First there was an idea…
…and then there was a trailer.
…one of our boxes after applying the first coat of grey from our friends at Graphenstone, and after painstakingly cutting the letters our from a sheet of ply.
March 2020 — Returning to the country, with my wife, from our world travels, two weeks before the first lockdown, almost out of savings, with this great new uncertainty hanging over all of our heads…was fun.
As it turns out, this stressful ‘welcome back’ was just what I needed. A few weeks of sitting in a temporarily rented apartment, watching the nature come back to live as human activity quieted down and reflecting on all the pollution I had seen while traveling, provided me with a push to reassure myself this was the right time to start a green business — something I had always wanted.
Talking to a friend of mine, Kevin, about it was the obvious choice, since we always got along great and have always been on the same page regarding the environment, work ethics and work quality, sense of humor, and the desire to make a difference. Plus we both had rich experience in property maintenance — that is how we met in the first place.
We agreed to do some research and to see what happens.
So, many days of reading and discussing followed. We wanted all aspects of the business to be green. Luckily the British market offers many eco-friendly alternatives to the mainstream paints, paper, tools, transport,…
Transport turned out to be the biggest pickle. Of course, ideally, we didn’t want to be driving a diesel van, while claiming to be sustainable, and electric vehicles were out of our financial reach. We turned our attention to the bicycle — Kev’s favorite mode of transport, favorite relax, and for someone who was a road racer, probably his favorite thing on the planet.
Everyone who has been to Amsterdam, Hamburg or Cambridge knows how amazingly well can a cycling city operate — cleaner air, fewer traffic jams, smiley faces. Idyllic.
But Leeds? A city where cycling paths are only starting to appear, where drivers wait for an excuse to give you a little nudge and send you flying into someone’s hedge, a city where cycling through the rush hour equals to smoking a pack of cigarettes?
We thought: Why the heck not? The change we want to see needs to start somewhere. Maybe we can give a little nudge back to the drivers and make them think about commuting or running a business on two wheels, powered by human muscle.
When we found a one-of-a-kind hand made bicycle trailer right here in Leeds, we took it as a sign. Ben from Leeds Bike Mill was extremely helpful and got the trailer compatible with Kev’s bike.
Bit by bit, we put it all together whenever we had a moment — together with this website, company identity, our supplier network and plenty of practice with ecological paints, which sometimes behave differently from what we were used to.
So, welcome to Grōni! :)
Mat