Public Good and Public Disservice

Uh, oops...

To the best of my knowledge I do not have any enemies in the bicycle industry and  I’m not   the kind of guy who picks fights either.  Occasionally something gets up in my nose and I have a hard time letting it go.

A while ago a stylish bike company bubbled up promising beautiful, stylish, commute bikes and to that end they succeeded and that company is called Public Bikes. What you may not know Public Bikes is the brainchild of Designs Within Reach founder Robert Forbes.

Robert Forbes has talked extensively about the importance of bicycles in lowering our environmental impact and who can say that’s a bad idea?

The trouble is there seems to be two Robert Forbes, the genial man of ideas and then there’s this guy – the Robert Forbes who ripped off the very designers who helped put Designs Within Reach on the map in the first place. In the December 30th 2009 edition of The New York Times Home & Garden section Fred Bernstein wrote a stinging expose on about some of the less than savory practices concerning Robert Forbes and Designs Within Reach.

When Forbes officially launched Public Bikes in 2010 initially things seemed to be hunky dory but rumor has it they’ve had to receive a cash infusion from an investment company and have recently been plagued with a product recall from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. While a lot of companies have had recalls,  this is still troubling.

I wish them luck but they seem to be a very style over substance company that have engaged in questionable business practices with an owner that has less than stellar reputation.