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The pic above shows Ian Frosst, the three year old son of Douglas Frost, the vice president of sales and marketing of South River Partners, the firm representing Centric Safe Haven child seats at Interbike.
The Centric Safe Haven child seat has almost as much moulded plastic as a US rear child seat such as the Rhode Gear classic. It has foot guards, a nap-board and an attaching bar that can fit to eccentric bike shapes such as, er, short top-tubed mountain bikes.
Many front facing child seats tend not to be so substantially built and they’re often a pain to fit to anything other than Dutch roadsters.
The long and meaty fixing bar of the Centric Safe Haven stays on the bike, whilst the seat itself can be popped off.
The seat was invented 14 years ago by Canadian carpenter Malcolm Jefferson whose son protested at being put in a rear child seat: the view was terrible.
Jefferson solved the problem by carving a wooden seat that could be mounted in front of the rider, over the bicycle’s centre of gravity. His son loved it. So did many other cycling parents who saw it. He made more wooden seats and then sought funding help to bring a plastic seat product to market.
But Jefferson discovered he fell through cracks in every business funding support system: he was too old, needed too little money, wasn’t building a big factory. So he sold his home and his car and kept the development going, succeeding in gaining patents along the way.
The product is now on the market and is being widely sold in Canada and some parts of the US.
Simon Goude of the Goude Design Group will be getting the product BS tested soon and then availability should be before Christmas. Goude has three children of his own, five years old, four and two.
Retail on the seat should be about £70.
Tel: 01462 485717
Email: post@goude.demon.co.uk
http://www.centricsafehaven.com
