BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Thule has revealed a new line of city and outdoor orientated luggage items and scooped a Eurobike design award in the process.
Having acquired the rights for the much praised Freeload bike racks – a New Zealand rack design specialist – the label, best known for its car racks, has set to work creating weatherproof backpacks and pannier bags.
Pack ‘n Pedal offer a solution that can be used both front and the back, and will fit virtually every type of bike on the market. The rack system, which the two companies jointly developed further, will be part of the Thule Pack ‘n Pedal range, designed to meet the load-carrying needs of cyclists.
Able to be conveniently used as a smaller backpack, the Pack ’n Pedal bags come with small hard shell ‘SafeZone’ compartments and separate computer storage, keeping valuables safe and accessible. The design of the bags makes them easy to load and use as normal bags. They also come with compression buckles to reduce size when the bag is empty.
Also new from Thule is an inspirational video series, dubbed ‘The Way I Roll’. If you’ve five minutes to kill today, this will be well worth your time:
Featured rider: Chris Van Dine
Jim Thorpe (PA), downhill rider and philanthropist
The son of east coast mountain bike pioneer Galen Van Dine, Chris Van Dine is a first generation professional racer who grew up living the mountain bike lifestyle from its beginnings. At an early age, Chris developed a taste for speed and won his first mountain bike race when he was eight. He was the first North American to be crowned the fastest man on the continent at the 2009 Pan-American Championships. His proclivity for travel and adventure has taken him to pinnacle experiences and jaw dropping first descents from Alaska to Patagonia. After being confronted with the realities of the developing world, Chris realized that his passion and experience could actually impact peoples’ lives on a basic level. From that point, his mission became one of ambassadorship and philanthropy, and after partnering with Pedals 4 Progress, an organization responsible for redistributing more than 136,000 bicycles to around 30 developing nations, Chris’ purpose was realized and he has not looked back since.
