Mile Markers #5: Igogomi and the Trifold Folding Bike Revolution

You see an Igogomi ad in the corner of your browser. One of the thousands of ads you’ll see this week. Usually you resist. The algorithm has no power over you! But this one catches your eye. You squint, curious. You have seen the bicycle in the picture before, but not this bicycle. This one goes by a fresh name. The design is different in key ways. Thicker tires. Disc brakes. Brighter colors. This is not what you thought it was, and you catch yourself staring. Your finger nudges the keypad, and at last you surrender to a click.

A new website. Exciting pictures. You see people, smiling as they ride the bike. You notice attractive scenery behind them, places you’d love to be. And then you see the bike, folded up.

Oh no, you think to yourself. Now I want one.

The characteristic you notice, the most important feature of all, is irresistible.

The Igogomi Alps is a trifold. And you love trifolds. As do millions of people around the world.

Go, Go, Gadget Bike!

Folding bikes are everywhere now. This once-obscure feature has exploded in popularity, as more city dwellers benefit from bike infrastructure but struggle with small apartments. You can almost always spot one or two at the local bike shop, ditto an e-bike homepage. Dahon is the most famous; the California-based company started in the early 1980s, selling bikes with special hinges that enabled them to fold in half. Dahon didn’t invent this technology, but its reasonable prices and smart marketing democratized this concept around the world. Dahon is estimated to dominate about 60 percent of the U.S. folding bike industry.

Then there’s the Cadillac of folding bikes, the reigning champion of urban fashion: Brompton. Founded in the London suburbs in 1976, Brompton was the brainchild of one Andrew Ritchie. A veteran engineer and computer programmer, Ritchie came up with an unheard-of idea: a bike that folds in two different places. Ritchie took some inspiration from a popular British folding bike called the Bickerton; but the Brompton was both far more imaginative and many times more elegant.

To watch a Brompton rider collapse a standard model is like watching a master origamist shape tissue paper into a crane. The rear wheel drops down; the top tube splits in the middle; the handlebars fall to the side. The bike seems to absorb itself into a prim triangle. Most brilliant of all, the pannier rack, which comes pre-installed, has tiny wheels; these are unnoticeable when you’re riding, but once you’ve folded the bike, you can pull it along like a piece of luggage. In its new, miniaturized form, the Brompton‘s full dimensions are 585mm by 565mm by 270mm, or small enough to check onto an airplane without any special packaging.

The mechanism is so mesmerizing that Brompton’s logo is just that: a cartoon of the bike folding up.

Not surprisingly, Bromptons cost a decent amount; a three-speed A Line starts at US$1,150, a hefty sum for many of the urban youths who typically ride them. Yet the price tag hasn’t stopped Bromptons from pouring into London streets, along with myriad other cities around the globe. The bike is small enough to fit under desks, to be carried one-handed onto a train. Brompton has become the mascot of new urbanism, a transit tool both humble and posh.

Other companies have tried the trifold, including Dahon. The Dahon Curl isn’t the company’s best known creation, but it echoes the same principles. Actually, the Curl is the trifold bike that you own—and have ridden hundreds of miles, around the city and on bike tours across New England. The Curl doesn’t fold quite as neatly as the Brompton, and the caliper brakes aren’t very responsive, but everything else is bliss: the ergonomic handlebars, the comfy seat, the smooth, eight-speed gearing. And just as one would hope, you have stored the Curl in cubicles and car trunks and hotel rooms, and no one has ever seemed to notice.

Is It Packable?

What is your obsession with folding bikes? Largely, it’s your family. Your parents designed and built their house with minimal closet space. They openly resent accumulating things they don’t need. Your Dad is an avid outdoorsman, and he values organization and compactness above all. Whenever you buy a gift for your family, your wife snidely asks, “Is it packable?“

The ideal object in your parents’ household serves two or three purposes at once, e.g. an accent table with an inlaid chessboard and an compartment for stowing blankets. Your father built your childhood bed, which tripled as writing desk, closet, and wardrobe. He carries a Swiss Army knife everywhere, an apt metaphor for his entire philosophy. His workshop is so fastidiously put together that his goal is to be able to find anything he needs, blindfolded.

The trifold bike is the natural extreme of this lifestyle. Here is a device that can take you anywhere; it can carry your bags and belongings; then it disappears the moment you don’t need it. Flat tire? A taxi driver might not even spot it in the backseat. Flying somewhere? Entire YouTube videos are dedicated to packing your Brompton to avoid airline fees.

The trifold bike might seem a little culty. But if it is a cult, you’re raring to sign up.

Igogomi folding bike

A Happy Coincidence

You can’t help yourself—you have to know more about the Igogomi. The Igogomi doesn’t look like a Brompton knockoff, but a genuine leap forward in trifold technology. You’ve never seen a trifold bike with disc brakes, or even thick tires. You’re amazed that this model is pedal-assist, yet still it weighs less than 17 kg. Plus, it’s an e-bike, but an e-bike you can probably ride without pedal-assist. You want to know more, so you write to Igogomi.

To your delight, a reply comes the very same day—not a form letter or generic note from middle management, but an email from Bob Gao, CEO and co-founder of Igogomi. His business partner is a man named Zhipeng Lee. Gao would be happy to answer any questions.

“Lee hails from a prestigious Chinese bicycle family with an illustrious 50-year legacy in bicycle manufacturing,” writes Gao. “His innovative design prowess has culminated in the seamless integration of the battery within the frame, marking a significant breakthrough in the realm of trifold electric designs.”

This is evident from the pictures. At first, it’s hard to believe the Igogomi is an e-bike, given the slimness of its tubes. But then you see the Samsung battery removed, and it’s a cylinder as slim as a traffic wand. Somehow, this little crescent gives you up to 60 miles of pedal-assist.

“The underlying motivation behind the design of this remarkable product is to address the needs of urban dwellers seeking a viable solution for short-distance travel,” Gao continues in his enthusiastic prose. “We are deeply committed to sustainability and environmental protection, hence the majority of the materials used in its construction are recyclable.”

Gao tells you that 70 percent of customers are based in New York and California, with a significant remainder in Florida and the Northwestern U.S.

“Our user group predominantly comprises young college students, with a higher proportion of female participants than male,” he writes. “Additionally, we also cater to a select group of elderly customers and are proud to have family-oriented repeat clients who have purchased their second and third bicycles for their respective households.”

When you ask Gao where the Igogomi bikes are manufactured, he names a city in China: Tianjin.

That name wouldn’t mean anything to you, except that you happened to visit China earlier this year, including Tianjin, a busy port city of 12 million people. Tianjin has a long and storied history, as well as an unusual distinction: Tianjin was the headquarters of Flying Pigeon Bicycles, the ubiquitous brand of the Cultural Revolution.

When you mention this to Gao, hoping to impress him with your knowledge of Chinese history, he does you one better.

“Coincidentally,” he writes, “the director of our bicycle production technology factory in Tianjin was once the founder of [Flying Pigeon].”

This blows your mind. You are two degrees of separation from a legend in transport technology. Flying Pigeon is the best-selling bike manufacturer of all time, having outfitted hundreds of millions of Chinese households, and they still sell today.

Flying Pigeon made very different bikes, back in the day: The classic model was upright, heavy, with curved handlebars. It was similar, in most ways, to the Dutch template. These were functional commuters, in the decades before cars were a common sight in Chinese streets.

But you think of the Igogomi as adapting this same philosophy to the 21st century. Here is a machine designed for manual riding or pedal-assist; for errands or pleasure; in paved cities or rustic back roads; for youths or seniors or any ambulatory person in between. If necessary, an entire society could run on Igogomis. And with the trifold mechanism, you wouldn’t have to add a single bike rack.

Igogomi folding bike

This Perfect Day Brought to You by…

One day, you decide the hell with it, you’re headed to Boston.

Your Subaru bombs down 95, gets lost in a knot of highways and construction cones, and finally arrives at a little divot of gravel on the edge of Auburndale Park, way out in the Boston suburbs.

You almost didn’t come here. Any excuse would have kept you at home—pumping up tires, switching rack-bags, putting the rack on your car, any step that required the slightest energy or care. It’s a lazy Saturday, after all, sunny and mild, and you could much more easily ride a 10-mile loop around the neighborhood.

But you have no excuse, because your trifold bike is already in the car. The Dahon Curl basically lives in your trunk, luggage already affixed, snacks already packed, and (go figure) a collapsible helmet ready to wear. All you had to do was dress yourself and ignite the engine. An hour later, you’re in Massachusetts and ready to roll.

You ride down dirt trails, then streets, then a dedicated path. For years, you’ve wanted to ride the full length of the Charles River Trail, which sneaks along the famous waterway, passing through a mesh of colonial towns, until you reach the inner-city. The trailhead is only an hour away, yet you’ve always found a reason not to. Until today.

Nothing in Boston is straightforward, and you lose your way several times among the brick high rises and backwoods. Each time, you yank out your phone to consult GPS. Hardly any signs exist, but you keep at it, recalibrating every couple of kilometers, like a two-wheeled scavenger hunt. You cross special trestle bridges, pass stone observation decks, coast through tunnels of trees. Every kind of bike comes at you, from junker MTBs to tank-like e-bikes to ultra-light racers. For miles, you parallel a busy highway, until the towers of downtown Boston emerge in the distance. Rowing sculls ease across the water, just visible beyond the yellowing foliage, as coaches bark commands through bullhorns.

You see so much today—bobbing sailboats, formations of migrating geese, birdwatchers with binoculars, unhoused people picking through trash cans. You hear snatches of conversation. You watch laborers assemble tents for some kind of festival. On one of the ramps, you nearly collide with a bulky old man urinating into a concrete corner.

And then, to your amazement, you turn onto a narrow strip of land, a tree-lined island called the Charles River Esplanade. You lived in Boston for a year, back in 2017, and never knew this place existed. The car-free path is thick with couples, families, joggers, picnickers. You absorb the perfect autumnal sun, the salt-tinged breeze, the muffled noise of passersby. You grab lunch from a taco truck, devouring a burrito bowl on the curb, as your trifold bike waits, freestanding on its overturned rear rack.

This is what the trifold bike was made for— spontaneous jaunts through the city. It can take you almost anywhere, of course, from small towns to rural roads to boardwalks to brick lanes. But wherever you go, it’ll be easy. No roof rack, no complicated assembly, no fuss.

When you return to your car, 27 kilometers later, the Curl folds down in under a minute. You place it back in your trunk, where it lies again, unassuming. Until the next time. And the next.