We built and rebuilt dozens of special tools to make the job quicker and easier. I think we've made over 100 test bikes, trying out a new trick or two on each one. The development of the technology really kicked into gear once I met Sean Murray and Justin Aguinaldo, as we just started cranking out bike after bike after bike, learning by doing and improvement. I started working as a volunteer in 2007. Then we had to make bikes that could hold up to the rigors of our target market and build them fast enough to reach our economies of scale. ![]() It was literally thousands of hours of logistics and sourcing to even make sure it was possible. The goal was a cheaper bike than Chinese imports, so we were hoping to get around $55/bike (we ended up at $70). After my first bike, a good friend of mine asked if I could show him how to make one. I needed to prototype and bamboo seemed like a cheap way to iterate. So as a personal F-you to this guy, I decided to build my own bike. I had a really bad experience at a bike shop with the typical bike snob, and it seemed so silly to me that someone could make me feel so terrible when I could make all the stuff that they were selling. ![]() It just seemed like a system that left a lot of value for the customer on the table.Īt the same time, I was looking to get back into fabrication (I am a lifelong maker and fixer). On the other side of the ocean, the marketing group had to work doubly hard to try to put value back in. When it came time to ship the products back to the States, we stuffed everything in cardboard boxes and containers and just stripped all this value, all the stories and experiences of the makers, out of the product. I had an incredible experience getting products made, pulling together a diverse supply chain, traveling around China and Korea, seeing the factory floors. The concept for the Bamboo Bike Studio grew directly out of my experiences as a product designer at K2 Sports.
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