John Greenfield Sits Down With Stephan Schier

Eric and I have been meaning to do this but Vote With Your Feet beat us to it. As we posted earlier (Chicago Dutch Bike Invasion), there are three new European bike shops that have sprung up in our city and Vote With Your Feet recently interviewed Stephan Schier from the Dutch Bike Co.

Here are a few excerpts:

“There’s a trend towards European bikes, but I wouldn’t just call it European bikes. It’s a trend towards quality and comfort, and people who have never ridden a bike or haven’t ridden a bike in ages wanting to ride. “

“In Holland people are interest in something that’s durable, comfortable and low maintenance. So that level of quality isn’t really being sold in the U.S. Most people are being sold finicky, lightweight and maintenance-intensive bikes that have index shifting systems, exposed chains and derailleurs.”

“All the bikes have a built-in handcuff lock on the rear wheel. It’s kind of a medium-duty, convenient locking solution that makes it really easy to lock up if you’re just running in and out of stores doing errands. The lock also has sockets and you can plug in a heavy chain or cable we sell into the sockets and chain the bike around an object. A lot of the frames even come with their own pump.”

John Greenfield from Vote With Your Feet plans on making this part of a series of interviews with Chicago’s new European bike shops so stay tuned.

0 people like this post.

Like