Last week we enjoyed a presentation by Rick Price, founder of Ft Collins’ own international bicycle touring company, Experience Plus! Bicycle Tours, LLC.. Rick was asked to share the history of this enterprise from its beginning in 1972 as “Bike Across Italy” until early 2020, now with tours to 20 countries. The title of the talk is “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”, reflecting how the birth and growth of the company has been directed by life events.
Incidentally, Rick started his talk immediately after a 28 mile bike ride, apparently not too encumbered by his required nasal oxygen. Rick may be the “patron saint” of Ft Collins bicyclists and could speak on a variety of bicycling topics, given his many contributions to this community.
Rick met his future wife, Paola, in 1965 when she was an exchange student in Rick’s high school in Newport, OR. They dated that year, wrote letters for 3 years and were married when Rick studied abroad in Italy in 1969. Paola was finishing her undergraduate degree at the University of Pisa. To celebrate her graduation they completed a long bicycle ride “across Italy”. Following their marriage they moved to Eugene, OR where Rick pursued graduate studies. (Eventually, they both completed PhD programs).
In OR they both developed “home sickness” for Italy and scraped together a bargain one way airline ticket to Sarajevo. There, the question arose “would Americans be willing to pay for a bicycle trip across Italy?” Thus, the first iteration of Rick’s tour company, “Bike Across Italy” was born. Advertising was initially targeted to college newspapers and was cheap and effective. Tour members (2-8) would ride 4 speed bicycles in the region around Pisa , camp at night and be supported by the original sag wagon, a 1952 flatbed Fiat truck. With the help of Rick’s brother in Boulder, CO, the company became headquartered in the US. But business did not boom - in 1973, only one person signed up.
A 12 year hiatus with no tours followed during which Rick and Paola pursued graduate degrees. Rick subsequently took a job at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute, then in 1983 Paola got a job at CSU. Fortunately for us, they returned to Ft Collins and the bike touring business with “Italian Specialty Tours” offering biking, hiking, culture, culinary and historic tours. Only the bike tours sold. Rick and Paola were now both academics with summers off and time available to grow the biking company. By 1987 there were 5 tours with up to 24 participants each.
As the company developed in the 80’s and early 90’s, Rick and Paola’s two young daughters helped lick stamps, paste mailing labels and, in short, grew up with the business when they had only 6 employees in their home office. By 2007/2008 both girls had completed advanced degrees and when asked, opted to take over the company.
As we all know, the travelling industry’s fate is tied to the economic world. When the “Great Recession” hit in 2008 the company’s overhead was in the $250,000-300,000 range. Bookings collapsed and employees were let go. In that same year, Rick retired and his daughters took over the business. By March 2020 Experience Plus was a multi million dollar business. Now, with COVID, it has essentially shut down for the near term. The new owners will need to be creative in this new and unknown travel future. However, as a past and future Experience Plus tour member, this writer is sure they will succeed.