How uncomfy bike led to bamboo bicycle business

FACED with an 18-mile boneshaking bike ride to work, James Marr could have just hopped in the car.

Instead he decided to build his own bike – from bamboo. And six years on he has a flourishing business helping others build bamboo bikes.

“I was cycling about 18 miles a day on my bike and it was really uncomfortable,” the 30-year-old said.

“I thought about getting a new bike and then decided to make a bamboo one – I’d seen someone riding one in the US.

“The frames there were about $2,500 to buy so they were quite expensive so I thought I would have a go at building one.” His first was “a bit interesting”. “It was not great, but I could have ridden it,” James said.

“But once I had done it and understood the process, I thought, ‘How can I make it a bit better?’

“People started asking if they could have one. And I was like, no, you can come and make one with me on the weekend.”

That was in 2010. By 2012 he had started the Bamboo Bicycle Club in London.

Last year James built one for the Design Museum. It looks like a carbon fibre racing bike.

“My goal is not for them to be a novelty,” James said.

“The people who ride them use them every day and go around the world on them.

“I’m an engineer myself and would have stopped doing them a long time ago if they were not good.”

He would like to see them enter the highest echelons of cycling.

“Maybe there will be a bamboo bike in the Tour de France at some point, I would love to do that,” James said. “There is not enough investment for that at the moment but that is my goal.

“Any money we make is reinvested into testing.

“Every year we run student projects so more research is done.”

He added: “We have had people with no vision building bikes and we have had 90-year-olds, and kids.

“There are always problems to solve because we create different frames each time but everyone I have taught has completed their bike.”

James, from Aberbran, Powys, added: “I never thought I would move in this direction at all.

“But you do something and enjoy it and go for it. If you can turn it into a business that’s great.

“But everything has to come from a passion.”

He’s taught about 600 people and sold about 1,200 kits.

Sixteen schools run bike-building programmes.

“We’re always booked up for our workshops,” James said.

“We ship home-build kits to Japan and South Korea and a lot to the US.

“We’re getting the bamboo and we’re sending it back to them.”