"The first thing a road cyclist does is throw away the bell," according to designer Hugo Davidson.
Knog's "Oi" bike bell was funded using Kickstarter and the campaign has raised more than $1 million. Photo: Supplied
"The first thing a road cyclist does is throw away the bell," according to designer Hugo Davidson. He ought to know. For a while he too was part of cycling's fastidiously design-conscious Lycra brigade. Davidson's knowledge of streamlined aesthetics stems largely from 14 years as co-director of Knog, researching, designing and producing multi-award-winning bicycle accessories – locks, clothes, gloves and lights among them. And the key thing research revealed was that a $10,000 carbon fibre bike has no room for a cheap and clunky Chinese bell.
"The old style dome-shape bells don't have the aerodynamics or stealth that all the other components designed for road bikes have," Davidson explains. "You can catch your clothes on them and it stands out like 'the proverbial' on carbon-fibre bikes."
For average Lycra-less cyclists, too, handlebars can be as crowded as a Mod's Vespa. "Lights, bicycle computer, cables, there's not a lot of room on a typical handlebar," says Davidson.
A prototype timeline of the Knog "Oi" bike bell. Photo: Supplied
But the other thing Knog had on its side was legislation. It's mandatory in many states for a bike to have a bell.
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Armed with this information, Knog set about redesigning the century-old bell design. 'Oi' is the result of three years' labour. Three months was spent on the tone alone, prototyping and machining different shapes, materials, metals and plating thicknesses.
The result? "It's like an angel playing a glockenspiel," says Davidson.
Knog's Frog design pioneered the use of silicon in bicycle lights. Photo: Supplied
Perhaps. To me the elegantly discreet 15mm wide 'O' shape that rings around the handlebars sounds like any other bell. "It's a significantly longer tone," Davidson avers. Nevertheless the name derives not from its design profile or from heavenly harmonics, but the earthy cry of 'Oi' – as in "get out of the way". To non-Australians the name requires some explanation, Davidson acknowledges. But it suits the company's "brash" marketing, he adds.
Clearly Knog is onto something. After less than 24 hours on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, Oi had smashed its $20,000 target. At the time of writing Oi has been astronomically oversubscribed: $750,000 – and climbing.
"It's the first time we have attempted to do Kickstarter," says Davidson. "I didn't have nearly the same level of interest in social media as I do on day 28."
Designer Hugo Davidson set about redesigning the century-old bell design. Photo: Supplied
Fourteen years ago, when Knog launched its Frog light – pioneering the use of silicon – it required travelling to a trade fair in Taipei and convincing distributors to take the product. The wrap-around light has since sold 5 million units in 65 countries. Today, without leaving home, the "analytics" behind Kickstarter allow Knog to understand where its customers are, where they found out about Oi, even their names.
"As an established company that was our goal – to see how well we could get in touch direct to the customers in order to launch the product," says Davidson. "Sites like Kickstarter are so exciting because they expose someone's idea to any number of countries instantly and you can very quickly understand whether you're likely to be successful or not. It cuts out much of the guesswork and pain."
Indeed establishing Knog was a gamble. Before starting it Davidson and his team were design consultants. But as clients drifted to China they decided to be proactive and design their own products.
"A consultant gets paid for the hours they work," says Davidson. "If you make good products then they make you money when you're sleeping."
It helped that they backed a winner in cycling. According to the City of Melbourne the number of cyclists commuting to the city has almost doubled in the past eight years to 15 per cent of commuters. And yet, according to Knog's Kickstarter figures, Sydney has generated more interest.
So is Kickstarter the future of Knog's business? "No, there has been a bit of backlash," says Davidson. "A number of people feel that Kickstarter is a platform that should be for start-ups only. But because this product was quite unusual we thought we should get feedback from customers."
Meanwhile, another avenue for launching new ideas is the Design Entrepreneur Awards, just announced by Good Design Australia. The awards offer $25,000 in professional services from business accelerator CtechBA as well as promotion through the internationally recognised Good Design Awards.
"We're not asking for a fully fledged business plan," says Dr Brandon Gien, Good Design Australia CEO. "It's really about fantastic ideas that are going to solve a need that no one else has done before."
Indeed, that has been the impetus behind Knog's Oi. "The thing that excites me more than anything is that it doesn't look like a bell," says Davidson. "As industrial designers it's in our DNA to make things look different from what they would typically look." This is one bell cyclists won't want to throw away.