BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
The Bike Club has confirmed funding of £5.7million, helping the brand expand its fleet of lightweight bicycles available to families for a monthly subscription.
The subscription bicycle scheme, founded in 2016 by Alexandra Rico-Lloyd and James Symes, is now the “largest private bike-rental scheme in the UK”. With a current fleet of 16,000 bikes, the investment puts it on track to grow to 150,000, with 12,000 arriving ahead of the Christmas peak.
“Our business model has always been focused on helping families to have bikes that grow with them, effectively solving the pain of constantly having to buy a new kids bike every 12-18 months as they get bigger. The Bike Club is a solution to a widespread problem for parents and for the industry,” said James Symes, CEO of the Bike Club.
“Over 80% of parents will teach their children to ride. People increasingly recognise that if you put your kids on the right sized, the better quality bike they’re much more likely to take up cycling and much more likely to have a better happier time.”
Jamie Lawson-Brown, a co-founder of Codex Capital, added: “We’re delighted to be partnering with the Bike Club to offer families a more sustainable and fundamentally better means of getting their children cycling. The combination of our investment and the entrepreneurial focus of the management team ensures we can increase the fleet rapidly, to offer this unique subscription service to an even greater number of families in this time of high growth.”
Mike Balfour, founder of Fitness First and chairman of the Bike Club, said: “In the same way Fitness First fundamentally changed the affordable health club industry, I can see the same growth opportunities with the Bike Club and family cycling. We are at the forefront of a generational shift in how we get our families cycling.”
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