News

A Very Dero Birthday: Twenty Years of Bike Parking and Bicycling Infrastructure Innovation

By Ben Hovland

It’s our birthday! In 2015, Dero is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Though we’re still not old enough to legally drink, twenty years of distributing bike racks around the world has taught us a few things about bicycle security, innovation, and living bike-centric lifestyles.

Throughout the year, we will bring you several looks back on Dero’s origins and the exciting directions we’re headed into the future. In our first installment, Rolf Scholtz, one of Dero’s founders, takes a moment to share his reflections on this historic milestone.

Derk+Rolf

In 1995, two brothers, Derk and Rolf (De + Ro = DeRo, get it?), identified a need in the existing bicycling infrastructure. “Bike racks weren’t functional for u-locks. There’s gotta be a way to make a bike rack that’s u-lock compatible and somewhat decent,” remembers Rolf. “Believe it or not, no one was doing that back then.”

So the brothers set out to solve this problem, one bicycle rack design at a time. They slowly gained clients and traction, operating from the apartment above Bullwinkle’s Saloon in the Seven Corners district in Minneapolis. “It wasn’t easy,” Rolf says, “We had to ship all our UPS from the bar, and we out grew it pretty quickly. But it was dirt cheap, and we were strapped for cash those first 5 years!”

Rolf-SwerveMaking-swerve

Given the small scale of their operation, Rolf and Derk were forced to innovate using their everyday experiences riding their bikes around the Twin Cities. “We were all bike people at Dero, in some way or another. I was originally a bike security monitor at the University of Minnesota,” Rolf recalls. “There’s a culture of biking at Dero, and we were always trying something new and different. That’s a big reason why we were so successful.”

Birchwood-snow Birchwood-corral

The Birchwood Cafe was one of Dero’s first customers. “Back then, I couldn’t even find them,” admits Rolf. But since then, the Birchwood has proven a valuable partner in advancing small business-driven bicycling advocacy and leading the movement to promote on-street bike corrals. Having committed to prioritizing advocacy early in our existence, Dero strengthened its connections with organizations such as Alliance for Biking and Walking and the League of American Bicyclists. Today, our network extends across North America, and we are excited for meeting new partners in the years to come.

League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit  

In the past 20 years, one of the most significant milestones was bringing manufacturing in-house. “We knew we had to do it ourselves,” Rolf remembered. The process, starting in fall of 2004, “took twice as long and cost twice as much as we anticipated, but the payoff was instantaneous.” After moving powdercoating and shipping in-house, Dero soon acquired their first metal bending equipment, and by 2010 our operation had matured into a full warehouse stocked with locally made bike racks.

Moka

Rolf shared several entertaining memories from Dero’s early days, but one of his favorites involved Moka, the office dog. Dogs are a longstanding fixture in Dero’s workplace. From the first time Rolf and Derk started hiring new employees, Rolf recalled one particular incident when, “Moka was underneath the table and farting up a storm, and they were silent! They just reeked. And this poor person was trying to ignore the wafts of this horrible gas while I’m interviewing them.” Did they get the job? “We didn’t end up hiring them. They probably thought we were full of it, blaming the farts on the dog!”

DeroHitchx

While dog farts still occasionally plague the office, Dero’s drive to innovate and provide the best possible bike parking and transit solutions remains as strong as ever. When Dero first began, Rolf and Derk started with the goal to design the most secure and best looking racks possible, all while accommodating both customers and end-users’ needs. This central tenet still holds true in our work twenty years later. We invite you to celebrate our achievements over the past two decades, and to join us as we continue to develop attractive and functional bicycle infrastructure.