Jacob Heilbron’s history in the cycling world is storied. Heilbron won the Canadian Cyclocross National Championships in 1978, where he earned his nickname, ‘Jake the Snake.’ He’s also responsible for bringing the first mountain bikes to Canada in his Vancouver store, West Point Bicycles in 1980. He went on to found Rocky Mountain Bicycles in 1981, and Kona Bicycles with Dan Gerhard in 1988.

Dan Gerhard got his feet wet in cycling at A-1 Bicycle Shop in St. Louis,, MO in 1975, before later moving to Vancouver, BC. There he managed West Point Cycles, was the Sales Manager for Rocky Mountain Bicycles from 1984 until 1986, and founded The Bicycle Group in 1986. The Bicycle Group was the original distributor of Brodie Bicycles, and became Kona Bicycle Company in 1988. Read More

Vancouver, August 28: Some of you may have seen the 1st prototype of the E-Ute last year. Although it was fairly crude, it worked and we tested it over the winter to test the battery system and refine the design.

On Friday we finally got the G2 Electric Ute built and ran it through some test rides before packing it up in the show crates for Expocycle Montreal (September 7-10). We’ll send it along to Interbike in Vegas (September 23-25). This is actually G2 E-Ute #2, the first is at Eurobike in Germany (September 2-5) on Kona Europe’s stand. There’s also a couple of more conventional Kona E-Bikes showing in Europe – the Token and the Ticket, the first in Kona’s SimpliCity range. The one you see here will retail somewhere in the $2500 range with a single battery. You can see from the test bike in the photo that the bike is two battery-ready for long distance haulers. Come and check it out – the future of cycling has a power-assist!

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It’s been a summer to remember in the Pacific NorthWest. Most summers, my dry weather (non fender) road bike gets out an average of 30 days. Last year being one of the coldest and wettest (remember Junuary?) on record, it was even less.

This year was special. From May until now (late August) the days have been glorious and warm and dry. Until this year, I’ve been riding a 2004 KonaKona that we built in a limited production run at Kinesis USA using Easton Scandium main frame and Easton Carbon stays. It’s been a joy to ride but after listening to our product manager Paddy White rave on about the new lightweight Haole steel road frame, it seemed like the right time to test his statement this was the best road bike he’s ever ridden.

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Jake Heilbron, one of Kona’s original founders, reminisces on the flames of change

It was 20 years ago that Dan and I got a phone call at 3 in the morning from the alarm company. There were only two of us working at our original headquarters in those days so I headed down to see what was up. About five miles away I was passed by two fire trucks and thought “this isn’t a good sign”.

When we got there, it was a 5 alarm fire with 10 trucks and water spraying from all around the 4 story building in the old Yaletown area of Vancouver. Dan and I stood there for a while watching the fire fighters and we realized pretty quickly that we weren’t going to be getting inside anytime soon. As we headed off to get some breakfast one of our competitors came by laughing and asked if we wanted to sell our business. When I got home I took my 2-year-old daughter to daycare. She went into the playroom and came back with a fire truck.

The old building on Hamilton Street had been through a lot but it was an old wooden structure with heavy wood beams and it burned for 3 days. The firefighters condemned the structure saying it was unsafe to go in. Since our offices were in the front and the fire had started in the back near the old loading dock freight elevator, Dan and I got hold of a tall extension ladder and had a friend help us distract the security guard while we scampered up and in. We filled up a couple of hockey bags containing our laptops and other valuables like the Campagnolo front derailleur I’d been saving for a new Ti road bike. In the meantime the security guard called the police and took away the ladder. Eventually the police sent us home after hearing our story and we got on with salvaging the business.
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