Swobo’s bike designer
by Richard MasonerSwobo is a favorite among a couple of the editors at Commute By Bike, and I was delighted to see this interview with Sky Yaeger. Sky, who left her product management position at Bianchi USA two years ago to design bikes for Swobo, talks about her design influences and philosophy in the interview.
Sky predicts that if gas prices continue to increase, bicycle ridership and sales will increase as well. She hopes the component companies will spend their R&D developing technology that is more useful and helpful to casual cyclists. She wants to see better internal hub gearing, for example, and disc brakes that don’t rub. Sky also wants the technology to be invisible “so casual cyclists are not intimidated by suspension components, multiple chainrings and shifters with 4 levers.”
It’s nice reading her insights. Read the interview here. I should mention that Cycloculture, where the interview is posted, is “a journal dedicated to cycling in the real world.” There’s some good stuff there.
See also the Swobo Bikes section of our Commuter Bike directory.
“so casual cyclists are not intimidated by suspension components, multiple chainrings and shifters with 4 levers”
I thought those were the cool fancy gizmos that everyone wants even though they have no idea what those things really do and probably don’t need them anyway?
I mean, I finally figured out that my cheap hybrid’s darn suspension fork is the main reason why noncyclists will often completely ignore the crowd of multi-thousand-dollar precision road bikes to gawk at mine. Look at that one with the cool shocks in the front wheel! Nice bike!
Maybe there’s a difference between gawking and actually riding.
My fenders, rack, trunk, panniers, lights and bell intimidated me at first……but I got used to it.
I would have thought that at least one of her favourites would be a Swobo branded bike.
I (in my adult life) was reintruduced to bikes 3 years ago at a local mall. The sales person gave me a fantastic orientation into the world of cycling on and off road. When we found what I thought would be my niche he took me aside and sugested I go to a local college town store where he’d recentiy purchased a bike. Well I’ve put aside that purchase for over 3 years now (laziness) but kept the interest and last week I revisited the local bike store and they showed me the Swobo Dixon and I was blown away. Lightweight enough, internal wires and gears, disc brakes and a built-in turn signal I had to have it.
I’m still a layman but it makes for a better student to have really nice affordable equipment.