A three-year-old was riding on two wheels, having great fun riding. I couldn’t believe how easily he was riding without stabilisers. The same day, I started researching and learnt it was a balance bike; designed to teach little ones how to balance before riding a pedal bike.
Kidvelo’s Balance Bike Business Journey
By Karen Wood Founder of Kidvelo
I run a company called Kidvelo that manufactures super light quality bikes and Kidvelo balance bikes for kids. None of this was planned!
I have spent most of my life challenging myself to do things with little consideration other than it sounded exciting. Jobs that I had no experience in but my gut instinct told me would be good fun. When I was sitting A-levels, I spent far longer reading Lonely Planet backpacking guides to far-flung countries than studying Physics. I knew I wanted to travel, and the careers advisor’s only solution was the Royal Navy. I had an absolute blast with the naval officers in the pub over the officers’ selection weekend, but still, my dreams of riding camels along the silk-road weren’t going to be achieved with a weapons engineering degree. Until I had seen the world, settling into what my parent’s called a proper job would never happen. I ultimately failed my exams due to a complete lack of interest and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do as a career, so another bit of paper didn’t seem to matter. So I went backpacking on my own with a one-way ticket to Bangkok. This “gap year” turned into 11 glorious years working in over 100 countries. I made my way by picking up jobs cooking on yachts, tour leading groups around Europe on coach-camping trips, hitchhiking across Africa, driving an overland expedition truck around South America and leading a couple of London to Kathmandu trips. Sounds idyllic and it was! There were tough days; losing passengers, having a passenger die in Zaire, getting shot in Colombia, breaking down in jungles, and fixing engines with a book, I could go on. But, on reflection, when things get tough, resilience, problem-solving, and determination are the skills that get you through. That and the reality if I didn’t solve things, no one else was going to. The same skills that will help you to run a business.
When I returned to the UK aged 30, clutching a small backpack and a pair of flip-flops, I wanted stability and my own bed. I talked my way into a sales job as a rep for a medical devices company. A car, a stable salary and a desk was pretty exciting at first, and the 9-5 seemed the way to go. I was not too fond of it, and couldn’t see any point in long, arduous sales meetings, but I needed an income to pay the mortgage. Then, I spotted a strange-looking wooden kids’ bike with no pedals whilst doing the nursery run. A three-year-old was riding on two wheels, having great fun riding. I couldn’t believe how easily he was riding without stabilisers. The same day, I started researching and learnt it was a balance bike; designed to teach little ones how to balance before riding a pedal bike. At this stage, I had a four-year-old struggling to ride a bike with stabilisers and an 18-month-old wriggling to escape his push-chair. So I bought a couple of metal balance bikes, and within two weeks, my daughter had learnt to ride a pedal bike, and the toddler was merrily weaving around on his balance bike, entirely independently of myself. The school run had become quicker, the kids were entertained and getting exercise and enjoying them and we could get out on family bike rides. So, in 2010, I quit the corporate job and bought more bikes on a gut feeling I could do something with them. I learned the basics of web design, built a very clunky website (it was dreadful but sold bikes, somehow!), used google and social media to promote ourselves and started a business selling balance bikes from my kitchen table. By 2014, my company had the exclusive distribution contract for the brand Strider and in 2015, my husband quit his career to join me. Over the years, we grew the brand to become a household name, ran balance bike racing for thousands of kids, sold thousands of bikes and learnt a lot about things we would change to improve the design and functionality of balance bikes. Sure we had hiccups, containers stuck in customs, getting our website hacked the same day we bought our first container, the car breaking down when on the way to meet the bank manager for a loan that we had already spent were some of the lowlights.
Never one for a smooth, comfortable life, we decided to cancel the distribution contract and threw away our financial security and a good lifestyle because we knew we could improve on the bikes we sold. So at the end of 2019, work started on design and testing. Then the global lockdowns hit, which slowed progress considerably. Finally, after developing a new bike range over Zoom, bikes were built and on a ship; the exorbitant shipping costs sunk the budget, so the carefully constructed marketing plans went out the window.
My advice to any new entrepreneur is, “expect things to go wrong and keep going!”
I had to repeat that to myself many times, but finally, by November 2021, Kidvelo had the first of the range in stock. Of course, we still have a way to go, and more unforeseen issues will come my way. The good news is that the bikes are gaining attraction from industry experts and customers alike who describe Kidvelo as “well-designed, well-made, and at a great price” – precisely what we set out to achieve.
The current challenge is we have a factory with our game-changing balance bikes that you can add pedals to and convert to a lightweight pedal bike stuck in a locked-down Shanghai. However, we have a waiting list of hundreds of parents keen to buy, and it will be revolutionary for kids aged 3-8 years that can’t ride a bike. I am grateful that so many are keen to wait and can see benefits for their kids, but it is very frustrating!
I have always suffered from worrying, and the 4 am wake up with my brain trying to solve everything will be a familiar feeling to many of you. But, perhaps my most significant accomplishment is that I have finally learned to stop worrying about the things I can’t control. I know we will get “there” by sticking to our ethos of delivering honest advice and excellent customer service alongside a brilliant product in a few years. I just can’t tell you what “there” will look like yet.
Trust your gut feelings, run your numbers and be reasonable with your expectations – then go and smash it!