The Bike Pack story

Jean-Michel: "Thank you so much to visit this page. Have you ever taken your bike with you in travel? Discovering a new country by bike is awesome, but travelling with a bike can be very stressful and expensive... or it at least it used to be until now.

I remember my first trip across the Atlantic Ocean when I was 18 and fresh off the junior ranks, to race with Club Espoir in France. I was a simple, young cyclist and like many others, I was taking a shot at making the national team as well as trying to get onto a pro team! I was bringing with me 70+kg of equipment as I was importing Zipp wheelsets to help me fund my six-month trip.

Back then, the luggage allowance was quite generous. Having to go through the Paris Charles de Gaulle metro stations (notorious for their terrible smell of urine) to make my connecting flight, was the main complication of bringing so much stuff along for the trip. Emilien, if you are reading this, I am forever grateful for your helping hands, getting through all those hallways and stairs!

Over the last few years, while travelling with bicycles, I have realized that it isn't always easy on the wallet.

Once, with the track national team, one of the riders on the team named Lawrence was travelling with an American company along with his 2 big hard case bike boxes. The airline wanted $450.00 in over the limit fees!

He ended up taking a chance and shipping his bikes with UPS for a little cheaper, but in the end, he lost more than the initial $450.00 because he wasn't able to train (the bikes did not arrive at the destination on time).

I was resilient though and the luggage cartel wasn’t going to prevent me from living my dream. Sometimes, you have to get a little creative... For example, travelling as a professional cameraman with American Airlines or a snowboarder with Swiss Air, I could save $100.00 to $250.00 per flight. But when there were no other alternatives, I would build custom boxes that respected the allowable dimensions. 

Now, with The Bike Pack, I don't have to worry about any of those things. 

In 2010, after a race in the Dominican Republic, I came across a very cheap suitcase in a small Chinese supply store in NYC. I bought one, as I thought I might be able to fit a full-frame inside of it.

Indeed, with some simple disassembly work, the bike could easily fit even though it was still considered a bit oversized. It didn't look like a bike case and being relatively small, I didn't get charged an extra fee.

The suitcase was extremely cheaply made. After only one trip, it began to break and I was concerned about using it again with my expensive bike gear...

That is when the idea to manufacture a custom bicycle travel suitcase came to me. 

An initial prototype was realized in Guatemala, right after the annual national tour. With the help of friends, the Padilla brothers, we brainstormed some ideas, tested some fabrics and quickly went to a local and skilled artisan with the plan. 

With the ups and downs (I broke my left elbow and leg in a high-speed crash going over a hidden speed bump) that come with chasing the pro cycling / Olympic dream, the project was then put on hold. It wasn’t until after the Rio games that I could invest the required time needed to improve on the first prototype that was made a few years before in Guatemala.

Indeed, in the winter of 2017, I drove from Quebec to Mexico with two goals in mind; to prepare for the upcoming cycling season and perfecting the product. Finding a manufacturer that could meet my design and quality criteria was pretty challenging.

My requirements were too demanding for most manufacturers that I visited and I began to lose faith.

Some criteria were non-negotiable: quality, respect for the environment, fair trade and finally, affordable to the customer. Everywhere I went, I was repeatedly told that my design idea was too complicated and that they couldn't do it.

It was by pure coincidence that when I spoke of my project to the lady whose house I was renting, she introduced me to Eduardo and her company based in Ocotlan, Jalisco that manufactured backpacks. That’s when I experienced a flash of an idea; if I could fit a bike inside a bag that looked like a backpack, wouldn’t that be fantastic?!! 

Eduardo and his company immediately made a good impression on me. We shared the same concern for the environment, the seamstresses were all commuting to work on bicycles. They were all in a beautiful working atmosphere and I could sense that there was a real passion among the employees to help me develop a great product.

After a few trips to Ocotlan and several prototypes for product development, I was very happy with the quality and the improvements we made each time. We brought a lot of innovation to the product with our internal structure.

At the end of the year, we produced a small-batch production to collect further real-world user feedback from ambassadors.

Throughout 2018, we tried to scale up our production to meet demand. That is where we ran into difficulties. The complexity of such a large product, availability and consistency of materials and parts made it hard to realize in Mexico. Given the fact that most of the materials were imported from China, steps toward producing straight at the source were then made.

Switching from Mexico to China proved a whole lot harder than expected. Thanks to great connections in the industry, we quickly produced more samples and practiced due diligence, properly testing the product, always in real-world conditions. 

Near the end of 2019, I flew to China to meet with the development team of the factory to further improve the product and get ready for mass production. During my time over there, tremendous progress was made on the bag.

The downside of moving to Asia was a much higher minimum order quantity and therefore even more precautions needed to be taken to get it right.

In 2020, as everybody now knows the pandemic put a halt to the travel industry. It was a tough challenge, but we took the opportunity to further perfect the product and prepare some of the marketing efforts. 

Even though the product is in high demand, the minimum order quantity in Asia makes it a challenge. For that reason, we are turning to a pre-sale here to make it all possible and allow everyone to benefit from the best possible price.