Sweetpea Bicycles

So there we were, sitting in an Indian restaurant off of Hawthorne talking about architecture, bikes, design, and big ideas.  One of us raised the question: “If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be?”  The raw divergence of our answers surprised us both.  I had always dreamed of starting my own business.  Natalie went to architecture school only to notice that all her projects involved bikes.  A couple bites of curry later, Sweetpea Bicycles was born. 

We knew right from the start that we wanted to build bikes for women.  And knew that women seem to have a different relationship to their bikes than men.  Guys tend to dig the specs.  Women fall in love.  It doesn’t matter if the bike is 20 years old or brand spanking new; the same feeling is there, and that is half of what we wanted to capture with our name.  Sweetpea – a term of endearment. 

But as we were testing this idea on our focus group (Mom and Dad), we started to get the nagging feeling that maybe the name was just a little too cute.  And we just couldn’t see some of our super tough women friends riding something that screamed Hello Kitty.  And while women love their bikes, they are also strong and powerful while riding them.  So we decided to throw in a cup of toughness and the Sweetpea logo came into being:

Cute as a button.  Tough as nails.

But there was some bad business was out there, and we wanted to avoid it.  So last April we filed for a federal trademark, and I am happy to announce that the word “Sweetpea” is now a registered trademark of Sweetpea Bicycles covering frames and forks. 

Incidentally, the picture above is of our new headbadge.  It took a lot of thought, revisions, and help to come into being, but we like it and hope you like it too.