Bamboo Bike Frame designed by Craig Calfee |
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Bamboo bicycles?
(FORTUNE Small Business) -- Craig Calfee realized the strength of bamboo
while using a stick of the stuff to lift his 60-pound dog, who had
gripped it playfully in his jaws.
That experience led Calfee, a maker of elite carbon-fiber bicycles, to
wonder whether bamboo could support human riders. He spent a week
cutting, smoking, and gluing the material into a bicycle frame, then
rolled the prototype into a trade show. That was in 1996.
Today Calfee Design, based in La Selva Beach, Calif., sells the bamboo
bikes, whose frames weigh just four pounds, for $2,695 each. They
account for more than a quarter of its $1 million in annual sales.
"Serious bikers like them because they're high-performance frames," says
Calfee, 45. "Environmentally conscious people like them because making
them burns less carbon."
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