Strida

Strida is a portable, belt-driven, folding bicycle with a distinctive 'A'-shaped collapsible frame, designed by UK engineer and designer Mark Sanders. The first model, Strida 1, was released in 1987 and the latest, Strida 5.2, in 2009.

The Strida folds into a "wheeled walking-stick" that can be pushed along, much like a folded pram/baby-buggy whose folding concept provided the inspiration for the design.

Other notable characteristics include:

The single sided wheel mountings and belt drive make fitting gears (e.g. dérailleur or hub gears) more difficult than on chain driven bikes with conventional forks. The use of front mounted Schlumpf gear gets round this problem. Hobbyists in Japan have fitted 5 and 7 speed gears.

The Strida was the major project for Mark Sanders's master's degree 1983 to 1985 at Imperial College London, and Royal College of Art. The course, IDE, (Industrial Design Engineering, now called Innovation Design Engineering) was a joint course by both institutions for engineering graduates to specialise in combining creative engineering with creative industrial design. The project is recorded in detail in the master's degree thesis. The aim of the project was to simplify bicycles and especially folding bicycles. It was inspired by the Maclaren baby buggy which folds into a thin form, with its wheels together at the end, so that can be rolled instead of being carried.

In 1985, Industrial Property Rights Ltd, (run by James Marshall, former manager of golfer Greg Norman) licensed the design. The name 'Strida' was suggested by the 8-year-old son of one of the company directors; this was adopted as it was preferred to the suggestion 'Blake' by a PR consultancy. Production of the Strida 1 started in 1986, originally in Springburn, Glasgow. The Strida was launched in Harrods, London in 1987. Approximately 3,000 Strida 1s were made in Glasgow - these can be recognised by a welded steel rack, later replaced by a nylon injection moulded rack, which latter remains in production.

In 1988, production moved to Long Eaton in Nottingham (near the Raleigh Bicycle Company factory, which by then was in decline). Sturmey-Archer developed a 2-speed, front-mounted gear which was prototyped and tested but never made in production. The Strida won all three UK Cyclex Bicycle Innovation Awards in 1988 (Best New Product, Most Innovative, Best British Design). Approximately 17,000 Strida 1s were made in Nottingham. Most were sold in Japan and UK, with smaller quantities in USA, Australia and Germany.

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