Team Dream Takes on the Alps: Building a Shop and a Community in One Summer

Here’s what you need to know: My name is Carla Alcibar. Sean Talkington is my life partner. We have a four-year-old named Benny and a cycling and casual apparel brand called Team Dream Bicycling Team.

The Team Dream story began in 2012. Sean had an unfulfilling office job that forced him to sit on the computer all day. He was sending emails with people all over the world, but otherwise not interacting with anyone. Around this time, he discovered cycling and quickly fell in love with the escape it offered. He could get on his bike, clear his mind, and easily explore the nature around his house all within the span of a couple of hours. So when a friend offered him the chance to come to Italy to work on a documentary about the Giro d'Italia, he quit his job and took it.

When the project fell apart, neither had to rush home. They decided instead to look for a town to ride and stumbled upon Tirano, near the Italian Alps. The choice proved eye-opening. He spent the days with people who spent their days only doing what made them happy. They made cheese, wine, pizza, and hosted competitive running events. They were hands-on about this work, but still managed to have time for their families each day.

Once he returned to America, he decided to start a cycling apparel brand. Surely, he could find a way to make a living like the ones he witnessed in Italy, where he could build something he was proud of and unique. He had experience designing clothes for his first company, Friends United Network (FUN, for short), and a level of motivation he hadn’t felt in a long time. Plus, being in charge of a bike brand gave you license to ride as much as you want.

And anyway, the choices available for cycling apparel at the time were not appealing. If you wanted to ride your bike without covering yourself in brand logos, the options were limited. When he was conceiving of his brand, he wanted to create a team that everyone could be on, no matter what level of experience you had on the bike. He wanted to create something that felt playful in a sea of brands that cater to the stereotype of cycling as something serious, painful, tough. His brand would make it clear cycling could make you smile.

In the early years of Team Dream, we manufactured everything in America. But we were traveling to Tirano a lot. Sean had made lots of friends during his trip that became our friends, which made any time spent in Italy extremely fun. During one of these trips, we learned of some factories in Italy that could produce gear and offer support at a price and consistency that wasn’t available in the U.S. Soon, we were producing socks, bibs, and jerseys in the country. Tirano became a home away from home, a base for our international operations where we could stay while doing factory tours.

In 2023, Sean pulled me and Danny Heeley, our shop manager, outside of our messy office to pitch us on his latest idea. “What if we went to Tirano for the summer and opened a Team Dream pop-up shop?’ He convinced Danny with the promise of epic rides. He convinced me with the promise of extreme chilling. “You guys better decide fast because I’m down,” he said.

We didn’t actually plan much before we headed out to Tirano in the summer of 2024. It was a week after our massive LA invitational event (look it up!) and a few friends had told us they would help us translate. We found ourselves at the airport with a toddler, mother-in-law, two adult bikes, a toddler bike, our own clothes, a trunk full of Kodak film (shout out to Tim Ryugo for that), and not an insignificant amount of retail product.

The trip to Tirano is not short. Door-to-door travel time from our house in LA to our rental in Italy takes 24 hours. By the end, our son was not stoked. With jet lag in full swing, we had hoped the first few days would be chill. Yeah, right! The first morning, our son had both a cold and a case of the grumps. Alas, it turned out to be the only day we could pick up the keys for the space we were using for the pop-up AND the day it made most sense to borrow our friend’s van to bring furniture to the shop.

The setup was a doozy. The challenges came one after the other. Our son took weeks to adjust to the time change, we needed more documents than we thought we would to set up a retail store overseas, none of the Team Dream product we had shipped had arrived, oh, and I got E-Coli poisoning. We don’t speak much Italian, but we quickly learned the phrase “Cosa stiamo facendo?” (That’s “What are we doing?” for my other non-Italian speakers.)

Even in the madness, we had a lot of fun. I used my background in store visuals to set up shop. We wanted the pop up to feel like a tiny version of our shop in LA, with some Italian flair of course. Ephemera from local thrift stores and our friend’s storage units helped. We hung Italian flag pendants and posters from LA Invitations of year’s past. We lit incense, laid out African rugs purchased at the weekly market, and blasted Cumbia. Our friend helped us make and paint fixtures and wall hooks. All the while, my toddler sat at my knee asking whether they could have more gelato and also take the neighbor’s cat home. It was a breeze!

We announced an opening date before we were really finished setting up the space. Who was going to come on day one anyway?

Well, guess what? We had a customer. I greeted him with a hearty “ciao!”

“Wait, this is Team Dream, right? You speak English … right?”

The man was from England, and introduced himself as Stewart Dean. He had brought his bike to Tirano from London just to come see us. He ended up staying in town for two weeks, during which we got dinner together almost every night. By the time our new homie left, we were growing confident our pop up idea might actually work.

The trip was like the movie “Groundhog Day” in the best way possible. People made their way to us and we would pick them up from the train station, find them hotels, take them to the grocery store, take them to lunch, take them on a bike ride, laugh, eat gelato, take them on a bike ride, hang at the pop-up shop, take them on a bike ride, take them to dinner, drop them off at the train station and over again.

All set against the backdrop of the incredible Italian alps, with their severe incline. I didn’t experience the struggle of biking for hours to get to a refugio, the name for a restaurant at the top of a mountain, but no one made me feel bad about that. The locals just seem to be stoked to see anyone outside, whether you’re just gazing up at the mountains, snacking on a pastry, sipping espresso, slurping up pasta or drinking wine. Everyone was also delighted by Benny, even when they had to help me try to keep them from rolling off a cliff!

During the three months we were there, we learned a lot and also nothing about how things work in Italy. We got to live like locals all summer. People would walk by and yell “Ciao, regazzis” as we walked around the city. And so many people made the huge effort to come visit us, including a few that literally came to Tirano mainly because of our pop-up. We had a lot of time to actually hang out with our friends and customers, which was honestly overwhelming. I think there were only eight total days during the entire summer where there wasn’t someone in town.

Closing the show was ultimately just as stressful as opening it. I felt sad as I returned the borrowed fixtures and furniture, pulled nails out of the wall, spackled over holes, swept floors, and donated a bunch of random stuff back to the thrift stores they came from. And of course, figuring out how to ship the leftover product back to the U.S. was a headache on top of a migraine.

It was all the more special, then, each time a local came by to ask us if we were going to be back next year. I was particularly moved by the women who worked in the bakery across from the street. When we finally had to say bye, they sent us off with tears in their eyes.

Still, I don’t actually know if I have the energy to do it all again this summer. I need a break. Sean, on the other hand, is already cooking up a new ambitious plan. Here we go again!