We have a true passion for bikes
With more than 800,000 build options and 160 colours to choose from, Bespoked Cycles lets you design, build and spec your bike from scratch with the finest components.
Our founder, Derek Thorp, fell in love with ‘fixies’ during his travels in China, loving the freedom, character and purity of the bikes.
His dream is to see New Zealand embrace these funky bikes and improve their lives and the environment - and have a heap of fun in the process.
Fixies are practical, functional, and worth getting excited about. By custom-building your own, you get a bike that is full of personality, style and won’t cost a fortune. The purity of the design makes them easy to maintain and the simplicity of the build allows you to switch out components to change the look, feel and ride at your whim.
Built for commuters, hard-core riders, hobbyists and everything in between, fixed gear bikes are built to stand out and be noticed.
Introducing Derek
Derek is passionate about Christchurch and is known to many Cantabrians as a key part of the Cityscape magazine team. His other mad passion is fixed-gear bicycles.
“Fixies look beautiful, behave predictably and are amongst the simplest, purest machines in the world. ”
Why fixed-gear bikes?
Two wheels with one gear on a locked sprocket: it’s how the first bikes were invented, how the Tour de France used to be and how track bikes on velodromes around the world have always been and still are today.
Fixed gear bikes are characteristically lightweight and look very minimal compared to other rides. They only have one gear, so changing speed is defined by how fast you’re pedaling. You can’t coast - when the bike is moving, so are your legs. Want to go faster? Pedal harder. It’s Newton’s third law of motion.
The feeling of riding fixed is not easy to explain. It starts with being directly connected to the drivetrain and finishes with the pleasure of riding something beautiful. In between is the heritage of doing something pure; the removal of noisy, complicated gears and the nimbleness of riding a bike which was designed to be light and fast.
To find out more about Derek and what he does in his downtime,
check out his interview in Cityscape.
