BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
As part of this year’s Team Green Britain Bike Week, well known names from cycling, business and fashion have designed bespoke bikes as part of a special Bike Week project.
British Olympic and World Champion track cyclist Victoria Pendleton is among the high-profile supporters creating a dream bike design. Other celebs involved in the project include fashion designers Giles Deacon and Wayne Hemingway, businessman and cycle-advocate Lord Sugar, TV presenter Dawn Porter, designer Orla Keily and Cyclodelic’s Amy Fleuriot.
This year more events have signed up to Bike Week, putting it on course to be the biggest yet, due in no small part to added impetus from EDF’s sponsorship.
The celebrity-designed bikes will be auctioned for community cycle projects.
Jim Blakemore from Community Cycle Centre BikeWorks – based in Tower Hamlets, East London – told BikeBiz about the project last month:
“We’re a not-for-profit joint social venture and one of three selected in the UK for the project. The idea was to build a bike and then auction it during Bike Week, and then put the profit back into social ventures. There is a lot involved – perhaps more than we anticipated,” confessed Blakemore.
“We’re working on a design from fashion designer Giles Deacon. It’s a really intricate design on the frame. We’re spraying that up and producing it and using some great fixie wheels.
“Vic Reeves also sent us a design for a bike for the project. It has square wheels. Initially we were going to reject it, but we’ve worked on a design that will have the square turn as a diamond on either side and give an optical illusion that in motion should look like square wheels. Other celebrities that have got involved include Nell McAndrew and Dr Fox.”
Bike Works is also getting involved in a number of other Bike Week activities, notably including an event at the Emirates Stadium. While Blakemore accepts that time is precious, he points out that participation in Bike Week doesn’t always mean it is a time sink.
“A lot of the larger scale Bike Week projects are run by local groups – it is when they excel, really. It can be a tough thing about the timing, but then again, converting people to cycling is easier to do in the summer, it’s when you attract fair weather cyclists. It has to be when they are going to get involved.”
“As a bike shop you can do as little or as much as you like. You could do a ten per cent discount during Bike Week, or do something that isn’t necessarily labour intensive,” Blakemore added.
