For more than five decades, Peak Sports has been a constant resource for Corvallis’ outdoor community. Located downtown, it’s the place people return to for things like an urgent bike repair, a quick ski tune, or a last-minute headlamp before a camping trip.
In 1971, the locally owned retailer began as a small bike shop, originally called The Touring Shop. Over time, it grew with the town, expanding into multiple spaces and shifting from bike sales to a full spread of outdoor gear. Now, bright sale signs fill the storefront windows. From the outside, it looks like an ending, but owner Larry Desaulniers confirmed it isn’t.
“We’re not going out of business,” he said. “We’re restructuring.”
The sale isn’t a full liquidation, rather more of a sorting process. Some items are deeply discounted, and others only slightly marked down, depending on whether they’ll be part of Peak Sport’s next evolution.
This shift didn’t come out of nowhere, even if it feels sudden. This past winter, snow, which is usually a cornerstone of business, was scarce. Winter gear sat, and when it finally moved, it did so at steep discounts. Rentals slowed, and service requests dropped off.
“The winter season just didn’t happen this year,” Desaulniers said.
That loss came amid an already shifting industry. The cycling boom during the early years of COVID-19 has since cooled, leaving bike shops with uneven inventory and unpredictable demand. As a result, space, once an asset for Peak Sports, has become a weight.
“It’s a lot of space,” Desaulniers shrugged. “And we weren’t doing the volume to support it anymore.” So, the store is changing, but it’s not disappearing.
Moving forward, Peak Sports will consolidate into a single location, cutting costs, but also shedding whole parts of the business. Bike sales and repairs are ending, along with winter sports equipment. It’s a significant shift, one that reshapes what the store has been for decades, but what remains is more focused and built to last. At the center of the shift is the consignment model, built around the Peak Sports Annex, which opened in 2017. The Annex specializes in gently used outdoor gear and apparel, which is lower cost, more sustainable, and, increasingly, more popular.
“That’s going to be the anchor,” Desaulniers said.
Around that, a tighter selection of new inventory: camping and backpacking gear, travel accessories, climbing equipment, and select footwear. Climbing, especially, is an area of growth in Corvallis, driven by local interest and the rise of indoor climbing spaces. Even so, nothing is entirely fixed.
“We have a sense of what will work,” he said. “But we’ll adjust based on what people actually want.”
Decades ago, Corvallis could support multiple bike shops and outdoor retailers, but that has since changed. Industry instability, shifting consumer habits, and competition from larger retailers like REI have narrowed the margins for independent stores like Peak Sports. There’s less room for error now.
Desaulniers doesn’t talk about the store strictly as a business. He calls it a resource, a necessity, and a routine of people who live in Corvallis, where outdoor activities aren’t a hobby so much as a way of life. The divide between what the store has been and what it can realistically continue to be is unfortunate.
“But this is what allows us to keep going, and to keep supporting the community that relies on us,” he said of the cuts.
For longtime customers, the change may feel abrupt. The store will look different, smaller, and more selective, but it’s not going anywhere, and it will remain a reliable and loved outdoor hub for the people of Corvallis.
By Taylor Pedersen
Do you have a story for The Advocate? Email editor@corvallisadvocate.com