Best of British: The man who made trials accessible for kids
Entrepreneur behind OSET who created a battery-powered trials revolution
‘It was a gamble, we remortgaged the house to make it happen’
‘My son Oliver wanted a bike but there was nothing for him’
Ian Smith probably wouldn’t mind us calling him an entrepreneur. His life story reads like a Dragons’ Den bio. Making electric trials bikes for young riders wasn’t his first venture, and may not be his last, but it has made a huge impact.
The story starts way back with Ian’s father. Back in the 1960s, Smith Senior was an advertising copywriter, and as he was very good at his craft he was drawn to the biggest opportunities – which meant emigrating to America. “My first motorcycle experience came there,” says Ian. “Just like in the movie On Any Sunday it was on the front lawn of our house in the suburbs, my big brother’s pal had one of those lawnmower-powered mini bikes. I was just itching to get on it. They said, ‘here’s the throttle, here’s the brake’ and sure enough I went off like a firecracker, out of control and crashed into the hedge. And of course I was hooked!” Mum and dad were not motorcyclists though and resisted the boys’ requests for bikes of their own. When Ian was 11 the Smiths came back to the UK and it wasn’t until he was 14 that he got a bike. “I was thinking motocross and I’d talked dad into going to a race. Only – fatefully – it was cancelled, but I found the Kent Youth Trials Club had a meeting on the same day. So we went to that and I found myself fascinated, so with dad’s consent, but my own money, I bought a ratty old Montesa 123.
“Dad’s profession brushed off on me, though. I saw Fantics were fast becoming the bike to have, but the UK importer didn’t really have any adverts, so I mocked up my own advertising campaign for them. With my dad, we presented it to Fantic UK. They liked it, and I got a very special deal on a Fantic 175!”
University put paid to the trials career, but he transitioned to road bikes and even dabbled in road racing. After graduating Ian found work with Reuters in London in their news clipping service, helping digitize the service in the fastdeveloping computer age. “After five years I planned to ride around the world with a mate, Tom. But Tom met a girl… So did I, Louise – now my wife. So instead Louise and I hatched a plan to go to the States. This was 1991, and back in California again I put together my press clipping experience with my love of motorcycles and saw an opportunity in indexing the American motorcycle magazines – and so selling article reprints.” Years went by and the pair bought a house and started a family. Ian got back into trials and created a
company making and selling films of the world trials championship. “My eldest son Oliver was born into all this. He’d sit watching the trials videos, desperately wanting a bike. He was only two and nothing existed for him. That’s when I struck on the idea of the OSET. There were these electric scooters with 12in bicycle wheels. I figured if I took the wheels, battery and motor and made up a frame we could have a bike for him. I’m not an engineer so my friend Mike Buchholz agreed to do the cutting and welding and we made the first OSET (‘Oliver Smith Electric Trials’). Within two weeks Oliver was winning in youth trials.
“When others saw the bike I was asked to make more. Rather than building them one by one, I saw this could be a business and contacted the Taiwanese company that made the scooters. Over the next two years we finalised the design and put the OSETs into production. It was a gamble, we remortgaged the house to make it happen, but it was an instant success.
“Since then, and as Oliver has grown, we’ve developed the range into bigger and bigger bikes. We now make eight bikes which retail through over 50 UK dealers and into 25 countries around the world.”
Get your kids started in trials, see this week’s Inspirations supplement