When one owns a successful honey company, the next natural step is to design bike-handle grips, right?
“There are actually a lot of similarities between the honey company and this other company we’re starting,” says Edward Okun, co-owner of the Kensington Market–based Nude Bee Honey. “We’re product developers, and [business partner Jared Cantor and I] use design to bring attention to issues that are important to us. For the honey, it was where our food comes from and getting people to care about what’s in their food. For the bike grips, I’m an avid urban cyclist so, with cycling, it brings up transit issues and the environment.”
Okun got the idea when he was building his winter bike in December and found there weren’t a lot of bike grips with an attractive design. The result: a new line called OOQI (pronounced ooo-key) that Okun designed himself. He says his grips are twice as thick as typical handle bars (making them cushier) and that they’re manufactured in the city.
The grips are available for pre-orders ($17) through Kickstarter.com (they need to sell a minimum of $12,000 by the end of next week to actually get the project going). Okun hopes that by August they will be available in retail stores like Urbane Cyclist, Hoopdriver Bicycles, Cycle Couture and Mike the Bike for $30.
