Bruno Saia
A simple idea for a school project is becoming a promising business in Richmond.
A 14-year old student from Waimea College has already started to convert push bikes to electric bikes.
“I had an opportunity to participate in a national competition where you build your electric vehicle and I decided to go with an electric bike,” says Jack McCormick, who had a whole year to build and design his first e-bike.
But the idea came earlier, with a little push from his mother.
“I was looking for a project and mum took me down to the recycling centre,” he says.
“There was a bike with a chainsaw motor attached to it and I looked at that and thought it was pretty cool, so I turned my mountain bike into a chainsaw bike and that was the first one”.
Proud of the result of his first attempt, Jack took the motorized bike to school, and that’s when the business idea was born.
“The business teacher approached me and told me that I had a really good and cool idea and that I should come along to business studies one time, so I did”.
He was the first teenager from Year Ten going to a Year Twelve business group.
“So I went along, and a bit further down the track I decided that it would be good to have another person and this is when Craig joined in”, says Jack.
“If we started putting effort into the motorized bikes we would have to switch for electric anyway because the whole climate change and all that, and here we are”, says Craig Liddington, who is Jack’s classmate.
“We are offering a unique service where we can convert a normal push bike to an electric one, so you don’t have to change bikes”.
“It’s a cheaper option rather than buying a really expensive electric bike”, he says. “We plan to keep on going with the business project”, added Craig.
According to the young entrepreneurs they are able to do a full conversion from push to e-bike for $ 750.
“This bike we are working on is to get the business promoted and it’s going to be raffled, probably in the next few weeks,” says Jack.