FrameWork Cycle & Fitness officially incorporated as a Nova Scotia Joint Stocks company in 2004 after Bill and Muriel Goldston established a sales and retail outlet in Downtown Sydney in 1996. What started out as a small bike repair and assembly shop serving box stores like Zeller’s, K-Mart and Canadian Tire. FrameWork grew to become one of Cape Breton Island’s largest privately owned retail sports shop specializing in the sales and service of bicycles & fitness products for commercial, institutional, home, and outdoor use.
FrameWork operates year-round in Downtown Sydney, six days a week with three full time employees and, in peak spring-summer-fall season, three part-time employees. FrameWork carries three main bicycle lines – Giant, Rocky Mountain and Felt – and several BMX brands including Fit, Kink, and Encore. FrameWork also sells and services multiple brands of commercial and home fitness lines from several prominent manufacturing companies in Canada, the USA and Taiwan including Atlantis Strength, Star Trac, Body Solid, Louis Garneau, StairMaster, BH Fitness, York Barbell, and many more. In 2012, MADD scooters for pro-riding was introduced to Cape Breton to meet a growing market demand. Over the years, more than 10,000 customers in Cape Breton alone have relied on FrameWork for their fitness goods and services. It remains a supplier and service provider to a wide spectrum of local companies and government agencies.
Company founders believe customer service is a key priority in any successful business venture, so to that end, ensure their staff are well trained and experienced. In 2009, the Sydney and Area Chamber of Commerce awarded FrameWork Cycle & Fitness winner of its Healthy Eating Active Living Award for its overwhelming positive influence in the community for establishing Cape Breton Island’s only bike race sanctioned by Bicycle Nova Scotia that year.
FrameWork and three local cycling enthusiasts established the not-for-profit FrameWork Racing Society which continues to host the island’s only annual bike race – Cape Breton Classic – for amateur and semi-pro cyclists. The two-day, three-stage bicycle race held every August remains one of the largest bike races in all of Atlantic Canada. FrameWork never forgets its community and contributes thousands to dozens of local charities or athletes annually including L’Arche Cape Breton for mentally disabled adults in Orangedale and Mabou, Etoile de l’Acadie and dozens of other schools in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton University, the Canadian Diabetes Association’s Going the Distance Ride for Diabetes, the Cape Breton Road Runners, Triathlon Nova Scotia, Bicycle Nova Scotia, the Cape Breton Barbarians Triathlon Club, the Cape Breton Fiddler’s Run, the Northside Harbourview Hospital Foundation and the Boularderie MammoWarriors Dragonboat Team among others. In 2012, FrameWork Racing members officiated all Canada 55 Plus Gamcs cycling events involving multiple provinces as well as other races in Nova Scotia.
In 2012, FrameWork introduced the first ever Ride to the Edge adventure tourism tour of the famed highlands of Cape Breton. This feature held in July provides locals and tourists the opportunity to experience a low-cost adventure of a lifetime by the seat of their pants of the 300 km Cabot Trail, named one of the top cycling destinations of the world by several trade magazines. It is the first time a local Cape Breton company has provided a supported bicycle tour; the result of its long-standing link to tourists from all around the globe who called on FrameWork to rent road, comfort or touring bikes to explore Cape Breton Island.
FrameWork Cycle & Fitness is located on beautiful Cape Breton Island in the heart of its most populated region in Sydney, Nova Scotia.