Cycle Sprog’s Karen Gee on a decade of change in the kids’ bike market

Karen Gee, founder of children bike news web-site Cycle Sprog, seems back again on a ten years of adjust in the children’s market place

This piece initially appeared in the May well edition of BikeBiz journal – get your free of charge subscription below

A ten years in the past Cycle Sprog released as a small website to doc what my spouse and I ended up learning even though biking with our two youthful little ones. Speedy forward and these kinds of a ton has transformed, and however so a lot continues to be the same.

We now cover kids’ bicycle launches various periods a 12 months, with an growing variety of youngster-only makes main the way. If you’re a ‘reputable’ bicycle model continue to flogging hefty kids’ bikes with stabilisers and princess decals then that phrase can no more time apply.

There is been a surge of innovation throughout major makes – junior mountain, highway, and cyclocross bikes, escalating body bikes, and equilibrium to pedal bike conversions are now commonplace. This coincided with new and enhanced items for towing and carrying more youthful children, as perfectly as garments and helmet strains created specifically for the quite youngest of riders.

Balance bikes are a ceremony of passage on the journey to unbiased using for a escalating range of small children. Cargo bikes have began to grow to be far more mainstream in our larger sized metropolitan areas, with e-assist earning matters considerably a lot easier.

If you cycle your youngster to university there is a chance you are no more time the only freak in the playground (I misplaced depend of the selection of instances we have been explained to we were being courageous or outrageous for carrying out this a ten years back).

The launch of the Bike Club’s membership support is disrupting the field by transforming the way
lots of families personal bikes, although making sure a sure demographic are always using high quality bikes of the
appropriate dimension. And however, looking again on the decade not substantially has transformed.

For the broad vast majority of children, it is extremely hard to cycle securely to university. School avenue schemes keep on being the tough fought for exception relatively than the rule. Whilst new standards for cycle infrastructure exist, only the most progressive parts are driving forward energetic travel agendas. And if 1 spot is thriving in its funding bid to develop protected, segregated infrastructure, it implies lots of a lot more have failed.

Inequality in bicycle ownership and using skill is rife. The lowest priced little ones bikes are badly made, just about unattainable to preserve, with no security expectations, and but they’re disproportionately high priced to lots of mom and dad and grandparents getting them.

Entry to secure amenities to shop bikes is unusual in decreased revenue spots, where by families absence the luxury of a garage or indoor house to maintain their bikes. Considerably of the concentration to day has been on loved ones cycling for leisure and sport. We now desperately need to have very affordable, reputable bikes for everyday usage.

The next era of parents are grappling with climate adjust and price of residing rises as nicely as the actual physical and mental scars of formative many years expended in lockdown. Manufacturers who make it quick and economical to transportation a increasing household by delivering straightforward methods at each individual stage from pregnancy as a result of to the teenage many years will locate a ready market. And payback will arrive.

The first small children who are utilised to driving definitely wonderful bikes are now achieving maturity. They’re the first in a generation brought up to know what ‘good’ appears to be and feels like, they’re the prospects, voters and field leaders of the potential.

Karen Gee is the founder of Cycle Sprog, the website in excess of 1.5 million moms and dads a 12 months use as their trusted source of information and facts about young ones bikes and spouse and children cycling.