As I did more cycling, I soon realised that it was much more fun to ride on a good bike than a bad bike. I also learnt that within reason you get what you pay for and that buying better may not cost you more over the lifetime of the investment.
I’m far from wealthy but I take this same approach to bikes for my family as I know that better bikes will mean they enjoy cycling more and that we as a family will ride more.
When my son got big enough for his first bike, my searching for the best kids bikes led me to Islabikes. They had a reputation for being light, easy and fun for kids to ride, well-proportioned including the controls and appeared to have terrific resale value. We duly placed an order for a CNOC 14 back in 2009 and it was a tremendous kids bike. Our son learnt to ride on the CNOC and it became one of his prized possessions.
When he outgrew it, I worked out that I should get around 70% of what I paid for it back thanks to the popularity of Islabikes, which I was over the moon about. I ended up selling it to some family friends and we reinvested in a new Islabike, this time a Beinn 20 Large, which again provided sterling service and in fact still is, as this bike has recently been passed onto my daughter. She moved to it after beginning on a Specialized and she tells me the Islabike is much, much better to ride. Sadly we lost 2/3 of the money we’d spent on the Specialized when we sold it on , which was disappointing.
My son is about to turn 10 and this time I did look around the marketplace and saw that there are some more good choices out there. We were quite impressed and tempted by the Hoy bikes for example.
However, there were two key reasons that helped us decide to buy yet another Islabike.
- We know they’re great bikes: light, well designed, relatively light and the kids have loved riding them. For our family, they’re well proven.
- We know that resale values are high, so we can buy with confidence knowing we’ll get a decent chunk of our money back (Islabikes will even do a buy back). This means they don’t cost nearly as much over time, especially if you reinvest back into another Islabike each time.
Using the sizing chart and a quick confirmation by phone with Islabikes customer service, I placed my order for a new Beinn 26 Small.
Yes it’s a big investment in a kids bike but I’m confident I’ll get at least half my money back and maybe as much as 70%, so the cost of what should be two years riding, won’t be that much. We know this is true from our previous Islabike purchases.
My son is nearly 10 and around average or just above height for his age. Whilst the size chart says from age 8, he’s got plenty of room to grow and actually I wouldn’t have wanted to try him on a bigger size as he found the change up from 20 inch wheels to 26 inch, a little tricky as it was. He loves this new bike though.
Most other bikes we looked at for his age were 24 inch wheels and the only other 26 inch bike we tried (a Trek) was just a little too big.
This bigger bike certainly weighs more than his old one at just over 9.5kgs but my son is very happy on it and for him it’s really just a scaled up version of his old bike. The gears and brakes work the same, the bike look similar, it’s just much bigger. This made it a learning curve of about 20 minutes to adapt to the new bike.
As a parent, I’m delighted we’ve made the investment in another Islabike, it’s nice to support a specialist company that’s a big part of why kids bikes are improving in quality each year. Islabikes started that move and all three of the ones we’ve bought have been completely trouble free to own. I take great pleasure in knowing that I’ve invested in great bikes for my kids (as I do for me). I couldn’t imagine not choosing bikes as good as I want to ride for my family, even if it’s meant saving up to buy them each time.
You can find out more here: http://www.islabikes.co.uk/
Any questions, please leave me a comment and thanks for reading.
