• Question: When designing a bike is style or function more important in terms of getting a british person to want your bike?

    Asked by 929mete32 to Eleanor on 14 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Eleanor Sherwen

      Eleanor Sherwen answered on 14 Mar 2016:


      For a typical British customer, definitely function is more important. The UK market has some of our most practical users and don’t mind about the style very much.

      It really varies by country. The UK market is only one of many markets for us. Other European markets also generally favour robust design like Netherlands, Benelux, Germany. We get more feedback on component faults from America, perhaps to do with their culture of very good customer service.

      From our far east markets like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc we get much more interest in style, special editions, and glamorous accessories. We get most feedback about cosmetic issues and scratches from Japan. There’s also an anglophile side to the appeal, people there think British stuff is trendy, so our distributors find it really helpful to focus on the “Handmade In London” aspect.

      Obviously that’s just a broad trend across the whole country, realistically each individual customer has different priorities to the next.

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