Nova Cycles Supply

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An Unlikely History

Nova was started in the back of a Pro Bike shop in Los Gatos, California.

James “John” Kennedy had a long successful career in the automotive industry in the Bay Area, along with holding world records in four classes of drag racing through the early ‘60’s. John transitioned from automotive to bicycles for physical reasons and was trained by a company selling cycling franchises to sell “Century Cycles”, a sort of knock-off of then Centurion Cycles that later became Diamond Back. John’s experience in race car chassis building and race engine building gave him much of the needed mechanical preparation- possibly too much. Within a short period of time he was modifying Campagnolo record parts to improve performance. In time, he sponsored catagory 1 racers Fred “Fast Freddy” Markham (later holder of the first DuPont challenge cup for human powered, non-assisted ride of 65+ mph.) and Dave Zanotti, a known hardcore “road dog”. They both competed stateside and in Europe during the Stetina brothers and Greg Lemond era. At some point, both Fred and Dave had decided to race the board tracks in Netherlands during winter and asked John if he could build appropriate frames for the task. John asked his good friend and upstate New York builder Ben Serotta for advice on what tubes to build with.

Ben told John. “you need SP tubes and I don’t have them in stock” so John asked him to order the tubes and added bakers dozen of other sets just in case he decided to build more frames. Ultimately the tubes and supplies came, john built the frames and the two category one riders went off to Europe. Shortly thereafter, the bike shop started getting calls from Northern California builders asking if they could purchase Columbus tubesets.

“How did they know we had tubes?” was the big questions that has remained unanswered. We just started selling tubes. John went to InterBike way back in the early Reno, Nevada days to let shops and a few builders know that he was now stocking Columbus and Cinelli frame parts. Soon, Prugnat, Bocama, and other Euro Zone frame parts were stocked. About 2 years into this “side hustle” John was about to be approached by a man who would be part of changing the face of the cycling industry with the first MTB revolution.

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