Roetz Bikes Turns Discarded Frames into Beautiful City Bikes

Each Roetz bike comes with information about the individuals behind the assembly and build date of your new bike. Photo by David Niddrie.

Dutch company Roetz is on a mission to influence the bike industry by building bikes with as little environmental impact as possible.

The four-year-old company produces about 1,000 bikes per year starting with scavenged classic, steel Dutch frames. “In different countries, cycling is looked at as a sustainable alternative to using a car or bus,” said Mark Groot Wassink of Roetz. “To us, it’s not. It’s just the way you commute. It’s the easiest way. As we don’t see it as a ‘sustainable alternative’ we thought, how can we be a sustainable producer?”

Roetz co-founder Mark Groot Wassink with a model from their step-through collection.

At the workshop, employees disassemble discarded bikes, strip the paint and decals, and inspect the frame to insure it is structurally sound. These frames are then cleaned, painted, and inspected once more before being built into one of three Roetz designs on offer. Almost every bike is slightly different, but fits into their existing collections.

“It would be difficult to get the same kind of frame if we wanted to, but we don’t really need to,” said Wassink. “We are looking for steel frames that are welded well – they might be old Gazelles or Unions. It doesn’t need to be literally the same frame as we make a collection out of them. The coloring, the fenders, branding – that makes it a Roetz bike.”

Available online or at retailers in the Netherlands and surrounding countries, the bikes start at €559 and accessories include beech wooden fenders and chainguards, cork grips, a reclaimed wood crate, and conveyor-belt skirt guard.

“We also value the people that make the bikes,” Wassink said. “We believe that when you buy a bike it feels better to know the person who made the bike.” As such, each Roetz bicycle comes with a tag sharing the name and photo of the builders involved in that particular bike.

Roetz have another lofty goal in sight, to make a 100 percent remanufactured bike. “There is a project we do now in which we have a 70 percent reused, new bike,” said Wassink.