Seed Spot is cluttered with creativity as much as anything else, and at first it is difficult to spot Derrick Loud and his bamboo bicycle.
At 24, Loud is quiet but helpful — a personality reflected in his bicycle company Boogüd, which donates one hand-crank wheelchair attachment to a disabled child in Kenya every time a customer purchases a bicycle.
It’s a project Loud has been working on for about three years. What began as an assignment for his biomedical engineering capstone class during his senior year at ASU has grown into a fledgling business.
The business was a finalist in the ASU Innovation Challenge and a semifinalist in the Dell Social Innovation Challenge.
“There are lots of organizations to donate wheelchairs,” Loud said. “The problem is they’re not designed for rough terrain. The front wheels get stuck in the dirt and you can’t push yourself, so you’re still reliant on someone else.”
Built for mobility
Loud’s contraptions look something like a bicycle that is missing its rear wheel. The handlebars have been replaced with recycled bike gears and pedals, which attach to a 20-inch front wheel. A flat seat on a horizontal pole extends from a joint just above the wheel and straps onto an existing wheelchair seat.
The cycles attach to any wheelchair to convert it into a sort of hand-driven tricycle, Loud said. The main wheel is large enough to lift the chair’s small front wheels off the ground, enabling someone to drive it on the unpaved roads of developing countries.
The hand cycle was originally designed for a Malawian boy who had polio, Loud said. The boy’s right arm was weakened from the disease, and pushing his own wheelchair was impossible, so Loud and his classmates designed one for someone with the use of only one arm or hand.
“It’s a lot easier than even using a wheelchair on a sidewalk,” Loud said. “It’s a more natural motion than having your arms spread out over the sides of your chair trying to push.”
A ‘buy one, build one’ model
Loud said he originally wanted to start a nonprofit organization once he finalized the hand cycle design, but soon realized he and his classmates didn’t have enough money to make that happen. He’d continued working on the project as part of his master’s degree program.
“We came up with the bikes as a way to offset the cost of the hand cycles, and I realized I kind of knew how to make one already from doing all of the research for the hand cycles,” Loud said.
The company now markets bicycles in the U.S. and donates a hand cycle every time a bicycle is purchased. Loud builds the bicycles himself in Arizona, but the hand cycles are manufactured in Kenya by Kenyan workers using Kenyan bamboo. It’s cheaper than exporting the cycles overseas and it helps to strengthen developing countries’ economies, Loud said.
The idea is loosely based on the one-for-one business models of TOMS shoes and ONEshot Global, which donate products to third-world countries at the same rate they are purchased in the U.S.
“Some people have problems with that model because it’s taking away from local businesses in small countries,” Loud said. “People aren’t buying shoes because they’re getting free ones. Ours is kind of different because we’re promoting job growth. We like to call it the ‘buy one, build one’ model.”
The name Boogüd is a mash-up of the materials used for the bikes and the thought process behind them—“Boo” is derived from “bamboo” and “güd” refers to the do-good mentality of the company, he added.
Building the bikes
He then uses the customer’s height to calculate the frame’s size and angles. The bamboo pieces are cut to the proper lengths and held together with an epoxy resin and blocks of balsa wood. Metal fittings are inserted into the ends of the bamboo where the wheels will connect.
The joints are then wrapped in sheets of fiberglass soaked in epoxy resin. After they dry, they are sanded down and wrapped 50-100 times in epoxy-soaked carbon-fiber sheets. The joints are then wrapped in electrical tape with the sticky side out, to remove air bubbles.
A few hours later, Loud removes the tape and sands the joints again before coating the entire frame in a waterproof, UV ray-resistant epoxy resin and outfitting it with recycled wheels, gears, brakes and handlebars.
Flexible but sturdy
Boogüd bicycles cost about $550 for a single frame, $800 for a complete single-speed bike and $950 for a complete performance road bike. The bulk of the cost is from the labor involved and production costs, which usually total about $50 per cycle, Loud said.
But Boogüd bicycles are still cheaper than most other bamboo bicycles. California-based Calfee Design, one of the most well-known bamboo bike manufacturers, sells its frames for about $3,000. A complete road bike from Calfee Design costs about $5,000.
Mark Blei, a sales consultant at Slippery Pig Bike Shop near Central and Campbell avenues, said the price discrepancy likely comes by virtue of different designs.
The Calfee Design bike at Slippery Pig uses new handlebars, pedals and gears, and boasts a heavier frame made of sturdier bamboo. Calfee Design road bike frames weigh anywhere from four to six pounds, while Boogüd frames weigh about three.
Blei said bamboo is an ideal material for building bike frames—its joints give it a rigidity necessary for structural soundness, but the wood’s density absorbs enough shock to make the rider comfortable.
Riders who choose bamboo bikes are different from those who choose a more common frame, he added. Bamboo is flexible and yet strong.
“Aluminum and carbon are stiff, but they’ll beat you up,” he said. “Every little bump and divot in the road you’ll feel in your wrists and elbows and shoulders.”
The difference in ride quality has not been lost on Loud’s customers.
Brett Loud, Derrick’s father, was one of the first to purchase a Boogüd bicycle. He and his wife got rid of their children’s bicycles once they moved away, but then decided to become more active and began thinking about purchasing new bicycles.
Brett Loud rode a steel-frame bicycle before purchasing one of his son’s models, he said.
“The thing I’m amazed at is how light the bike is, I guess because of the bamboo,” said Brett Loud. “For some reason it rides very very smooth.”
Moving forward
Derrick Loud said he hoped to accept 50 preorders through Boogüd’s website, which launched Oct. 30, and work with Phoenix bike shops to make his bicycles available in physical locations.
So far he has sold about a dozen bikes, he said, but the majority of sales were during the summer before the site launched.
Loud’s goal is to produce about 25 bikes per month, regardless of the number of pre-orders, he said. It’s a number he said he should be able to sell easily.
“There’s an appeal in the do-good aspect of it,” Loud said. “People like that by buying a bike, they’re giving mobility in Africa.”
Contact the reporter at chloe.brooks@asu.edu
