Meet the entrepreneur who is on a mission to change the image of tricycles

“I bought a second hand one online but it got stolen within a week from his care home,” the founder of Jorvik Tricycles in York says.

“It was after buying the second second hand tricycle that I had a lightbulb moment and I started looking into manufacturing them.

“Due to the size of tricycles, bike shops didn’t want to sell them and the ones we found online were very dated. Nobody had come along and redesigned them or updated them to make them look cool,” he says.

Initially, Walker, whose background was in sales, marketing and branding, ordered 30 off-the-shelf tricycles from China.

“I expected them to come fully-built but what arrived were containers of parts,” he says.

“I had no experience with bicycles so I made a bit of an error there. I had to get a cycling friend to come and help me build them.

“The front room of my house became a workshop. I would build one tricycle every few days and put them on eBay.

"I’d then have to open the sash window to get them out of the house because they wouldn’t fit through the door.”

He adds: “I didn’t really have a brand at that point, I just wanted to see if there was a market out there and test how it would work.”

Walker discovered there was indeed an untapped tricycle market, particularly when he tinkered with the designs and colours of the off-the-shelf models.

These days the company, which only creates electric tricycles for adults, has an agent who sources parts from all over Asia and ships them to be built into tricycles at the firm’s headquarters in the village of Wheldrake.

"When we first started, we only sold non-electric tricycles,” says Walker. “When electric bikes came in we started doing one model and gradually built up to a point where people only want to buy electric tricycles. It was a natural progression so now we only sell electric.”

The firm, which sells through its website and also has a showroom in York city centre, is investing £200,000 in a new experience-led showroom that is set to open later this year.

The new space at its Wheldrake site will allow customers to test-ride a new tricycle at the indoor track in the centre of the showroom.

The track will aim to mimic a real life road - kitted with traffic lights and a gravel pit to give customers the full experience of riding a Jorvik tricycle in a safe environment.

“It can be quite a daunting experience for some of our customers to come in and test ride because they may have had an accident on a bike or have balance issues,” says Walker.

“Sometimes you have to physically help them get on the tricycle and walk around with them.

"When we first came to this site nine years ago the car park was quite empty. Over time, different businesses have opened up there, which have traffic coming in and out daily.

"It’s not the best environment for our customers and it can be a bit frightening if you’re trying to do a test ride in a busy car park.”

The business, which employs six full-time members of staff and intends to create another four jobs with the new showroom, sells, delivers, and services 11 different models. It has seen tricycles rise in popularity across a range of age groups since the pandemic.

Although people with mobility issues were its core customer base initially, the demographic is changing.

Walker’s past experience in branding and marketing has helped to initiate this change and modernise the image of tricycles.

“We’ve changed the concept of what a tricycle can be,” he says. “We’ve made them cool, we’re bringing out new models, which has attracted a wider demographic.

“Young, old, people with balance issues, people wanting to be eco-friendly, people who don’t have a car, people who want to use them to go shopping, our customer base is very broad now.”

“We’ve made them into a lifestyle product - just another form of transport - and we’ve shown that you can push the boundaries of what you can do with a tricycle with our videos,” he says.

Once the new flagship showroom is completed, Walker hopes to replicate it throughout the country and is also looking for stockists.

“We get a lot of customers who tell us they can’t make it to York so we want to open another two or three stores across the country and find stockists who align with our values to sell them too,” says Walker

“I think we’re just scratching the surface, really. There’s plenty of growth to be had.”

He is also introducing new models to the range, including a travel trike, a small, lightweight electric tricycle that can easily fit into a car.

"Some customers use them as an aid so they want to take them to a holiday home or to the beach for the day,” he says.

Walker, who was born and raised in Goole, East Yorkshire, has had a varied career as a postman, garden furniture salesman, and latterly running his own product branding and marketing business.

The 43-year-old father-of-two, who has a 16-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son, says he has found a passion project in Jorvik Tricycles.

“I love it to bits,” he says. “It’s bittersweet really because we wouldn’t be where we are if it wasn’t for my dad’s Parkinson’s but the stories we get back from customers and the joy you see when people come to the showroom are moving.

"There aren’t many jobs where you can say you sell something that will genuinely change someone’s life.”