Forward thinking. Open minds. Caring about what we do. Listening to our riders. Working hard to achieve the results that we planned. Not giving up somewhere in the middle of the road. Doing only what we can do best. Doing things differently.
These are just a few of the leading thoughts that have been with us since the beginning of NS Bikes.
When we started working on our first frame, the Streetlegal, pretty much everyone was shaking their heads in disbelief. Sure, it was a crazy project. At that time no one believed that we could go anywhere with that one. But we took the risk. We pushed the project through and built the frames. And guess what? We sold all of them much faster than we planned. How come? Well, probably because the frame was designed and developed by REAL progressive riders, and there happened to be a few other REAL progressive riders out there who needed that kind of product. Not many, but enough to inspire us and give us a feeling that someone appreciates what we do.
The same story repeated with several other products... we always heard voices doubting if what we were doing had any chance on the market. But in the end, the most crazy concepts always proved to be successful.
What’s interesting is that some companies are actually making their brand new frames based on our 2003 design - but so what? Since then our frames have gone through something like 10 evolutions. Riders evolve, the sport evolves, so our products are always up on the frontline. Always changing, adapting.
Our new products have gone a long way in the last few years. And we are not ashamed to admit that something can be changed, something can be improved. In fact, no matter how hard we try, we can't keep ourselves from redesigning everything each year. If something can be improved - we just have to do it.
I think that another thing that defines NS is that it's a company dedicated to making highly specialised products for a narrow group of customers. That means that we doubt whether NS will ever be the choice of the “Hey, I want to buy a mountain bike because it’s cool” customer. The beginner rider probably won't appreciate the details that make our products special either. And it means that you can be pretty sure that if you meet someone on an NS, they will speak the same language as you do, no matter what country they come from.
In the future, we hope that people will shake their heads the next time we show them our new design. It means that we are still thinking different. And that’s good.
Szymon Kobylinski
NS Bikes
