BikeMekk is a Swedish company that work with service and repair. The company was created 2021 and the founder and owner is me Jonas Liljeblad. I have been working with bikes my entire life. It has always been a passion of mine and I had the oppertunity to work with what I love. Every since I was a kid I always wanted to create my own workshop and work with bikes. Always loved to take them apart and put them togehter again. Many years have passed since that thought was created and many experiences later I have now created Bikemekk Sverige AB.
My passion for bikes did start when I was around 13 years old. It started with me doings some testworking in school at Sportex. That ended up with me starting working at Sportex during summer holidays and over the years I worked there part time during my studies for many years. When I finished high school I started to work full time and got offered to work as store manager. All the years during my studies I worked as salesman and mechanic. After some years I decided to study at the University withing econonomy and computer science. It was during my years at Sportex I built my first bike. Found a old Nishiki Rally that I repainted and made to a singlespeed.
During my studies at the University Team Sportia reached out to me and offered me a position at their HQ to work with technical support and aftermarket related to their private brands such as Sjösala, Peak Cycle, Extreme and Carrera. In this position I was also working with home exercise machines such as treadmills, crosstrainers and exercise bikes. In my everyday work I supported all stores that was working with these products when it came to technical trouble shooting of bikes and exercise machines. Except from this work I also worked with quality control on the products that the product managers at Team Sportia created togehter with our suppliers. I also managed the spare parts that we needed to be able to repair the products that was created. Now my first experiences if China and Taiwan did happen. I did travel there to control production of Team Sportias products and I was visiting all factories to see the production line. After working with this position for a while my interest for working with products and development of products became my new passion.
In total I was working at Team Sportia for 6 or 7 years I think and my last 3 years I was working as Product manager for bikes. I got the oppertunity to visit many cool places and companies in this position. Testing new bikes in Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, Gran Canaria and Germany. I did also visit Continental and Abus factories in Germany. Got the oppertunity to visit and experience the 3 factories in Sweden that still produce bikes in Sweden, Cycleurope (Varberg), Skeppshultcykeln (Skeppshult) and Monark Exercise (Vansbro). During my time at Team Sportia I was also starting to find the fun of also riding all kinds of bikes. Previously I was more interested in them as hardware and didn´t bother riding them so much. It became important in my role at Team Sportia to have the experience of riding roadbikes and MTB to have to first person experience what might be different in a comfort roadbike and a stiff competition roadbike. This ending up with me doing Vätternrundan 3 times, Cykelvasan 1 time, Hisingen runt 2 times and some other smaller exercise races. There is definitely some extremly amazing experiences to ride fast speed with roadbikes downhill on small roads in mountains located in Switzerland, Italy and Gran Canaria. It is also very interesting to feel the difference of climbing up long hills on different bikes aswell. The absolute most cool experience I ever had on a bike was when I was pedeling uphill in Switzerland mountain below the skilift without any effort almost. I was using a Scott E-Genius with Bosch Perfomance CX midmotor. It was unreal to be able to climb so effortless and when you arrive at the top you could turn off the electric assistance and just hammer downhill. 2015 was the first time I really opened my eyes for e-bikes. I mean e-bikes been around all the way back since 2000 when for example Sram made their ebike system in a hub with controller integrated. From 2000-2010 I would say most e-bikes were not that good. In 2012 came in to the market with their first midmotors and during this time e-bikes start to grow. In 2008 Ecoride the Swedish brand was founded and have during the years developed really nice e-bikes with moth their own Spintech drive units and bikes with Shimano Steps.
In 2017 I did stop working for Team Sportia and got the oppertunity to have some months of vacation before I was starting working for Ecoride and Walleräng E-bikes. At Ecoride I was working as product and development manager for both Ecoride and Walleräng bikes. Was working here for a little more then 2 years and learned a lot about production, sourcing, supply chain and quality control. Ecoride have their own factories and when I started working for Ecoride they factory was located in Kunshan area north of Shanghai in a small are called Zhung pu Town. Here did Ecoride produce their own bikes but also some other brands from England, USA and Austraila. With an amazing team in both Sweden and China we did develop, produce and sold bikes mainly in Sweden and Norway but also some small volumes in Europe and US with the premium brand Walleräng E-bikes. Walleräng is the founder Martins last name. During 2018-2019 antidumping fees became reality on e-bikes imported from China to Europe. Because of this Ecoride did start their own factory in Poland. Was really intersting and challenging to create a new assembly facility in mather of months and change all supply chain to produce bikes in Europe instead of China.
In the autumn of 2019, an opportunity opened up at Voi Technology that I could not refuse. I started working as a Team Leader for a development team. This team developed the scooters and other hardware. This was also the first time I came in contact with shared mobility. Very interesting to work with a product that would not only work well and be safe, it should preferably also be able to be run over by a car as people generally had the pleasure of trying to destroy the scooters. Scooters are built-up very similar to electric bicycles when you look at the components that are related with the electrical system. Similar engines, batteries and control units. Voi Technology also develops and designs its own IoT (internet of things). Very exciting experience to work with teams that work mainly with software and programming combined with hardware and mechanical design. Software is extremely fast-paced and flexible when it comes to development, hardware is slightly more difficult to implement changes in just as fast because samples need to be physically produced and tested to be able to validate if the product turned out as intended.
Due to Covid-19 Voi was forced to take strong actions on saving money. With total lock down in majority of the markets basically all income stoped for Voi. Unfortanetaly me and my team was still on propationary period still and Voi did cancel our employments. Shortly after this I got offered to work for Velove Bikes. Velove is a company that use to sell a special cargobike for comercial use. It is a 4 wheeled cargobike that do have a big box with doors loaded that is possible to roll of the bike. In early 2020 Velove changed their business model from selling these special cargobikes to start using them for last mile delivery in urban cities. They are still developing and producing their own cargobike and other hardware that is helping operation to perform in the most efficient, safe and productive way. For the moment Velove have operation in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Copenhagen.
After working at Velove for approximately 1,5 year I got the question from Voi to come back. Since I stoped working at Voi Technology due to Covid I was happy to come back. I am now working as Engineering manager for Voi and a leading a group of engineers to develop hardware on scooters and E-bikes. My expertise within E-bikes is this time also more relevant since Voi have operated E-bikes soon one year in UK. During 2022 Voi is planning to launch more E-bikes in different markets and I am working as Technical Project Lead for many of these projects.
