU) with several liberal arts majors and was trying to decide what graduate school to attend,” says McNeese, president of A&B Cycle Inc. and Heartwood Holdings LLC, a real estate holding company. “I began working part-time assembling bicycles —within a year I had become the purchasing manager and then became the general manager. In 2014 I had the opportunity to buy one of the greatest businesses on Earth, A&B Cycle.”
Located on South National across from Cox South Hospital, A&B Cycle is an expansive brick and mortar that proves it is serious about bikes. When McNeese purchased A&B in 2014, he added solar panels to the roof, which not only generate power six months of the year but also return extra power to the grid. “This is how we hopefully do our part to not be a drain on the world,” he says.
While solar power is a new-age addition, McNeese has kept the storied history and was very understanding of the business and what made it special.
“Our best innovation is older than our business—customer service,” he says. “We do our utmost to make sure people have the very best experience. In this world of bad service or no service, we hope that makes us stand out and we hope those experiences travel by word of mouth from one person to the next.” While his commitment has been keeping customer service at the forefront, McNeese has also adapted strategies to the longstanding business to make it more relevant to today’s marketplace.
“Probably the largest thing that I have done within the business was discontinuing the representation of several brands and focusing on the best bicycle brand in the world: Trek,” he says. “This has allowed us to have a stronger relationship with Trek and provide our customers with the very best.” That consolidation of brands not only allows the team at A&B to be product experts and fit their customers into the best bike for their lifestyle and cycling goals, but also created opportunity for A&B to be proactive with trends impacting the cycling world.
“I was in Amsterdam, which is a bike mecca, recently,” McNeese says. “Half the bikes I saw being ridden around were e-bikes. Trek responded to this shift and there has been a dramatic rise in the popularity of e-bikes in the U.S.” That popularity shows up in sales, with A&B fitting more than 100 customers with e-bikes annually, according to McNeese. But the remaining 900-plus bikes sold at the shop vary from children’s to road, mountain and more.
“We are such a tradition that we often have grandparents come in and buy their grandchild a bike,” he says. “[Because] their grandparent brought them in generations ago and bought them their first nice bike.” Whether the experts at A&B are repairing a road bike for a serious cycler or providing entry-level knowledge for a leisurely rider, their service spans generations, skill levels and lifestyle needs.
“What we really do is make people happy,” says McNeese. “We help them find the right type of bike and make sure it fits them well. Whether they are riding for fun, fitness or transportation, when they leave here, they have hopefully had a great experience.”
