BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The one-off custom-finished bike Pantone x Romance is now on auction on eBay.
The bike was created by bike brands Specialized and Sram, Argentinian-Spanish artist Felipe Pantone and boutique cycling clothing designers Romance for charity World Bicycle Relief (WBR).
It was recently valued by Sotheby’s of London at £35,000.
Adam Parkes, co-founder of Romance with Nathan Dytor, said: “It’s amazing seeing how much impact a bicycle can have through the work WBR does, such as being an enabler for a child in Africa to make the long journey to school, which in turn allows them to complete their education – it’s life-changing for them and their family.
“As cyclists ourselves and because of our own passion for cycling, we make it our mission through our brand Romance to create something unique and beautiful that we can sell to raise money for WBR, and make a difference.
“Our artist collaborators buy into that vision. We select artists whose work is visually interesting, striking and who are open to blurring the boundaries between art, design and cycling with us.
“This year’s collaboration was with the huge artist Felipe Pantone, we’ve been a fan of his for a long time, so it was great to see the cycling jerseys we made with him sell out in record time.
“This sparked the idea to go bigger – we had a chat with Specialized and Felipe, and decided if we could use a bike as a canvas to create a unique one-off piece of art, that could potentially be huge!
“If the auction goes well we will essentially be turning one spectacular custom bike into hundreds of Buffalo bikes that WBR can send to communities in Africa to change lives.”
The resulting bike is complete with a Specialized S-Works finishing kit, Sram Red eTap groupset and carbon Roval deep-section wheels.
The bike will be on display at Look Mum No Hands from 18th to 21st November and will be on auction until 26th November.
