His name is Storm Sondors, and he's made a fat-tire electric bicycle that sells for $499.
Sondors launched the bike in February 2015 after successful campaigns on crowdfunding sites Kickstarter and Indiegogo. He raised a combined $12 million, and still holds the record for the second-most-funded project on Indiegogo.
As for fat-tire bikes, they've become popular, and they're great off-road, especially in snow and sand — and look badass. With the Sondors, fat tires meet e-bike at a surprisingly low price.
Before we go any further, a note on the price: While the bike launched at $499, shipping will cost another $200. The price will also rise in future campaigns. But even then, the price of his bike seems out of place — if not impossible — in a market crowded with models that can cost 10 times what Sondors is charging.
By comparison, Specialized, a maker of popular road and mountain bikes, produces electric models that will set you back between $3,000 and $7,000. There's Pedego, which has been producing pretty e-bikes since 2009. Their entry-level models will cost about three grand.
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A good deal of controversy surrounded the project, fueled in large part by a cease-and-desist order from another manufacturer that had already produced an e-bike called the "Storm" (Sondors' original name for his product) as well as a lawsuit from Sondors' own PR agency for breach of contract.
Internet crowdfunding brings with it a great number of prying eyes, and when these suits were posted online a debate erupted over whether people would ever get their bikes.
There have certainly been lengthy delays; there are more than a few stories about owners receiving their bikes almost a year after contributing to the campaign. But let's not forget: The internet liked Sondors' idea so much it gave him 12 million bucks. In one year, Sondors has turned that into a production reality — and the man was happy to report that all ordered bikes from the original campaign have now been delivered.
Sondors, an avid surfer, spent much of his career making children's toys, including, he told me, designing toys for McDonald's Happy Meals. He also said he recently purchased his first smartphone.
"I like something, and when I can't afford it, I try to make it myself," Sondors said, "and being into mass market [production] I started to ask myself, 'Could this be done better?'"
By "better" Sondors means cheaper. He claims his two decades in the toy industry helped him figure out how to produce the bike while avoiding major costs. He has evaded spending much on marketing, benefiting from the free press surrounding his record-smashing crowdsourcing campaigns and word of mouth.
The giant box showed up in our office in early February, and assembly was a simple affair. Anyone who's ever ridden a bicycle and would feel comfortable assembling a piece of IKEA furniture would be more than OK tackling this task.
There are directions online, in the form of official YouTube videos. I'd have preferred paper instructions, though, because handling the bike while watching and pausing videos is a pain.
The packaging could have been better, too: Damage during shipping included a bent front dropout, and the front brake took a hit. I was able to fix it myself, but some would probably have wanted to consult a bike shop.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider