(Photos: Signal Cycles)
North Portland based bicycle makers Signal Cycles‘ new “picnic bikes” will soon be available for sale at Anthropologie.com. The national retail chain contacted Signal after several months ago after learning about the “Fremont” bike they created for the Oregon Manifest Design Competition last year.
Signal Cycles co-owner Matt Cardinal says a buyer from Anthropologie was interested in a picnic-themed bike and it was an idea he and his partner Nate Meschke had already been thinking about. The bikes feature a 3-speed rear hub, a large front wicker basket, a step-through frame, and a hub-powered front light.
The bikes were fabricated at the Signal shop here in Portland and they also feature hand-built wheels by locally-based Corsa Concepts. Cardinal says Anthropologie plans to sell the two bikes they’ve purchased for $6,000 a piece (got to love that retail margin huh?) and they plan on using them to decorate their stores for the holiday season.
This isn’t the first bike Anthropologie has sold. They also sell bikes from Linus on their website and they even list a $10,000 rickshaw. And Signal isn’t the only Portland maker you’ll recognize on their website. They also sell the fantastic leather saddle bag made by none other than Geoff Franklin of Walnut Studiolo (who many of you might recall from his attendance at BikeCraft).
For Signal, the project was a great chance to further their experience into making bikes in more of a production model, instead of a one-off custom approach. Cardinal says the picnic bike project was similar to how they developed their Saltzman model; a production bike that comes in standard sizes and starts at $3,600 all built up.
Once Anthropologie sells the two they’ve bought, Cardinal says Signal will likely sell a very similar model direction (and I assume, at a much more reasonable price).
See more photos and learn more about the project at SignalCycles.com.