We are getting excited for our upcoming trip to Oregon this weekend. Portland celebrates Pedalpalooza this month and it is packed with cool bike events. Since we are sponsoring the Disaster Relief Trials, we thought it would be a good time to pack up the van and head North.  If you’re in the Portland area, stop by and say hi at one of these events (we’ll have the all-new Boda Boda to try!):

Saturday, June 16th

Kiddical Mass, PDX
1pm-3pm
Arbor Lodge Park

Join Yuba at Kidical Mass, PDX for a fun-filled circus-themed family ride! Put on your bearded lady getup or dust off your bear suit, brush up your juggling or tame a bakfiets of tiny lions. Surprises are in store! Kids must wear helmets. We ride slow enough for little ones; kids must be able to ride in a (reasonably) straight line and start & stop as required. Come ride with us!
Katie Proctor, katie.proctor at gmail daht comm, Kidical Mass PDX, 607-262-0439

Yuba Open House at Joe Bike
4-6pm
Joe Bike
3953 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97214

Want to be the first of your friends to try out the all-new Boda Boda bike? Hightail to Joe Bike on Saturday for an exclusive Northwest preview of the new cargo cruiser from Yuba Bicycles.

World Naked Bike Ride, PDX
8pm-12am
Meet at the empty lot at the corner of SE Water and Salmon streets

The PDX world naked bike ride for 2012 will take place on 16 jun 2012 at 10pm. Begin gathering at 8pm at the start location – the empty lot at the corner of SE Water and Salmon streets. For more info on the ride, check out the Facebook event.

The World Naked Bike Ride is an annual, worldwide bike ride that highlights the vulnerability of cyclists everywhere and decries society’s dependence on pollution-based transport. It’s also a lot of fun and it’s free for all! Portland has the world’s largest ride–with around 10,000 people on the road in 2010 and 4-5 thousand folks in 2009 and 2011–and we are looking to break the record for the world’s largest naked ride again in 2012!

Sunday, June 17th

Disaster Relief Trials
10 am – 6 pm
Velo Cult
1969 NE 42ND AVE
Portland, OR

Opportunity ONE: Family Utility

• Demo a full spectrum of cargo bikes from three shops:
  Clever Cycles, Joe Bike, and Splendid Cycles
• See the new Yuba Boda Boda cargo cruiser
• Learn about disaster preparation for your family and home
• See how you can transport your family without your car, or without using your car quite as much
• Have your questions answered by top cargo bike enthusiasts

Opportunity TWO: City Utility

• 30 riders will navigate 30+ miles, visit 7 checkpoints, and collect 100 lbs of cargo along the way.
• This event will provide a working draft for what a city can do with cargo bikes after a disaster
• Create connections among city organizations both public and private for the public good

Zombie Apocalypse Ride
10:30 am – 1 pm
Velo Cult
1969 NE 42ND AVE
Portland, OR

The Zombie Apocalypse Ride is combining forces with the Disaster Relief Trials. For those that love zombies and disaster preparedness but aren’t planning to race the trials, this ride is for you. This is a fun and social ride. Dress as either a Zombie or a Survivor (self-explanatory). Prizes for best Zombie and Survivor Bike. Easy paced ride with multiple stops where various facets of surviving the post-apocalyptic zombie world will be debated.

• Demo a full spectrum of cargo bikes from three shops:
  Clever Cycles, Joe Bike, and Splendid Cycles
• See the new Yuba Boda Boda cargo cruiser and new Xtracyle Side Car
• Learn about disaster preparation for your family and home
• See how you can transport your family without your car, or without using your car quite as much
• Have your questions answered by top cargo bike enthusiasts

Opportunity TWO: City Utility

• 30 riders will navigate 30+ miles, visit 7 checkpoints, and collect 100 lbs of cargo along the way.
• This event will provide a working draft for what a city can do with cargo bikes after a disaster
• Create connections among city organizations both public and private for the public good

Special thanks to the presenters, organizations, and supporters of DRTpdx 2012:

142nd Fighter Wing // The Oregon Food Bank // Oregon Red Cross // Portland Bureau of Emergency Management // Multnomah County Emergency Management // Portland Fire Bureau // ARES (amateur radio) // Portland Neighborhood Emergency Teams // OHSTAR: Oregon Humane Society Technical Animal Rescue // Portland Businesses By Cargo Bike // Cargo Bike Food and Beverage Vendors

A hearty thank you to Sky and everyone at Velo Cult for the generous use of the space!

Read the full article here….

Green Gear Guru has been producing bags, wallets and accessories out of upcycled materials for years. Need a backpack made out of bike inner tubes for your mountain biking buddy who’s going back to school? They’ve got you covered.

Follow the Cruiser Boutique on Twitter

Late in the summer of 2008, we got a phone call from Joe Doebele in Portland. At the time we had just launched the Mundo v1 and had no accessories available. Joe’s vision was to offer quality cargo bikes at affordable prices to his community. Since that time, Yuba Bicycles and Joe Bike have been growing together, selling hundreds of Mundo Utility Bikes in Portland, Oregon. Now, at the start of 2012, Yuba offers two different Mundo models including an electric-assist version and over fifteen accessories. Joe Bike has grown too; this month, they will be tripling their floor space to accommodate the growth in the cargo bike market.

We caught up with Joe Doebele to find out what is the secret sauce behind the Joe Bike success.

Yuba Bikes: How many years have you been in business now?

Joe Doebele: A little over 3 years.

YB: I hear that you will be expanding in 2012, why is that?

JD: Cargo bikes are big. Our shop was small. It’s on probably the best shopping street in Portland, but it was only 600 sq ft and a lot of people could walk right past it without noticing. We needed more space for bikes, but we also wanted more space to hold events and classes, to host fundraisers, and most of all to give our employees and customers a little breathing room. Our staff were literally climbing under and over and around each other and the bikes. Whenever there were more than a few customers in the shop at once, none of them could really move.

YB: What is your most successful line?

JD: Yuba. Yuba was the first bike we sold, back in the fall of 2008, and we stuck with it, promoted it a lot, took it wherever we went. Now word of mouth has taken over. We’re the biggest Yuba dealer in the world. At schools, parents drop their kids off by bike, and it can be a Bakfiets, Big Dummy, XtraCycle, Mundo, Madsen, or whatever. There are a lot of impromptu test rides at schools. By the time people come into the store to buy one, they’ve already made up their mind. They already know the bike and how it rides and what the accessories are. So, starting a few months ago, people would just walk in and say they wanted a Mundo and didn’t need to test ride it. This means that the beginning is the hard part. Getting the bike in front of people is the hard part. It gets easier the more people see the bike in use in their own environment. It also helps that Yuba keeps improving the bike and has accessories that work well.

YB: What are the Mundo buyers like?

JD: Overwhelmingly, they’re young families. When we first started selling Mundos, we thought of it mostly for cargo, and in fact most people used it for that. But then parents took over. It’s mostly for transporting kids and their stuff, and groceries. Also surprising to us is that it’s the moms more than the dads who ride the Mundo, but that’s been true of all the cargo bikes we’ve sold.

YB: What is the average sales ticket?

JD: $1600.

YB: Selling that many Mundos, what is the secret to closing sales?

JD: Our ethos doesn’t include the concept of “closing” a sale. We don’t use sales people and we don’t give commissions or bonuses. All of our staff are mechanics, and all of our mechanics know and love the Mundo, even though they’re not the simplest bikes to assemble. Most own one; one owns three (a V1, a V2, and a V3). Instead of “selling”, they just tell it like it is, suggest that people try as many cargo bikes as they can, and answer people’s questions. And, as I said above, increasingly people know the bike beforehand from other parents at school, so they just come in and buy one.

YB: What would you tell bike dealers to do to achieve your success with the Mundo?

JD: If cargo bikes are still new in your town, it’s probably essential to create some awareness and momentum by working with schools and showing up at events like farmer’s markets, maybe creating your own events, and of course using the internet in conjunction before and after. Shops that focus on road or mountain bikes tend to have a harder time selling cargo bikes. Shops that make a commitment to this kind of bike and really get to know them will do better. But in any case it’s probably safe to say you can’t just stock the bikes and expect them to move. You have to become a bit of an activist.

Joe Doebele is the owner of Joe Bike in Portland joe-bike.com

J.C. Lind Bike Co.

You gotta admire a dealer who orders a truckload of Mundos when the weatherman says 17 degrees and snow!  Jon at J.C. Lind Bike Co. knows cargo bikes and now he has Mundos in stock.  Welcome, J.C. Lind! Jon says: “We are super excited to be carrying the amazing Yuba Mundo cargo bikes at J.C. Lind Bike Co.  We were the first shop in Chicago to focus almost exclusively on cargo bikes and the Yuba Mundo with its incredible versatility and affordability is the perfect fit for what we are all about. ”

Jon Lind

At J.C. Lind Bike Co. we strive to satisfy our customers with high-quality bicycles that are designed to enhance their riders’ lifestyles.  We are especially passionate about promoting a healthy, fun and unique urban transportation alternative to the automobile.  Come by our shop in Old Town-Chicago to see firsthand what makes our bikes the perfect union of form and function.

Chicago was once called the “bicycle-building capital of America“. By 1900, the Arnold, Schwinn and Company had relocated from Germany and set up shop in Chicago where there were 54 bicycle clubs with more than 10,000 members.  Chicago had thirty factories turning out thousands of bikes every day — over a million units per year.  Two-third’s of the country’s bicycles and accessories were made in the Chicago area at that time.   Mayor Richard Daley greatly added to Chicago’s bike routes in the early 70′s.  Yuba Bicycles, located in Marin county, the new center for bicycle makers,  has an affinity for Chicago as being a mecca for using bikes for everyday transport and we look forward to helping to keep that tradition alive in Chicago.

The Bicycle Works is Marin County’s first non-profit bicycle co-op.  Directors Jelani Bertoni and Spokey Godfrey, have launched this project in San Anselmo to inspire people to live more active, sustainable lives.  This amazing do-it-yourself bicycle workshop offers the community a place for people to get bicycle knowledge and skills so that everyone can use a bike for their everyday transportation.  They have a passion for getting people out of their cars and on their bikes.  Part of that passion is their realization that many more people will get out of their cars if they can have an electric-assist bike.  The Bicycle Works is a laboratory for electric bike testing and development.  If you stop by their shop in San Anselmo they would be happy to show you their electric Mundo.  Come see what an electric Mundo can do for you!

Ask for Tim at the Spokesman

If you feel like catchin’ the surf down in Santa Cruz, you could be cruizin the boardwalk on a new Mundo from our new dealer — the Spokesman located in downtown Santa Cruz at 231 Carthcart Street. Stop in and say hi to Tim.  Call: (831) 423-5683 or click www.spokesmanbicycles.com  or find them on our Yuba Dealer Map

Yuba Bicycles is happy to welcome Mike’s Bikes as our most recent and largest Yuba dealer.  Mike’s Bikes is the largest independent bicycle dealer on the west coast. They have eight stores in Northern California; San Francisco, Sausalito, San Rafael, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Sacramento, Los Gatos and Petaluma.  Having Yuba Mundos in their stores shows that Mike’s Bikes is on the front edge of bicycling trends and that utility bikes that allow people to use their bicycles for more than just transportation have really hit the mainstream. Welcome Mike’s Bikes!