This struck me as a great idea. Ikea is apparently working with Velorbis to offer the rental bikes and trailers to its Danish customers (from Inhabitat).
Of course, this won't work here if Ikea continues to build their US stores in the exburbs.
Inhabitat also had a post about a student who designed and built a $30 cardboard bike. Perhaps he could make them out of chipboard and Ikea could sell them.
09 July, 2008
Ikea Bike Trailers
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12 comments:
Neat story about Ikea Chris. Dave Moulton also shared the cardboard bike story with his readers last week. I think you 2 are on the same wavelength ;-)
http://davesbikeblog.blogspot.com/
Best rgds,
Bob
As did bicycle design blog,
http://bicycledesign.blogspot.com/
IKEA is out in the sticks here in Portland, OR, but it also happens to be right off a dedicated bike path, so it's only about a 10 mile jaunt with the Xtracycle to bring back a whole load of bargain-basement slave-labor goodies.
Dang! All the Ikea bikes have Brooks saddles and grips--classy rental fleet.
IKEA built a store recently in Brooklyn... kinda of off the beaten path from what I hear, but the first one not in an exburb!
The cardboard bike is a terrible idea. Any bike that isn't lugged steel is rubbish. Also think about that cardboard bike for a second: it's fibers held together by glue! Not too different from a carbon bike and we know how terrible those can be!! ;)
Seriously, I love hearing about things like cardboard and wooden bikes.
With my luck with IKEA, I'd probably put the bike together upside down, or part of it backward, then snag some of the veneer in fixing my error.
Ikea is now in Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY - http://info.ikea-usa.com/Brooklyn/ - and a bike trailer rental would be perfect for most people who live within a few miles of Red Hook i.e. Park Slope, Carol Gardens, Beurum Hill, Cobble Hill, Downtown BK, Prospect Heights, basically a 3 mile radius from the center of Prospect Park.
Not to mention the fact that there is very little car parking in Park Slope and I'd think people with multi-million dollar brownstones would feel that much more self satisfied by delivering their low cost (but stylish) Scandanavian furnishings via human power.
Ikea is building in a sort of industrial area on the edge of downtown Tampa, a few blocks from trendy Ybor City. It would be cycleable for a fair part of the city. But I don't think many people would use them here. Mostly you ride either on the sidewalk or a bike trail. I used to blame it on narrow streets, but in Philadelphia, with even narrower streets I saw bikes everywhere. I hadn't seen so many safety levers in 20 years. Drivers here just seem not to be used to sharing the road.
I love the concept of the cardboard bike, not a big fan of disposable stuff. But living in a high property crime area and having several bikes stolen over the years the concept of an easily replaceable inexpensive bike is very intriguing.
Aaron
Manhattan has a special Ikea bus, and then truck delivery. A mass transit shopping experience!
Portland also has a light rail transit stop for Ikea.
Chris,
What is the wait time for a semi-custom cardboard rando frame?
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