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Bike Friday®: TEN YEARS OLD AND STILL FLYING!
10,000th Bike Friday® soon to roll off the line.
| WORTH LINKING INTO... |
Rider
Personalities
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Q: The Bicycle Built for Two or One
Life
at Bike Friday® after Sept. 11th |
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By Lynette Chiang
Ten years ago, Hanz Scholz, cofounder and designer of Bike
Friday®, flew to Australia with the world's first Bike Friday® - a
double ring diamond frame New World Tourist.
"I'd never packed the bike in a suitcase before this trip and I am happy to report
it worked great." (Otherwise Bike Friday® would probably not exist today).
He met a former girlfriend and took buses to cycle the desert regions of Oz, including
Uluru, Ayres Rock, The Olgas, Darwin, Broome, Perth, Catherine and Alice Springs.
Was it hot? "Oh, about 130 degrees, we went through 4 gallons of water, overheated
... I had to ride 18 miles in the pitch dark with my little Maglite®, then
nearly ran into a wild horse ... all the light showed was some fur." And the Bike
Friday®? "Every time Janet got on a bus they wanted to charge her $10 for
her mountain bike. They said, yours can go free but she's gotta pay for hers".
Ten
years later, the New World Tourist has evolved to become the benchmark in performance
travel bicycles, and is joined by a wide range of models covering the entire spectrum
of two-wheeled mayhem. So where did it all begin? In the chilly plains of Fargo,
where Alan Scholz started cycling to get a boy scout merit badge. He got the badge,
then eclipsed it when, at 16, he and three friends embarked on an epic 14-day,1100-mile
self supported bike tour around his home state, North Dakota. From that experience
he was hooked. His parents Earl and Mary Ester recognized passion (remember when
parents were good?) and helped him start the Great Plains Bike Club, which became
a focal point for touring and competitive cycling events.
At 17, the adolescent entrepreneur opened a Ski and Bike shop in the basement and garage of his parents house. He called it Al's bike shop, then later changed the name to Dakota Nomad. Little 7 year old brother Hanz kept busy by helping work on bikes and teasing the dog. Also involved was brother Ian (midway between Alan and Hanz) who now builds the BicycleR Evolution Trailers.
The brothers started racing and became known as tough competitors to beat. They were also tough to beat in the sartorial stakes, after Alan noticed that there was a shortage of good cycling clothes and touring bags and decided to drag out a sewing machine and stitch up the market. Burley Bike Bags was born, named after the nickname of Alan's future wife Beverly. After doing an Outward Bound course ( in Eugene Oregon) Beverly fell in love with Oregon so of course love-struck Alan followed her there.
The pair fell right into the laid back hippie life of Eugene, and every Saturday
they would cycle 25 miles from their yurt in the woods to the Saturday market
to sell their bike bags and clothes. Burley Bike Bags soon burgeoned into Burley
Design Cooperative®, a successful business manufacturing quality rainwear,
cycle touring bags, cross country ski wear, tree planting bags, yurt covers and
the famous Burley Child Trailer when their first daughter, Hanna, was born. The
Burley Child Trailer® is now renowned worldwide as the benchmark by which
others are measured.
Around this time, in 1985, Hanz Scholz did his landmark trip to Europe with a cheap (then state of the art) folding bike and came back with a sore butt and a vow to invent a high quality travel bike of his own. More on Hanz later.
Meanwhile, Alan and Beverly moved to Atlanta to explore new options, starting
a custom commercial awning shop. Beverly and Alan parted ways and Hanz started
working with his brother again in earnest. They returned to Oregon and started
ATP (Advanced Training Products) making tandem frame sets for Burley Design®
and bikes for other companies. Hanz, still with that bee in his bonnet and a sore
butt, started experimenting with folding travel bike designs.
Burley became the largest tandem builder in the USA for a period, but ever anxious
to do something totally innovative that they could really call their own, Alan
and Hanz decided to launch into building performance travel bikes full time, encouraged
by their friendly dentist (now Bike Friday® owner and dentist extraordinary, Richard
Gabriel).
Thus began Green Gear Cycling®, in a small garage with two visionary employees.
The company has now colloquially become known as Bike Friday®, after their signature product. The name was created by Bike Friday® owner and early collaborator Paul Moore, famous bike guy in his own right.
Running a small business is never plain sailing, even if you are making an exquisite product that is loved and admired the world over. In fact it can be said that running a business is about solving problems.
Alan attributes the ability to ride out tough times to the personal nature of
the way the company does business - in terms of forming a one-on-one relationship
with each customer, the custom nature of the bikes, and intrepid nature of cycle
tourists in general. "We believe so strongly in matching a person to their very
personal machine, their bike, that our whole organization runs backward from most
manufacturing. Our design process starts at the customer instead of ending with
the customer simply buying the results".
This means the company can make a bike exactly suited to the rider. Alan and Hanz are passionate about "being personal". "The mass production orientation in our culture tends to make us see anything outside the 20th and 80th morphological percentiles as non-normal. (Morphology: the study of form or size and shape of people.) We are convinced that everyone interested in cycling and doing it well is "normal" to us. As an engineer I know the materials don't care what size and shape they are made into. Size and shape of the user are not restrictions when approached correctly." "We have a unique product, but because we are a tiny custom builder we cannot afford a big glossy ad budget or conventional placement in stores. We can only survive if our customers love their Bike Friday®s, and tell anyone willing to listen. We have grown by referral."
There is also the hurdle of making a product that is "different".
"Conventional marketing would have told us that if we wanted to make a bicycle that goes in a suitcase and also make money, we should use bigger wheels, for no other reason than to stay squarely in the comfort zone of the mass-market mindset. It is always risky to go against the flow, but there's putting your financial safety first, and there's doing it right." The relentless pursuit of innovation has resulted in this company turning out models never before seen in the cycling industry. Witness "Project Q", the tandem that converts to a single bike.
Bike Friday® has always extended its vision beyond merely selling bikes. The company sees cycling as a way of life, and a way to create a better planet. Back in 1995 Bike Friday® built the fire-engine red Family Tandem, the affordable, kid-friendly travel tandem that got big and little riders pedaling in unison all over the world. This bike initiated many programs for disabled children, including the Adapted Physical Education Project at Wayland Public School, MA., and the Tandem program at the L.A. Braille Institute.
So what is in store - or should we say - in the factory, for the new year?
"Well, we're celebrating our 10th Anniversary, and fingers crossed, our 10,000th Bike Friday® will roll off the line this year," says Alan, looking relieved. "We're going to unveil models that will be firsts in the cycling world. They won't be just another Bike Friday® - though that's always welcome news to our customers."
Hanz has the last word. "Events of the past year have reminded us all of something
that we always knew: survival, both personal and professional, cannot be just
about money. It's about fellowship, humanity, relationships and all those words
that seem to have dropped out of business journals and textbooks. It's important
to never forget there is a human being behind that e-mail address." |
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