4 years ago, I walked into my local bike shop with a shotgun seat prototype under my arm.

The store owner Kris checked it over, and then quickly took a punt on the product that my friend Tom had designed, by placing an order for 5 units. 

We had our first official shotgun retailer, and we were pretty happy with ourselves. And ever since then, we’ve worked really hard to grow our retail foot-print. 

We started in New Zealand. I did a road trip around the country with a boot full of shotgun seats. And we sold the lot. 

Then Australia came on-board, and we picked up some key stores across the ditch. We were 12 months in, and we were finally starting to build momentum. 

Fast forward to 2019 and Andrew joined the team, followed by Trev in the UK in 2020. And now all of a sudden, it’s 2021, and we have distributors supplying bike retailers in New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Chile, South Africa, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia... Phew! 

And whilst Andrew and Trev have driven the international growth in terms of sales, they couldn't’ have done it without the support of our awesome team based out of our NZ office – not to mention our off-shore liaisons, who offer in-market support.

But I digress, because we have some big news to share. And it’s our biggest ever addition to our retail foot-print in terms of stores. 

Today we’re excited to announce that our products are now available at REI Co-op, one of the largest sporting retailers in the US of A.

With 168 locations across 39 states, REI Co-op significantly increases our footprint in the US, and adds to the growing list of bicycle retailers brought on by our North American distribution partner, HLC.

Being stocked in REI adds to our existing network of US dealers, and makes the shotgun seat (and our recently released tow rope) even more available to US MTB parents – Andrew Inman, Kids Ride Shotgun

We’re proud to now have over 2000 retailers globally, and we’re excited about working with all of our awesome stockists, to ultimately help raise the next generation of mountain bikers.

Dan - Co-Founder, Kids Ride Shotgun