*Straps (By Be)

After a crash with a cab wrote-off my old dutch racer, I started riding fixed-gear in 2018. It's the simplicity of them which attracted me- with so few things to go wrong, it seemed the perfect choice for bike-deliveries in the city. After a very short amount of time, I realised I was absolutely not, the first to see such sense! I started to delve into the world of cycle-messengers & couriers, keeping my bills paid, by delivering takeaways & bits of bar work alongside.

I soon learnt the importance of pedalstraps on a fixed-gear bike & got given a pair, made by a fairly reputable brand. Ecstatic to support a (not too-distant) local(ish) brand, I put this seemingly unbreakable product through the paces, singing its praises to everyone I met. Then, within our whole friend group; one after the other- them straps started to fall apart. After getting in touch, the company would replace each pair, which was great. But each & every time one of us got in touch about another broken pair; they'd guarantee each & every one of us, that this had never happened before.

To be blunt: this really fuckt me off. Like, seriously? Gonna say this shit will never break; we all break the shit- then you have the nerve to promise us all, that it had never happened before? Fuck off, man. Straps snap whilst riding brakeless- best hope you aint going fast huh- could be the last time you do & that is not funny in the slightest bit.

A little dispirited, I took it upon myself to look into the design, function & history of pedalstraps.

A lot of what was on offer, was the same design- just with someone else's logo on it. All these big companies... just coppin-out on their customers... no regard for safety or honesty- all pretty fuckt if you ask me...🤬

So in 2019/2020 I drew up a very simple design & took to my sewing machine to try figure them out. After running the prototype pair for a few months, some friends offered to help put them through their paces. The first few were nearly-impossible to make, snapping an entire pack of machine-needles on each pair. After about a year: I'd made a few adjustments to the design, tried various materials & really focused on the construction-process- they were finally ready to offer-up to the general public.

The past 4 years has seen me handmake >150 pairs of pedalstraps. In that time, the design/process has only been improved, whilst not a single pair has been broken! Straps (By Be) are designed to stay where you set them & never give up. The oversized 'body' of the strap spreads the load across your feet for a comfy ride. Everything inside that body is what keeps them together, wrapped securely round yr feet. The webbing is double thickness where it passes through your pedals & the sliders it threads through are military-spec for extra resilience. That kinda sums up why *Straps (By Be) continue to be the strongest straps in the game! If you need more info; wanna talk customs; have collaboration/distribution enquiries, please get in touch via Instagram or email.