AIRDROPBIKES
How Ed Brazier built a bike brand while staying true to his values
Have you ever felt like you’re not proud of the work you’re doing, even if you’re doing it well? That’s the situation Ed Brazier found himself in when working for a successful company as a graphic designer. “When I came to Sheffield to find work, I had this idea of what I was looking for – a small group of like-minded people committed to something they really believe in, and doing work that we could be really proud of. But I never found that,” Ed tells us.
So, in 2014, after 12 years of grinding and saving, Ed, a passionate mountain biker who grew up riding rigid bikes around the Lake District, quit his job and poured his life savings into starting something he could be genuinely proud of. “I set up Airdrop myself, working out of my garage, which I converted into a workshop. It took me until the end of 2015 to get the first bike launched. I carried on working alone until a couple of years later, when James came on board. Andy joined us in 2019, but even now it’s just the three of us.”
Ed knew that starting a bike company was a challenging and somewhat crazy idea – especially when he didn’t have any formal training in bike design – but that was part of the appeal. He became obsessed with figuring out how to build the brand, and he still is. “I’d been a graphic designer for years, so I was used to developing ideas and solving problems, and I’ve always been into making things. I may not have known how to design a bike, but I knew how to learn, so I took what I knew about riding bikes and worked hard at it.”
The Airdrop line-up currently consists of two bikes, the Fade dirt jump bike and the Edit V4, a 155mm-travel all-mountain bike built around 650b wheels. There’s a downhill bike, the Slacker, being prototyped. It’s Ed’s ethos of doing things with a purpose that drives the brand, along with a desire to produce quality over quantity. “To us, usability is critical. A proper mountain bike should be easy to live with, to ride, clean and fix. It should never let you down. That’s hard to achieve, so we sweat it with the practical details – the things you never notice, because they’re just right.”
With this mentality, Airdrop aren’t chasing yearly model updates or the like. It’s still a massive undertaking for the three-strong team to produce a bike, though, so what does the future hold for Ed and co? “We’re all about getting better, not bigger, and only doing things we’re proud to set our name to. To me, it’s more rewarding to offer an alternative to the mainstream brands. So you’ll see a small range of bikes, each with a clear identity and purpose, and we’ll dial in every single one. We’re also going to deepen our knowledge of how to work well. That means staying true to our roots, growing the culture and being creative. It also means committing Airdrop to be a responsible company concerning ethics, equality and the environment.