On Buying Bikez* for Children

We here in the IT dept, have been meaning to write a buyers guide for ages and have utterly failed to get round to it but fortunately Bike Radar just did one.  So we’ll link to that instead – links at the bottom of the article – one a general parents’ bike buying guide and the other a 20 inch bike buying guide.

The most important thing to remember is the best bike you can have is the one you have and for members who want to race we have a container full of bikes for you to borrow…

What the reviews don’t cover is resale value so it’s worth mentioning that Islabikes keep their value on the secondhand market astonishingly well meaning that, if you can stretch to the initial outlay, they can be used for a couple of years and yet still make most of their money back.  Obviously this can actually make them a lot cheaper in the long run than a bike costing half as much.  (In the run up to Christmas I’ve seen them going on ebay for within a couple of pounds of the new price, and in one case more.)

The Frog bikes are of a similar high quality, they also hold their value pretty well and you can try them for size. Billy Bilsland Cycles (club sponsor) is a stockist so you even qualify for a discount for members!

Finally if you do want advice, and if you’ve read this far that is probably true, during the season there are often 80-100 kids at Bellahouston or Cathkin on a Saturday morning who would be delighted to show off their bike to you and let your child have a shot.  Plus there’ll be quite a few grownups who have some fairly strong views on which bikes to buy and how much they have spent on them over the years!  It’s also worth posting on Facebook – you never know someone might have one lurking at the back of the shed that they’ve been meaning to put on Fleabay for ages but haven’t quite got round to….

Gear

Decathlon gear is good and they have a good size range.  Aldis and Lidl occasionally stock cycling gear in children’s sizes and all the stuff I’ve had from there has been cheap and ace, i’m still using an 8 year old hi-viz…

Club strip is “Pactimo” which is ordered though the club secretary, we are just getting a selection of casual gear to wear from our other sponsor BD Print.
Finally shoes can be really expensive and children grow out of them really quickly but the club has a boot bag for passing them on…

Frog Bikes review

General Parents’ Buying guide – Bike Radar   (that is a guide to buying bikes, not parents.)

20 inch bikes

Secondhand classifieds.

Gumtree

singletrackworld classifieds

Braveheart Classifieds

*Club policy. Rachael gets quite angry if I miss the opportunity to use a “z”.