TAIPEI, Taiwan (BRAIN) — When Bob Forgrave read the guidelines of the Taipei Cycle d&i Awards, he knew his Flatbike Pop-Off Pedals had to be a favorite in the Parts and Components category.
Forgrave, Flatbike president, was right, for his removable yet “destruction-tested” pedals suitable for mountain bikes and e-bikes can be removed quickly to make transporting and storage easier, more efficient, and also offer a level of theft-prevention.
“Even before we won, we were excited to read the criteria and discover that this entire award was about solving important problems in elegant ways,” said Forgrave in an email to BRAIN from CABDA West in Las Vegas, where he’s speaking to distributors and bike shops about his award-winning pedals. “So when we entered, we were thinking ‘How can we not enter this?’ Solving an important problem is what we've been doing for the past two years. When we won the award, it felt like less of a surprise and more of an important validation from experts in design and the cycling world.”
Taiwan folding bike brand Changebike’s Alice Chi represented Forgrave at the awards presentation at the Nangang Exhibition Center. Flatbike is Changebike’s U.S. supplier.
Pinching two latches releases the pedal spindle and body while re-installing requires a simple push of the spindle into the short latch head threaded into the crank arm. When the pedals are removed, those latch heads make it difficult to ride off with the bike. The pedals have passed the ISO-4210 safety requirement for pedals and drive systems.
Based out of Kirkland, Washington, Flatbike has sold removable pedals from Wellgo for six years, but during COVID, when the supply chain slowed and meant nearly a year from order to delivery, Forgrave said he and Flatbike’s Eli Baggenstos had a better idea.
“And we thought, ‘10 months! We could design and manufacture our own pedals in 10 months,’” he said. “Actually, not true. We could design and destruction-test new pedals in 10 months. Manufacturing took another 10. All told, we've been at this since mid-2023.”
Forgrave said removable pedals are a great way to save space and protect bikes from scratching each other and other items. However, most are not designed for the rigors of mountain biking and e-biking.
“We felt that commuters and mountain bikers deserved a removable pedal with an entirely new type of latch that was easier to remove, protected against accidental removal, and destruction-tested to MTB standards. That would be game-changing.”
His pedals were displayed at last year’s Sea Otter Classic, a Kickstarter campaign was completed in October, and the first 500 sets were delivered. Now Forgrave is working on establishing U.S. distributors and a bike shop network to complement D2C sales. He’s had interest from European distributors, too.
Flatbike began in 2016 as a distributor for Wellgo pedals and Revelo Bikes’ THINstems, which allows rotating the handlebar 90 degrees without the use of tools to enhance storage, and Changebike. Before starting Flatbike, Forgrave worked 13 years at Microsoft building product line brands and designed internal programs as part of Microsoft Consulting.
“The spark for Flatbike came post-Microsoft when, after wearing out my knees as a runner, I switched back to biking for daily exercise and discovered that putting a bike away in a convenient, yet accessible, location is a challenge by itself. Way tougher than tossing running shoes in the corner. But, if my bike could become flat, that problem would go away.”
The first batch of Pop-Off Pedals was manufactured in China, Forgrave said, but he’s moved it to India to better manage the quality-control process and to stay a step ahead of a trade war that he anticipated.
“A year ago we saw the writing on the wall and tariffs became part of that decision,” he said. “What we did not anticipate was tariff warfare. We happily do business with Canada, so the 25% import tariff breaking North American agreements hit us hard. We also will be slow-walking our European distribution plans while we monitor changing attitudes about American exports in the middle of our aggressive worldwide tariff wars. This environment will put a cap on growth if it continues.”
For now, Forgrave is content with positive customer feedback. “We have gotten excellent engineering feedback by passing ISO-420 destruction testing. We have won a design award. Now we need to move to the next level and collect interest from bike shops and distributors, so we are able to ship in quantity with retail packaging in Q3.”
Interested retailers and distributors can contact Jim VanBibber. All the award winners can be seen on IFDesign.com.
