Kona Bicycles

One of the first things visitors see on the tour of Kona Bikes HQ in Ferndale, WA, just past the massive collection of mountain bike and cyclocross skinsuits from now defunct teams and World Champions, is a sticker that shouts, “Following the rules will not get the job done.”

Kona has been bucking convention and breaking rules since 1988 with exceptional results. They build their bikes the way that the best  riders descend: by taking risks and experimenting.  While they’re the first to admit that their strategy has sometimes caused them to hit the pavement, more often than not, they’ve been well ahead of their competition.

An Uncommon Mission

Kona bikes are built with one thing and one thing only in mind: helping cyclists have more fun on their ride.  However, this goal is more self-serving than it sounds. Committed to being “rider owned for life,” the Kona team has to eat their own dogfood, so to speak.  Every single member of the Kona staff is an active cyclist. The bikes they build are specifically designed for themselves, their family members, and their team. Not surprisingly, there are no ‘comfort bikes’ in their portfolio and they are not and never will try to be all things to all people.

While Kona bikes look great, their focus is function over fashion, with a primary goal of durability, closely followed by weight and responsiveness; Kona is one of the few bike companies that prefer to sell many people one bike every 10-20 years.   When cyclists buy a Kona, they know that every penny possible went to adding the features that the Kona Team wanted for themselves on their own ride.

Small is Beautiful

Né the Cascade Cycling company in 1988, the name Kona came about after Fuji, who had a bike named the Cascade, moved to protect their brand.  The renaming was a nod to the gonzo style of Hunter S. Thompson’s Curse of Lono and is a window into the whimsical nature of the company, reserved for everything but the quality of their bikes. The folks at Kona have a certain lightness of being and irreverence for stodginess.
Unlike some larger bike brands, their overall vision is not world domination, but a more simple one: to able to make great bikes for the rest of their lives, having some fun and improving every year.

While their brand and presence often projects a large company, today there are only 22 employees and frame production is around 30,000 annually (by way of comparison, a September 2011 Specialized recall was 14,000 or so frames).  An even more impressive statistic is that more than 2/3rds of the staff have been at Kona for more than 5 years.

Collective Development

Kona’s relatively small size allows them to be more nimble than most other bike builders. It’s also why they can use such an unconventionally collective product development methodology, where almost the entire team is involved in the bike design process.  It’s a case of “best idea wins,” that doesn’t stop in their warehouse: Kona is one of the few stock bike builders that continuously incorporates rider feedback.  That inked up guy you see sitting in the back of the shop chatting up mechanics and other customers may not actually be a customer, but the Kona rep who is trying to find out what people are in to and getting their feedback on new ideas.  When it comes to racing bikes, Kona relies heavily on their pros. The “Jake” cyclocross line was relied on the feedback of ‘cross legends like Wendy Sims, Ann Knapp, Barry Wicks, Eric Tonkin and Ryan Trebon, so that they could create a stock frame that their Pros ride.

Getting Involved

At Kona, the phrase “for cyclists by cyclists” holds true … plenty of companies talk the talk, but only a select few walk the walk.
Not only is our Kona rep one of a select few in the industry to actually ride a bike to the store, Kona’s advocacy roots are some of the deepest in the industry.  Whether it’s their Buck-a-Bike program (an optional program where Kona dealers collected $1 for every Kona sold, and Kona matched those funds, distributing them to IMBA, Rails to Trails, and NORBA, to name a few), their Grassroots racing program or Max Jones race clinics at NORBA and World Cup events, Kona has always been involved in the ‘scene’.   However, their most ambitious project to date is the recent Africa Bike project, which strives to increase “people’s quality of life via the freedom inherent to the bicycle” and is already helping kids get to school, HIV nurses get to patients, and create more effective management of water systems.

Models Available:

We’re proud to be an authorized Kona Bicycle dealer in New York.  Below, find the models of Kona Bikes currently in our New York City location.  Space limitations in the shop prevent us from carrying all sizes in all models in the Kona portfolio, so please call us at (212) 253-7771 for specific sizes currently available.  In addition to the following list, we are happy to special order any bike in the Kona catalog that we don’t stock including Kona Women’s and Kona Kids bicycles.  Note that “Special Ordering” is a lot less special than it sounds.  We can usually have your shipped and assembled within 10 days.

Road:
Honky Tonk
Roundabout
Sutra

Mountain:
Mahuna
Unit

Cyclocross:
Jake
Jake the Snake
Major Jake

Commuter:
Dew
Dew Plus
Dew Deluxe
Dr. Good
Paddy Wagon