We are everyone’s nobodys.
We have done this before.
We believe that bikes can be pretty silly but riding them can be pretty powerful.
We are here because we want to work for something more than an opportunity for another job.
We believe that being content is a blessing. The work shared here is our attempt to be content with a creative process, the objects that are produced from that process, and the experience of consuming those objects.
We believe that creation and vulnerability are a powerful salve for the soul.
We believe that affordable is a relative term.
We believe in the collective power of community.
We acknowledge that there are long standing conflicts within the bicycle community and believe that engaging in them is the only way to move through them towards making this a better place for more people to be.
We want to go as far as we can and bring as many people with us as possible. There are many ways to engage with, contribute to, and support this work.
Andy
Before shoving off with Fruit Bikes, Andy spent six years designing bikes and parts, writing articles, and riding bikes all over for the now second-best bike brand in the world, Surly Bikes. He learned from the best in the business and brings a lot of design, manufacturing, and testing experience to this -you might have even ridden or own a bike he worked on!
Forever bouncing between the trades and the engineering, art, and design worlds, Andy cares a lot about people and spaces and how they interact, and about how we construct, approach, and care for the world in which we live. After learning to move through the world from a pup on a motocross bike, the way bikes are never really made sense to him, and after the better part of a decade of designing them he is still as confused as ever.
Andy grew up in the rural Midwest and carries a thick accent and walks and talks like a farmer, but he’s always been self-conscious about that. He enjoys high fashion, the fancy things, science fiction, working together, and road trips. Windows down over windows up, bench seats over buckets, learning over being right, and down and dirty over high and tight. He’ll most likely die halfway done with whatever he’s started, but he’ll probably try to sell you something about how getting half way to somewhere great is better than all the way to somewhere OK, and you won’t really believe him, but you’ll probably hope he gets there anyway.
*thanks to Cass Gilbert for this photo