Bamboo bicycles: the bet of a Colombian entrepreneurship

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Get to know the Colombian entrepreneurship that is committed to innovation and caring for the environment with its bamboo bicycles

Currently, large cities have chosen to promote the use of bicycles as an alternative and sustainable means of transport for urban mobility, which offers additional benefits by reversing air quality. This allows the preservation of the environment, as well as health care, while recovering the space in the roads which allows the cities to have a better mobility.

Leer en español: Bicicletas de bambú: la apuesta de un emprendimiento colombiano

This is how the rise of bicycles has opened a range of possibilities, offering different models, designs, accessories, even in the materials used for their manufacture. This allowed the industrial designer from Bogota, Julián Marín, to found the Akúa Bambooclass project, an enterprise that since 2015 designs and manufactures bicycles with non-conventional materials.

The passion of this designer for bicycles led him to find out about the use of innovative materials that allowed him to manufacture a bike that was strong enough, finding the viability in the bamboo. This plant is not only a renewable resource but also is capable of regenerating itself without needing to be replanted and being a fast growing plant, it is ideal for the manufacture of bicycles, making them flexible and at the same time resistant.

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This material, along with the cane arrow, kevlar and carbon, allowed Akua Bambooclass to make a difference compared to other bicycles, not only for being an innovative proposal but for providing additional benefits, since a bamboo bike absorbs the vibration of the ground, therefore the muscles and joints suffer less stress than with a steel or aluminum bicycle.

They are also more flexible, which makes them softer and more comfortable when walking. They are better for long trips because they vibrate less, which causes less fatigue and is much lighter than a steel bicycle. They are resistant to impacts because it flexes but does not breaks. They are friendly to the environment in their manufacturing process. They are resistant to water and with proper care can last more than 10 years, and its design and manufacture, allows it to be 100% customizable.

The project received excellent comments and was very well received, which led it to expand abroad, reaching cities such as Milan, where its partner, the designer Hernando Marín resides, who contributed to the project by giving Akua Bambooclass a touch of design and style.

Nowadays, they maintain the commercialization of bicycles and seek to discover new materials and designs that allow them to continue innovating in the market.

LatinAmerican Post | Natalia Gomez Ortega

Translated from "Bicicletas de Bambú: la apuesta de un emprendimiento colombiano"