Aurora cycle shop owner revs up for retirement

Bob Conley wasn't much of a motorcycle enthusiast when he was a young man. He admits he loved driving a dune buggy during his honeymoon with his late wife in the 1960s, after he returned from a stint with the Army Corps of Engineers and helped to build the international airport in Vietnam.

When the honeymooners returned home, his cousin introduced him to the Honda Dream 305 motorcycle, and Conley loved it, he said.

"I then bought a 1964 used Honda Dream in 1969 and have loved motorcycles ever since," said Conley, 69.

So it wasn't unusual for him to spend about 42 years, first as a mechanic and then later as a co-owner, at Fox Valley Cycles in Aurora. After he retired in 2010, he retained a smaller ownership with his two partners until recently when the men decided to fully retire and allow the next generation to take over. Bob's son, John, and daughter, Chris Tracy, and partner Jim Cromwell have managed the business since 2010 and are now in a 10-year deal to eventually have full ownership.

A lot happened over those 42 years, Bob Conley said.

He witnessed the business expand to three stores with 35 employees. But as times changed, along with the economy and higher leases, the stores consolidated into one. Also the array of Honda, Kawasaki, Suziki and other brands that were sold were trimmed down to just Honda brands of motorcycles, scooters, ATVs and other motorized equipment, Conley said.

"In the United States, we don't ride motorcycles for basic transportation, it's mostly for recreation," Conley said. "But elsewhere, (overseas), the motorcycle is a basic piece of transportation."

Personally speaking, he and wife Barbara also raised a family in Sugar Grove, where they also housed several foreign exchange students over the years. As the kids grew up and left, the Conleys downsized and returned to Aurora before Barbara passed away in 2000.

"I got all kinds of calls from England, France, New Zealand, Iceland and Japan," Conley said. "They were the foreign exchange students, and their friends, who all came to our house. Our house was like a meeting place for all of them. But to hear from them after all this time really meant something."

In 2009, Bob Conley attended a class reunion and reconnected with a friend, Mary. They eventually started dating and then married about four years ago.

Mary retired recently as an executive assistant at DePaul University and now that Bob Conley is handing over the business, they are thinking about travel. Perhaps they'll reconnect with some of those foreign exchange students who enjoyed their stays with him many years ago, he said.

"We'd like to go to England, yes, we're working on that," he said.

Award winning tech exec

TradeMonster Chief Information Officer Sanjib Sahoo of Naperville won the Constellation SuperNova Award, the top honor in the Matrix Commerce category. The victory is the company's first at the SuperNova Awards. The company was a finalist in three categories last year. Winners were announced as part of Constellation Research's fourth annual Connected Enterprise conference. The Constellation SuperNova Awards honor industry leaders who overcome odds to successfully transform their organizations with innovative technologies. The awards recognize technologists from various industries. We wrote about Sahoo in April, when he talked about living in a remote area in India, where education was a privilege, and then becoming a tech exec at Chicago-based TradeMonster, an online retail options and stock broker.

Zurich IT exec honored

Tom Peach earned a place on Insurance & Technology's Elite 8 for 2014 because of his leadership in effectively managing an information technology network that supports about 10,000 employees nationwide and in Canada for Zurich North American, based in Schaumburg. The magazine annually recognizes the most successful and inspiring IT executives in the insurance industry.

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