Our Story - Long Version

Prevelo bikes was started in 2016 by Jacob Rheuban, a father of two boys and self-professed kids' bike geek. “I was frustrated with the design of kids bikes, even in middle to high-end,” Rheuban explains. “For me, teaching your kids to ride should be a joyful experience. But I think a lot of us forget how intimidating it is. When teaching my two sons Jonah and Elliot, I noticed they were more confident and took to riding more easily when they were lower to the ground. So I started trying to get them as close to the ground as possible. I chopped up seat tubes and rigged low profile track saddles to their bikes. But lowering the rider isn’t as simple as lowering the saddle. The entire bike needs to be designed lower to the ground. This turned into the core design philosophy of Prevelo bikes. It makes kids safer, increases confidence, and makes it easier for them to learn and ride.”

At Prevelo Bikes, our mission is simple, make bikes for kids that are as confidence inspiring and fun to ride as possible. All Prevelo bikes are 100% engineered for kids from the start. Our bikes feature exceptionally low minimum seat heights and low bottom brackets. This geometry places the rider close to the ground. We have found that kids feel more confident, learn easier and ride better when they are closer to the ground. The low geometry also lowers the center of gravity making the bikes safer and more agile. Lowering the geometry required us to re-think crank lengths. In conjunction with our low geometry, Prevelo bikes crank arm lengths are optimized down to the millimeter to make sure the rider can pedal efficiently and comfortably. Prevelo bikes cranks also have ultra-narrow q-factors (in regular English, this is the distance between the pedals). A narrow q-factor means that young legs don’t need to be splayed far apart to reach the pedals.

All of that engineering would go to waste if we built the bikes out of cheap metal and components. All Prevelo bikes frames and forks are made of custom formed 6061 aluminum tubing. Everything on Prevelo bikes, including the tires, hubs, wheels, handlebars, stems, saddles, brakes, shifters and derailleurs is quality. All bikes in the Alpha line include V-brakes and Kenda rubber, even the Alpha Zero balance bike. The 20” Alpha Three, 24” Alpha Four and 26" Alpha Five add a Microshift 8-speed drive train with thumb-operated shifters. For those kids ready to race mom and dad on the trails, the top-of-the-line 20” Zulu Three, 24” Zulu Four, and 26" Zulu Five include air forks, hydraulic discs with short-reach levers to accommodate young hands, and derailleurs and shifters specifically selected to work well with small wheel bike and small hands.

Prevelo continues to push the limits of what is possible with kids bikes. In 2018 Prevelo released the first ever purpose build 14" and 16" trail bikes, the Zulu One and Zulu Two. Both have progressive slack mountain bike geometry and hydraulic disc brakes. The Zulu Two HEIR adds the world's first purpose-built 16" air fork, the HEIR 16. The Zulu Two HEIR was awarded the Gold A'Design Award for product design.

Finally, we all want a childhood for our kids that is even better than our own. Hence the term Upgrade Childhood. Our promise is to always keep innovating at Prevelo - to make better bikes for all our kids and overall deliver an even better experience. The outcome, we hope, are riders for life.