awesome bikes in kids sizes
'We’re not a kids bike company and I really don't like being thought of as one. For me it conjurs up images of sickly colours, novelty stickers, baskets and stabilisers. I’ve always thought the market was full of opportunists leveraging childish appeal and marketing waffle rather than any real substance - and we’ll always distance ourselves from them. We make sophisticated, premium bikes fit for adults, we just make them in kids sizes.’Andy Loveland, Founder
Early Rider was founded in a garden shed in the market town of Henley on Thames, 30 miles west of London. Our first bike was a wooden balance bike, shaped like a chopper. It just worked - stability, ride comfort, roll over and all attitude. Although far from being the first balance bike out there we designed ours from scratch in search of the very best riding result.
Our first pedal bike would show the lengths we were prepared to go to to. A belt driven kids bike, a world first. An exercise in bespoke componentry rewarded by a bike that redefined expectations. Super lightweight, no maintenance, no grease, no dirt, no steel to rust, smooth, quiet and always ready to ride. The ‘Belter’ set a new standard in kids bikes and was the first to win the prestigious Eurobike Award, the only one ever to win Gold. It has become the best selling belt drive bike of all time and led to Early Rider being the largest manufacturer of belt drive bikes in the world.
Proof is in the riding
The importance of these first bikes cannot be overstated. They have taught us how our work is rewarded: by a generation more capable and committed than ever before. From humble beginnings, but with a steadfast commitment to making the very best, we have learnt how to produce bikes and young riders with unparalleled potential. And we don’t just mean how well they ride their bikes, we measure this by confidence, independence and the lengths they are willing to go to break down boundaries.
Still so much to do
Design, prototype, test, repeat. It’s the process by which we continue to refine and innovate. Over the past 15 years we have developed an unrivalled collection of bikes that will support the adventures of all children, no matter whether their opportunity for adventure is in the local neighbourhood, the park, the woods, the hills. But although we see many children raise the bar, there is still so much we have to do to tackle participation of kids in an active life as a whole.
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