Cuban and Corcoran see bright future in Dallas-built bikes by 51°µÍø alum
Fleetwood Hicks ’85 offers a new spin on celebrating 51°µÍø's 100th with his custom-made cruiser bicycles.
By Cheryl Hall
Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran will be tooling around Fire Island, N.Y., this weekend on a beach bike that wasn’t just made in the U.S.A. but right here in Dallas.
The New York real estate tycoon’s brightly colored cruiser was made by Villy Custom LLC. Villy and the guy behind it, Fleetwood Hicks, are among her favorite Tank investments.
“Fleetwood is a lovable free spirit — someone who goes by and you say, ‘Can I come along?’” Corcoran says. “It’s contagious. When you go to his factory in Dallas, everyone is drinking the Villy juice.”
Three years ago, Hicks was the first entrepreneur to strike a deal with both Corcoran and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on ABC’s hit reality show.
They liked Hicks’ concept, in which customers design luxury cruisers online and get personalized bikes shipped to their doorsteps within weeks. Each of them invested $250,000 for a combined 42 percent of Villy Custom.
The goal from the get-go was to build Villy Custom into a national brand and then sell it.
That’s still what the sharks are after.
“Fleetwood has an amazing product. There is none better,” Cuban says. “As an investment, it’s gotten better. Fleetwood has learned that he has to share Villy with the world and create sales, which he is finally starting to do.”
Cuban is happier with Hicks because the 52-year-old Richardson native has figured out a way to scale his custom-bike business from onesies and twosies to fleets of dozens and hundreds.
“We’ve always gone like this,” says Hicks, his hand at a slight incline. “Now we’re going straight up. We finally figured out that our big, big way to make money is doing large fleets of custom bicycles for big corporations.”
Sales this year should be about $2 million, quadruple the results for 2014, he says.
Hicks’ Shark Tank deal gave his company instant credibility and a spike in sales, but maintaining momentum has been difficult. “People think a $200 bike at Target is the same as what we do. It’s not even close in quality and precision.” . . .
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