Early Rider Reflect on 20 Years in Business

This piece first appeared in the May edition of BikeBiz magazine – not subscribed? Get a free subscription.

Kids’ bikes are not what they were 20 years ago. Yes, there are still plenty of cheap, cheerful and overly stickered-up ‘bikes’ you can give kids to ride around on. But one brand in particular asks, ‘Why stop there?’ Why not make a kid’s bike that adults are jealous of, and wish they had when they were younger? 

That brand is Early Rider. Now 20 years old, Andy Loveland has captured a corner of the market that prioritises good-quality bicycles for kids. Because why shouldn’t kids have excellent bikes that fit them and ride well? BikeBiz sat down with him to catch up as Early Rider reaches 20 years of trading to discuss what he thinks the future holds for the kids’ bike market.

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Early Rider has reached 20 years of trading; how does it feel to still be going so strongly after two decades in the industry? 

Yeah, it feels immensely gratifying and at the same time, extremely exciting. There’s no doubt that we’re extremely fortunate to have spent this amount of time in an industry with such a positive mandate, and despite our ‘maturity’, we have never had more to look forward to.  

Can you tell our readers about why the brand was founded? What inspired Early Rider? 

In 2005, my wife and I were just back from a stint in the US. We were expecting our soon-to-be youngest, Luke and our eldest, Freddy, was two. It was an exciting period of change for us – suddenly all our focus was on our newly growing family. 

Back then, there was a growing acceptance of kids being more connected to screens than to the world around them, and it just wasn’t going to be that way for our kids; we were going to make sure they were outdoors as much as possible.    

Freddy’s Godfather came across a pedal-less bike in Germany, developed as a therapy tool for kids who were struggling; the idea was to get them mobile, no matter what, because our emotional and cognitive development is rooted in our physical interaction with the world.   

This, of course, was the first balance bike, and it was just beginning to get broader traction.    

He bought one for Freddy, and before we knew it, he was flying around, never to be in the push chair again. It was life-changing. The freedom, the mobility, the quality of time spent together – it was transformative.  

It was clear that the balance bike had huge potential, but that wasn’t the catalyst for the company; the trigger for me was how a small innovation, just a thoughtful simplification of a product unchanged for decades, could have such a profound effect on Freddy’s development. 

We didn’t set out to start a kids’ bike company; we saw the opportunity to change when and how kids interacted and engaged with the world around them through riding. The same would be true of surfing and snowboarding, but the bike was simply the best place to start, especially as we could already see that the balance bike was the death knell for the traditional steel, upright, poorly spec’d kids bike, and it seemed almost certain to me that the entire kids bike market would need reimagining – and that was exciting.   

I started thinking about bike design and how we could reposition the importance of riding, and the hope was that we could rail against society’s acceptance that kids are ok to grow up connected to devices rather than the world around them.  

That’s where Early Rider came from; it was a play on Easy Rider. In the same way Easy Rider was about counterculture, we were to be a counter-culture brand, making a stand for participation in an active, outdoor childhood.  

What do you think it is about the brand that’s contributed to its longevity in the kids’ bike market? 

We are and have always been a product-led company, rather than marketing. We’ve always had the trust that if we do the best possible job with our products, the market will eventually find us.  

This has also been one of our biggest moderators as well as one of our biggest strengths. By being laser-focused on ‘best-in-class’, we have had to accept that it’ll only be those who understand the true value of the bike that will see the true value of our design philosophy.  

This is a battle we are beginning to win. We feel the consumers are catching up; they’re increasingly seeing the importance and holistic benefit of cycling. We’ve seen 20% plus growth every year for the three years since COVID, when the industry and wider economy have struggled, and I think our product philosophy and introducing innovations like the Velio range is why.  

You say you are ‘product-led’, what is your product philosophy? 

We operate under the belief that progression is a series of design problems. As we fix them, we increasingly unlock our kids’ potential. We make it easier and safer to take them further and earlier.  

To be more granular, ultimately, in everything we do, we’re looking at answering three questions: 

1. How do our products amplify and elevate our kids’ inherent abilities? 
2. How do our products make experiences more positive, more memorable, more meaningful? 
3. How do our products help create stronger connections with the world around us and each other? 

We’ve just launched our most comprehensive, full-range relaunch in our history, our first in five years. With the launch, we really focused on geometry and how the position of the rider on the bike positively impacts their ability to ride with more control and confidence. Narrowing the Q-factor while still allowing wider tyres on our smaller bikes, adjusting head angles and lowering the centre of gravity wherever possible.  

With Velio, we started with the question of when babies develop confidence. Understanding this happens during the golden development window of 6-12 months, we set about designing a bike for a 9-month-old that helps the child to develop balance and coordination. Judging by the success we’ve seen with Velio, the market agrees. 

What does Early Rider have planned for 2026 and beyond? What’s the long-term goal with the brand? 

We can’t wait to see the impact of the new launch over the coming season. It seems all around us has been curtailing development to focus on costs and finding margin, and so to raise the bar when others are standing still is super exciting. 

We’ll continue to work on supporting our customers.  Growth isn’t just about more customers, it’s about supporting them earlier, staying with them longer and across a more varied range of activities. We have two of our most exciting new product launches yet to look forward to within the next 12 months, as well as some awesome collaborations. We want to build on the momentum we’ve generated in recent years. 

As a brand, we want to continue doing what we can to encourage participation in an active and outdoor life. We really want to promote the reciprocal benefits of encouraging adventure for us all, too. We have a motto, ‘Our kids look to us for inspiration, yet we find it in them. If we place adventure in their hearts, they will keep it in ours.’ 

It is a journey we’ve been on personally over the last 20 years. Having prioritised adventure in our family life early, our kids have been the real driving force for us to do more in recent years. It’s inconceivable that my wife and I would have jumped out of a plane over Jurien Bay or have been diving shipwrecks in the Caribbean in the last few years, without it.  

Indeed, to truly circle the loop, Freddy, the original inspiration for Early Rider, is now helping to push the company forward, having taken on responsibility for our flag-bearing, Swiss market. We look forward to Luke joining us next.