Projects

I sold my house early June 2022. I had a look at houses in Poland and after that I travelled to Ukraine for business and to look for a house to buy. That's right, the actions of the insane psychopath Putin who decided to commit more war crimes didn't put me off. I have various business ideas and I visited a business in Poland (for a possible cooperation), after that I went to Ukraine. I had various problems and delays in 2022 and more delays in 2023 but things like deciding where to buy a house just take time and all in all things are progressing, slowly. The information on these projects will be updated when I can share more.

Just a sketch...

Plans to produce some specific bicycle components

The things I have been interested in most of all are bicycle lighting and saddles. These are the 2 most important parts of cycling, saddles for riding at any time, lighting for riding at night. Handlebars, racks, bags, tyres, fenders, and so on, are far lower on the list of priorities.

In the case of leather saddles there are enough good choices esp. with Gilles Berthoud and Selle Anatomica making saddles with a good frame so that the entire saddle can be rebuilt. Berthoud makes saddles that are likely useful for slower touring without going to 21 cm wide saddles (the Brooks B67), namely the Vars which is 18 cm wide, just a little wider than the B17. The Berthoud saddles can be bought with or modified with cutout just as Brooks saddles, so that should take of the most important requirements in leather saddles. This means in saddles there is likely not that much to improve, at least in leather saddles. Although, there is one thing I am thinking of related to saddles...

In lighting there is a lot to improve, but there are some issues I had to deal with and so there are other projects that I may do first.

Start of the business

In 2022 it was mostly deciding about which of my ideas to pursue first and where, then in 2023 I set up an LLC in Lviv (Ukraine, for now it is registered in Lviv as the lawyer I knew from 2022 lives there) as I want to do part of the development in UA, either myself or with manufacturers in UA, and partly (esp. for panniers) with 1 or 2 manufacturers in Poland. I will keep an addres in the Netherlands, at least for now...

I will keep a business address in the Netherlands, but I intend to make bike products, possibly in cooperation with manufacturers from these countries, and working with 2 friends from Poland and from Taiwan. Products to be made I think in Poland and Ukraine, we will see how it goes.

Some information on the projects

• Promote cycling with art: This project will likely be ready first and will be based around art from someone I know since a few years. We came up with some interesting ideas in 2023, of which a little bit of inspiration for some of them came from a picture that promoted cycling in NL/Amsterdam that I found in my family's 'archive'.
• Different racks with panniers: I've had this idea of better racks/panniers since about 2008-2009. Now I have the means and time to implement it and I will describe it when I get the prototypes ready.
• A different bike trailer: This should be simpler and more useful than others for the most common tasks for which you want to use a bike trailer, especially transporting groceries in addition to or instead of using panniers, but which you could use up to larger tasks such as transporting big boxes for a local house move.
• Bicycle lighting: Scope and design to be decided.

Last modified: 2024-2-8