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Calling style-conscious cyclists
From arty helmets to trendy baskets,
one bike business has everything you could need for the two-wheeled commute, writes Josh Loeb
BOBBIN Bicycles is the type of business that would have been inconceivable as little as five years ago.
With vintage gear, flowery bags and arty helmets, it caters for a new breed of cyclist born out of the bike boom that has seen large numbers of Londoners swap cars and travel cards for the freedom of two wheels.
If you think cycling means tight-fitting Lycra shorts, sweaty shirts and muddy BMXs, Sian Emmison and husband Tom Morris are on a mission to make you reconsider. Down some stairs in a converted warehouse are Bobbin’s headquarters, and visits are by appointment only. After all, this is a very special shop.
“Because we’re both from art backgrounds we commissioned artwork to publicise the business,” says Sian, displaying cartoon parodies of Bobbin’s typical customers. There’s Sam and Sam, a hipster couple from Shoreditch, Scandinavian architect Klaus, bourgeois old biddy Margaret, and Nina, a fashionable gallery assistant. As a marketing exercise, it’s genius.
“These are the new cyclist tribes,” Sian explains, “trendy kids on coloured bikes, more mature people on vintage models and cute girls in berets [as illustrated]. Because we don’t have any window space we have to hijack other people’s. We recently did an installation in a trendy jewellery shop in Soho. They hung jewellery off a bike to show it in a different context. We also had this image of bikes with magic powers, and a friend invented a superhero for us.”
Londoners are more image conscious than people elsewhere in Britain, according to Sian. Hence the demand for bikes as fashion accessories, albeit more useful ones than brooches, rings or necklaces, given that they get you from A to B.
Currently it seems women are far less likely to hop on a pushbike than men. But taking its cue from Amsterdam, where cycling has been a major part of the city’s transportation since the 1960s, London is set to become a cycling utopia if mayor Ken succeeds in building new “cycling highways”.
Sian thinks this will make cycling a more attractive option for women who may currently see it as a dangerous pastime.
She says: “We have a particular customer base in that some of our customers may be a bit tentative or nervous. That’s reflected in the style of our bikes. You could imagine going for a picnic in the countryside on one of these bikes, with a basket of cherries.”
With prices starting at £225, Bobbin seems a very affordable bet for those who like bikes with such a sense of fun.
• Bobbin Bicycles (by appointment only),
31 Eyre Street Hill, EC1. 020 7253 1058. info@bobbinbicycles.co.uk |
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