By Zach Spicer
With Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” playing over a video of kids riding Guardian Bikes bicycles, the Seymour-based company shared some big news.
Since the Guardian Bikes brand started, the company recently hit a milestone with 1 million bikes sold.
Brian Riley and Kyle Jansen appeared on the TV show “Shark Tank” in 2017 and landed a deal with Mark Cuban. Operating from Austin, Texas, Riley, who is the company’s CEO, and his team began looking into other sites that would allow them to reshore their company’s manufacturing to the United States. Ultimately, they settled on Seymour and opened their first U.S. factory in 2022.
“It’s official. We’ve sold one million bikes,” the text says in the video. “That’s one million first rides, one million family rides, one million ‘I’ve got this,’ one million adventures, one million safer riders, one million times infinity priceless moments.”
During a recent celebration featuring a cookout and games, Riley spoke to his employees.
“There’s still a lot to learn, and there’s still a lot to improve, but what we’ve accomplished so far is nothing short of extraordinary. That is not easy to do,” he said.
Initially, Guardian operated out of one building in the Freeman Field Industrial Park. Today, the company occupies seven buildings and continues to work toward having its bicycles 100% made in the USA.
“It’s not just a million bikes that we’ve shipped out there,” Riley told his employees. “We’re all connected to these million customers that have gotten a bike and gotten this kind of experience, and to keep doing this really well at scale, we just need to continue to take a lot of pride in what we make and the quality at which we make it because every single one of these, when they leave the door here, they are going straight to somebody’s door, and it’s making a 6-year-old’s whole life. It’s a huge deal for these kids to have a bike like this, and it really does transform them.”
Guardian Bikes are only available to purchase online at guardianbikes.com.
Check out this JCIDC video featuring Mark Cuban: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TihhzZRL6Ig&list=PLAXoByhJl4ML6bDeWTpcuMIvepA_HIROx&index=2