Attending Eurobike 2025 with a focus on cycling as transport solutions, and a recommendation to seek out the Tarran T1 Pro e-cargo bike, I had the good fortune to meet with Freda Lu, one of the co-founders of the Tarran brand.
Speaking on the Tarran stand, it was clear there was much more to talk about. Here we revisit and expand on the conversation for a BikeBiz online exclusive feature.
Freda, you come into the cycling industry from a consumer electronics and technology background. As a co-founder, is it daunting entering a new industry?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: It’s really exciting.
Entering a new sector is the kind of thing that we – Tarran – thrive on: Seeing opportunities and exploring intelligent ways to make things simple, easy, intuitive and enjoyable to use.
Can you give us a quick overview of your background?
Sure. I’m a product marketing specialist. My background includes two bachelor’s degrees – one in Journalism, the other in Economics, plus a master’s degree in Integrated Marketing.
My career started out in PR. After graduating, I worked briefly for Tencent. When an opportunity to join DJI arose, I wasn’t going to ignore it.
Today, I have more than 10 years of experience in the consumer electronics and tech industry. With nearly three years of that time working for DJI – long enough for me to say that the business is justifiably famous – I’ve been privileged to work with some extraordinary people. You’ll see that former DJI employees are prominent in the Tarran co-founder team.
What does your marketing journey look like?
At the start, I worked in PR. As DJI underwent an internal reorganisation, I joined a business unit. Here, two people take care of one product line – one on the marketing side, one on the sales side. After that, I moved internally, taking care of social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter and Google, from a DJI headquarters perspective.
DJI is where I get to develop my expertise in different functions in marketing. That’s possible because, one – it’s in the tech industry, and two – it’s in DJI. The combination makes for a dynamic working environment. I covered a lot of ground in just under three years at DJI.
How do you find yourself working in the cycling industry?
If I’m personally asked, “Why a future mobility company?”, my answer is simple: I ride my Brompton to and from work each day. Actually, throughout my student life and beyond into my career, I commuted by bicycle for over 10 years.
I’m an avid hiker and surfer, so you could say I lean towards an outdoor, eco-conscious lifestyle. Combined with my professional background in the tech industry, when I heard about an opportunity to blend technology with the lifestyle I love, it naturally sparked my interest. As a product marketing professional, that connection is paramount.
I relocated, moving to Shenzhen to be part of Tarran. For me, the opportunity to be part of the founder group, working on a new project that brought personal and professional passions together, was too good to miss. We, as a group, are innovators. It’s what gets us excited, what motivates and enthuses us.
Can you give us an introduction to your Tarran co-founders?
At Tarran, our team comes with senior experience working for the likes of DJI, Insta360, and Anker. We’re a team with deep expertise in seamlessly blending hardware and software. I mention this because of the way the business functions: R&D and Product managers at DJI basically take the lead for the entire projects. That experience is to the fore here at Tarran.
I was originally approached by Ben Guo, a former colleague from DJI, who also held an influential role as Senior Product Manager at Insta360. Ben is highly respected for his R&D expertise and for the ability to listen to marketing and consumer feedback: Innovation needs to meet the market. It can’t just be exciting to engineers.
Critically, Ben’s Hong Kong base provides a linguistic advantage and more – a global perspective. This cultural fluency proves invaluable when collaborating with KISKA, our European design agency, and engaging with European industry members, from distributors to retailers, and end users – our target audience. (His ability to navigate cross-cultural nuances ensures our solutions resonate locally while maintaining a cohesive global vision.)
Next, I’d introduce Avery Zhao, previously Global Go-To-Market Head / Sales Head North American at DJI. Avery left a senior role at Anker – global Go-To-Market team leader and designated sales team on portable power station line – to become part of the founder team of Tarran.
Our Director of R&D (Software/Hardware), Vincent Qu, spent 9 years at Insta360, working as an embedded software R&D manager.
Myron Zhang, our Director of Mechanics and Supply Chain, previously also served as Product Manager for multiple DJI products before advancing to R&D Head at an innovative mobility-tech venture.
This is the calibre of our Tarran founder team. People who have strong global consumer electronics business experience spanning hardware and software development and delivery. When you look at the skillset and professional experience, it’s easy to see why we’ve frequently been complimented by investors.
The European and North American cycling industry is largely male-dominated. Are female founders commonplace in the consumer electronics and technology sector? Do you see many female founders in China?
Generally, across the tech industry – if you look across the whole company – I think the gender ratio is more or less balanced. However, when you look at the R&D team or the leadership team, I think there is still a significant gap.
Talking from personal experience, my last company had a female CEO who created an environment, built a culture that promoted female leadership. Reflecting today, that experience fundamentally shaped my perspective – which is why when the opportunity arose, I embraced it without hesitation. Now, the prospect of forging such an environment myself is also a source of motivation.
Is there an advantage to be had – a competitive advantage – for a business with a female co-founder?
I’d say a hard ‘Yes’.
During our first year, my team worked on a questionnaire to gather first-hand data – getting to know our prospective customers.
We find out that riders of cargo bikes – this specific category – the gender ratio is balanced. That’s very different from other categories. Even when we look at the adjacent category – city/hybrid, and especially when you look at trekking, or road bicycles – there are significantly more male riders. Cargo is different.
Looking at key e-bike and cargo bike markets:
- Germany: women make up just over 50% of the population (42.3 Mn women and 41.2Mn men).
- The Netherlands: roughly 8.96 million women, with approximately 8.85 million men.
Talking purchasing decisions:
It’s a widely accepted and extensively used statistic that “women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing decisions”. There’s a more contentious one, which states “50% of products marketed to men are actually purchased by women”.
Female voices need to be heard at the most senior levels. For me, the female perspective serves as a starting point.
How has that shown up in your development process for Tarran’s first product?
As a simple yet vital insight into the practical value of having a female co-founder, I mentioned riding my Brompton to work and back. Brompton doesn’t have stand-over height challenges. I’m 5’2”. We twice lowered the standover on the T1 Pro. Not an issue for my male colleagues. Something obvious to me.
If my voice isn’t heard, how do we find out? When the first reviews appear online? When we have issues with sales performance? When we consider the cost of re-engineering the product for V2, and launch a new marketing campaign to promote the solution, which we should have seen before we launch V1?
Throughout our R&D process — from core functionalities to the smallest of details — feedback from all female employees was actively sought and directly incorporated.
When you look at our Landing Gears, they specifically enhance stability for smaller riders – irrespective of gender – when getting underway, and when parking, as well as improving safety when handling loaded cargo.
The warm grey frame colour also reflects the collective preference expressed by our female team members during testing. This might seem like a minor detail, but when we refer to those buying decision insights*, a colour that has strong female appeal is no small matter.
Inclusive design, by nature, extends beyond incorporating female perspectives—it should encompass diverse needs, from regional to varied user preferences, and more. I firmly believe the female lens remains disproportionately overlooked in current practice.
Carrying this inclusive philosophy forward, we will incorporate more diverse considerations into our product design. I believe this is vital to striking a balance.
Given what we’ve just discussed – product development – it makes sense to talk about the T1 Pro. What do you want to deliver with the product which launches the Tarran brand in the mobility space?
Let’s start by saying that we are focused on developing a cargo bike that truly elevates user experience by intelligent solutions – launched into a competitive market.
While ‘intelligent’ may be our positioning vocabulary, our true wish is leveraging technology to solve tangible pain points. The solutions may vary for future product lines, but this stays as the core.
Beyond this, we hope to support sustainability in our own way as well: OTA (Over The Air) -enables future feature upgrades, allows continuous value enhancement and an evolving experience.
OTA updates feel like a great way to ask how Tarran, a ‘future mobility company’, is forming working relationships and partnerships with distributors, and retailers – the businesses that make up the cycling industry?
We arrive from a place of respect. We are new in the cycling industry, coming from a sector where small items are easy to ship, where updates (software and hardware) are rolled out frequently, and new products are launched on a more frequent basis. It is critical that we understand the dynamics and expectations of the cycling industry.
Unpacking this, we have done extensive research into the market – retailers, distribution, logistics, customer expectations (across the business and customer spectrum), and post-sale support.
Just as we explore ways to innovate with a product, so we must do this with a service – all whilst being aware of the expectations of our industry partners. Relationships make everything work (or not). An innovative product doesn’t win long-term fans if the ownership experience isn’t positive. Retailers don’t want to work with you if they aren’t well supported by the brand.
In keeping with the key target markets, we have a Dusseldorf office. A European business presence is critical.
When does Tarran start shipping bikes?
We began shipping our first bikes only a few weeks after Eurobike.
The show – a really positive experience for us in 2024 and 2025 – represents a great opportunity for brick-and-mortar businesses to meet us and experience the product in person, a critical part of the retailer relationship. For Tarran, it is also a unique opportunity to meet with distributors and the media.
Meeting people in person, offering people an opportunity to ride our T1 Pro, means it’s possible to be compared directly with our competitors. It is a great opportunity to showcase your differences. We received many compliments. A lot of encouragement.
We’re always open to new dealer conversations, and I’ll mention here that we are already developing the next Tarran products – models 2 and 3 – which will widen our offering and complement T1 Pro.
For anyone wanting to explore the T1 Pro, or enquire about becoming a Tarran retailer, I’d suggest either contacting our Sales Manager, Golden Huang, via LinkedIn, or visiting the Tarran ‘become a dealer‘ webpage.
