Hans Steege and Rolf Scholtz became friends during their junior-high years when their parents relocated from Minnesota to teach at an international school in Berlin. They rode their bikes everywhere—not unusual for kids their age, nor for others living in the high-density German capital.
As adults, Steege and Scholtz are taking advantage of a similar trend in the U.S. “What we’re seeing is an interest in high-density bike parking in urban areas,” says Steege, a mechanical engineer and vice president of Minneapolis manufacturer Dero Bike Rack Company. Scholtz, who cofounded Dero with his brother, Dirk, in 1995, is president.
Appropriately situated on the Midtown Greenway bicycle trail, Dero doubled its warehouse space last October to accommodate its growing business. Its dozens of products include custom racks with laser-cut business logos, as well as its Ultra Space Saver, which stores bikes vertically, thus accommodating twice as many cycles as a standard horizontal rack can. Dero’s sales have increased about 40 percent each year for the past four years, Steege says. The company’s sales are spread out across the U.S., with most in warm-weather states. About 20 percent of its business comes from municipalities; the balance originates from universities, contractors, and companies.
“The last couple of years, there’s really been a sea change in the way people are looking at biking and bike commuting,” Steege says. Case in point: More than 2,000 people biked to the presidential inauguration in January and parked their bikes using a valet service—and Dero-supplied racks.
Dero is also benefiting from municipal efforts to expand bike commuting. Some cities have ordinances requiring building owners to maintain a certain number of bike parking spaces. Minneapolis is considering a bike-share program where riders could check out and return bikes to designated racks around town. Steege believes that the need for racks in the metro area will grow as the light rail system expands and more people bicycle to stations.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building certification has given the bike rack market a bump, too. LEED rules give buildings points toward certification for including a certain number of bike parking spaces in their exterior designs. Steege also believes that federal stimulus money authorized in February will trickle down to his company’s slice of the infrastructure market.
Dero now wants to “turn into a bike transport company instead of just a bike rack company,” Steege says. Besides selling bike lockers and transport racks, it’s developing a counter system that lets employers who reward employees using alternative transportation to track the number of staffers who commute by bike. Radio-frequency identification readers located near the racks read RFID tags attached to each employee’s ride.
