Our friends from Cheapassbikes, have a great mission out there: To help 100.000 people a year to get an affordable bike that is reliable and sustainable by the year 2023. Cheapassbikes are doing so by selling refurbished used bikes, which are in an impeccable condition for a price as low as €89. They will also deliver your bike to your doorstep in no time.
To understand more about how Cheapassbikes works, we decided to break down for you their mission statement and vision:
100.000
This number is their current dot on the horizon. To be able to give 100.000 bikes a new life within one year is a very unique and challenging goal on its own. That would mean Cheapassbikes are saving 274 bikes a day! We think this is very important because, in the Netherlands alone, 1 million bikes are sold every year. They hope they can reduce this number to stop overproduction and to get people aware that it is not necessary to throw out a bike that soon.
Affordable
Cheapassbikes wants the entire Netherlands to be able to afford a bike. On average in the Netherlands, a new Bike costs €563 for a city bike. It is not affordable for everyone, and that is why Cheapassbikes came along. They want to be the solution through having bikes from as cheap as €89 going up to bikes of >€500—this way there is an option for every wallet.
Sustainable
we already told you that an astounding 1 million new bikes are being sold in the Netherlands. This is of course not very sustainable, more: when you know the average Dutch person already owns 1,3 bikes. These bikes are mostly built in Thailand and Germany (60%). The construction of totally new bikes plus transportation to the Netherlands is not very sustainable when you know thousands of bikes are neglected every day and picked-up by local government to be destroyed. That is where Cheapassbikes come in to give these bikes a second life so they will be able to provide you off comfortable transportation for another 10-15+ years even in the wet climate of the Netherlands. They give these bikes a new life by refurbishing them. When necessary they change out the chain, tires, the seat and put on safe lights so your bike is as good as new. The used parts are recycled repaired and used again so the production and emissions stay as low as possible.
Reliability
Like many of us, Cheapassbikes thinks that reliability is essential, not just quality wise also the origin of the bike is necessary to them. In the Netherlands alone 500.000-800.000 bikes are stolen every year. This means the second-hand market of bikes is overflown with stolen bikes. Cheapassbikes is fighting this by registering their bikes so it can be found when stolen. Because they only do business with the government, they can guarantee that bikes are legit. The second part of reliability is the quality of the bikes. This is why, before sending them, Cheapassbikes are checking everything, from the lights to the tire pressure.