Nestled near Haggard Park in downtown Plano, Custom Scooters has been selling and servicing scooters, motocross bicycles and small motorcycles for the last 18 years.

Like Apple and Google, the idea for Custom Scooters started in a garage and soon ballooned into a thriving business. Unlike the tech giants of today, however, Custom Scooters remains profitable because of its guaranteed quality service, not because of its online sales or low-priced inventory, owner Travis Kirk said.

“The real pitfalls of buying something based on convenience alone are that you remove the locality of that item,” Kirk said. Part of what keeps people coming back to Custom Scooters is the store’s free-servicing policy for returning customers, he said.

“When you buy a scooter from us … I’ll tighten and tune that scooter for the life of the product for free,” Kirk said.

While shopping malls have become less popular destinations among teenagers, Kirk said the custom scooter and bicycle motocross scene has picked up traction—especially considering the Frisco skate park that opened in August.

“Those [Frisco] neighborhoods find out that we are here, and they show up in large quantities and buy scooters from us,” Kirk said.

As its name implies, Custom Scooters provides patrons the flexibility to pick and choose the parts to build a scooter to their desired specifications. From the base deck and handlebars to the wheels and grips, Kirk said he can build scooters for children as young as 7 years old as well as adults.

The shop’s prebuilt scooters start in the range of $150 to $300, Kirk said. Still, some of the customizable scooter decks can cost as much as $360.

Beyond supplying the scooters, Kirk says he provides instructors for classes in Allen to teach safe skating techniques and skate park etiquette to beginner riders.

“It used to be that kids just gravitated to Razor [scooters] and just scootered in the neighborhood,” Kirk said. “These days—hundreds of kids go the skate park daily and on the weekend, and it is a vibrant community. It is quite exciting to see the growth of that category.”

Custom Scooters
912 E. 15th St.
www.customscooters.com
Hours: 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat., closed Sundays