Three months after stepping down as the CEO of three companies, including used bike seller The Pro’s Closet and boot retailer Freebird, Jonathan Czaja now owns them.
Czaja bought the companies — the third of which is Jane, a women’s fashion e-commerce site — last week from Yasser Elshair of Elshair Cos., an Arizona private equity firm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Bikes and boots are very different, but the similarities are strong brand followings, big customers and loyal audiences,” Czaja told BusinessDen.
Elshair had rolled up the companies over the past two years.
He bought and rebooted TPC in the fall of 2024, shortly after the business announced it was closing after raising nearly $100 million from investors. He acquired Jane out of receivership in 2024. And he paid $500,000 in August for Denver-based Freebird, which had shed dozens of stores in receivership.
Czaja had led TPC before its closure. After Elshair’s buys, he tasked Czaja with leading all three companies.
In September, however, Czaja wrote in a LinkedIn post that he had stepped down because he and Elshair “disagreed on how to move forward.” Czaja declined to provide more detail on that in an interview, or how he ended up buying the companies a short time later through his investment firm Freewheel Capital.
“They just had financial difficulties that had nothing to do with the brand,” he said of the companies. “So we’re taking advantage of all those good things they previously had.”
TPC has done $12 million in sales so far this year, according to Chief Revenue Officer Justin England, who expects that figure to double in 2026. He’s been with the company 16 years, and Chief Operating Officer JP Gage has been there for 13.
“We’ve been here from the beginning and grew it slowly over time, so we just had this crash course in doing all of that again last year,” Gage said.
The pair said they’re aiming for sustainable growth. While TPC once peaked at 2,500 bikes concurrently for sale, Gage said the company has 300 available right now and figures its peak is 800. The company has 26,000 square feet in Thornton, down from the 135,000 it once had in Louisville.
While most bikes are sold online, TPC’s space does include a retail storefront. The company hopes to expand its hours by next spring beyond the current 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.
“We’re trying to figure out how to take the cost structure of the zero-interest-rate COVID days, which was extravagant, and continue bringing those down,” Czaja said.
With a smaller budget and focus on profitability, there’s less capital to spend on marketing. But they figure they’re still benefiting from the campaigns of previous years. Czaja said TPC is breaking even for the first time in the company’s history.
“In some ways we’ve benefited from the tailwinds of all the money that was spent to raise awareness,” England said. “The belief that JP, Jon and I all have is in what TPC means to the cycling base and industry, and that was what ultimately allowed us to bring business back.”
Freebird, meanwhile, is newer to the turnaround. But Czaja thinks the early returns for the company are encouraging.
The company has opened a third store at Park Meadows mall in Lone Tree. It joins stores in Nashville, Tennessee, and Charleston, South Carolina, which survived the brand’s mass closures.
Freebird also announced three new styles of boots last week, Czaja said, with the help of Freebird’s founding designer, who is back in her role.
Czaja said Freebird is fulfilling 7,000 orders a week and expects over $20 million in sales next year. He hopes to add two more retail stores in 2026 and to steadily grow beyond.
“We hope to bring it back to its former glory, and the plan is to slowly build back to that scale,” Czaja said. “I would say we’re stable now.”
With Jane, the story is similar. The online marketplace was founded in 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah, before raising $40 million and foundering thereafter. Czaja said most of its 10 employees work remotely.
Czaja, a former employee of Walmart and eBay, said he plans to buy more e-commerce businesses and centralize finance, human resources, marketing and technology under one umbrella.
Still, he said he wants to have industry expertise within each business, much like he’s found with Gage and England at TPC. And, the Denver resident hopes to keep a local tie.
“Ideally,” he said, “we acquire brands that have a Denver presence.”
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