Kona Bicycle Company
Kona Bikes is a bicycle company in Ferndale, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. It specializes in high-performance mountain bikes, racing and touring bicycles. The company name comes from the owners' love of Kailua-Kona in Hawaii.
Initially the company marketed bicycles under the brand name "Cascade", but had to change the name after a trademark dispute. Kona was the second choice, and is used to this day. Names of the bicycles started out with Hawaiian and volcanic names like the Cinder Cone, Explosif, Hei Hei (Hawaiian for "race"), Hahannah (Hawaiian for "hot"), Fire Mountain, Hot, Lava Dome and Kilauea (released in 1993 and named after the Hawaiian volcano). Kona started to use tongue-in-cheek humor in the names. Names like the Stinky and Coiler started to appear. Some of the earliest full suspension bikes were named the Sex One and Sex Two ("Sex" was short for "Suspension EXperience"). Those were dropped after complaints. When nobody complained about bikes called Stab and Shred, Kona joked that violence was more acceptable than sex.
The company was founded in 1988 by Jacob Heilbron, Dan Gerhard and early MTB champion Joe Murray, who has since moved to Voodoo Bikes. Heilbron and Gerhard still own and run the company.
Kona's Jake the Snake model won the US cyclo-crosschampionship under riders such as Anne Knapp and Ryan Trebon, and the Canadian championship under Wendy Simms. The team model has Shimano Dura Ace groupset while the retail has Shimano 105.
Kona full-suspension bicycles have used the linkage driven single pivot suspension with low main pivot location system since 1999, identified by swingarms attached to the seat tube to activate the rear suspension, inverting forces generated by the swing of the chain stay.
Kona has been developing partnerships with bike parks, primarily with Whistler Blackcomb Bike Park, in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, where riders can rent versions of the Stinky. Other partner bike parks are in Austria, Czech republic and Italy.
Read more about Kona Bicycle Company: Kona Factory Team, Advocacy, Ford Focus Kona Edition
Famous quotes containing the words bicycle and/or company:
“I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)