Ride Safe with Bike Rags

Posted Jun 25, 2012
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BIKEIOWA.com sets down with Tony Burnett, owner of Bike Rags, for tea, triskets and Fireball to see what he has up his sleeve for this season.

Bike Rags has been a BIKEIOWA sponsor for a couple of years now. We love the fresh designs by Iowa folks who ride! Bike Rags is HQ'd out of Cedar Rapids, but shipped all over the USA.

Styling, comfortable, quality clothes printed in nothing but reflective ink. "Ride Safe yet remain Fashionable in our reflective cycling apparel. It's Genius!!

Buy Bike Rags Gear - Check out our online store at BikeRags.co (yes, it is .co, not .com)

More about Bike Rags.

What’s new with Bike Rags?

Lots of stuff – new designs, new materials, new people

New People? Who??

We have two new additions to the Bike Rags family. Peter Kelchen “The Elitist” joined the force as part owner last fall, and is currently on hiatus walking the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. He is currently averaging 20 miles a day (beast) and is so far ahead of schedule he’s taking a week off to come home and ride RAGBRAI. Peter handles the accounting and books. Pete’s a Treky, meaning his cruiser, road bike, and mtb are all Trek and he loves them dearly.

Juan Ramirez, “The Talent”, is also part owner and is the creative one of the bunch. Juan is a digital artist by trade, so naturally is in charge of any design work, i.e. shirt designs, website stuff, logo. Juan’s bike stable consists of a 70’s Schwinn roadie and a sweet Bianchi townie that he just won with $10 in raffle tickets. $1000 bike the lucky S.O.B….

And myself, Tony Burnett, you can call me whatever you want. Production and sales are my forte. I live and breathe bikes, bike culture, and bike advocacy…so please don’t run me over… I’d like to keep living and breathing. My daily ride is “Sally”, she’s an old steel frame PUCH that I converted to a single speed, and she loves pulling B.O.B. full of shirts to the post office. I have many more, but she’s my favorite.

What inspired the new designs?

A lot of the new designs are brain babies of “The Talent”. A lot of brainstorming and a lot of research online, seeing what else is out there. We wanted to set ourselves apart in some way, but it’s tough, the bike culture and the art culture have really started to merge. We are constantly coming up with new stuff, but we wanted to start with just a few to keep things simple for now. But as we grow, be on the lookout for some great stuff.

Bamboo? Tell us more.

It is my pleasure to tell you more about Bamboo shirts. I fell in love with this material last summer, as I was sampling all kind of different products. The new shirts are made with a blend of 70% Bamboo viscose and 30% organic cotton. The result is one heck of soft shirt, I mean really soft, and the best part is the durability; un-matched by any other natural fiber material.

We love the Reflective shirts! Tell us more about the process, is it expensive, how long does it hold up?

The process is pretty simple; we print the reflective ink like we would any other ink. And yes it is very expensive, but I figured out a way to make is less expensive. Mixed into the ink are microscopic glass beads, the beads are what reflect light back to its source. We save money by getting the beads separately and mixing it into the ink ourselves, thus giving us more options for print colors and keeping the price of our shirts in check. Comparable shirts of this material and print are in the $40-$50 range. I wear these shirts every day, I bike every day, I usually am wearing a pack of some sort and they are just as reflective now as they were a year ago. They have been washed and dried more times than I can remember and they do show signs of wear, but I’m especially hard on them for a reason. I wouldn’t sell them if I didn’t know they would last.

What is the furthest away that someone has bought a shirt from Bike Rags?

Texas and Colorado

We assume you have a closet full of biking shirts, which Bike Rags design is your favorite and why?

Your assumptions are correct. The classic “Riding a bike. It’s just like riding a bike” is one that I wear a lot, but my new favorite is the “Bike Bang Theory”. Biking is such a huge part of who I am, and putting a scientific twist to cycling is just really cool if you ask me. There is another design that we haven’t released yet that speaks loads about having a deep love for the bicycle, might be a special release on that one later this year.

Do you do your own screen printing?

Yes, we print everything ourselves.

What’s the future of Bike Rags?

Our goals are to keep growing as a company and to keep doing research on new products and designs; we don’t want to get stagnant. We will start pushing to get into bike shops around the mid-west and beyond in the coming years. For the short term, we want to gain more exposure with social media and to build a better website. So go to www.bikerags.co to check out the new designs and follow us on twitter @bikerags and like us on Facebook. There you will find updates, funny/cool pictures, new specials, and lots of other fun stuff.

We will also be selling shirts at Parlor City Pub and Eatery in Cedar Rapids when RAGBRAI rolls through, so be sure to come by and say Hi.