bike design for girls

I’ve been planning to buy a racing bike since a while. The company I work for has joined the Nederlandse fiets plan. This means that if you use your bike to go to work or to the train station to which you take your train to work, you receive your taxes back. And since I pay 42% taxes every month, I thought it was very worth while.

Now buying a bike is a pretty big decision, the budget involved is far more than my monthly fashion budget. And I definitely also know less about it. So it has been quite a journey to understand what factors should influence my buying decision. After visiting three stores, talking to over 10 core cyclists and looking consumer blogs, I can now generally say I know what I want. In super short, you have 3 brands playing in the entry price point: Trek, Cube and Specialized. Trek has the brand name and quality and generally higher price point, Cube have a standard frame and play on the insight that beginners are told they need a bike with good component groups, and thirdly Specialized, who have a better frame, and groups which are relatively the same standard as the frame, and lower price point. If you need more info, let me know! Specialized was my final choice.

The most surprising element that has come up in all the discussion is somewhat unexpected, at least for me.. It wasn’t how the different brands were feeding off the different perspectives consumers could take, or what was the best bike, no.. it came back to the female version of the bikes and helmuts. Definitely, there is an improvement in the whole girl topic. The designers have definitely thought about how a bike should be adapted to a female body (apparently we have longer legs than men :) ). Designers however also still keep making the basic mistake of colouring female bikes in light blue, lila or pink, preferably with flowering motives. Do you really think that a girl that loves the sensation of speed, has calve muscles that look like aubergines and tends to do sport everyday wants to have flower motives in pink on her bike? No thank you, just keep it sleek and slim, just like the men's toys! Thank you