When choosing what products to stock at Hitchabike, we have one question that we ask - does this product transform your ride?
Transform. Your. Ride.
Three words there, each doing some heavy lifting for us.
What Does “Transform Your Ride” Mean?
Ride
The experience you have when out on your bike. Also, the bike itself. Time to pimp your ride!
Your
No two bikes are the same, your bike is unique to you. Two people can buy the same bike, but, ten minutes later, one will have mudguards and the other won’t. One might have a bell, the other a luggage rack, lower tyre pressures, electronic gear shifting - the options are endless.
Transform
We want to stock products that make a change. Maybe it will change the kind of riding you can do. Maybe it will change the way your bike handles. Definitely a trailer will change what kind of things you can transport with you on your bike. Even a little bell will change what other people think of you as you speed along a canal towpath!
So, that’s the basic filter we apply when selecting which products to stock. Yeah, there’s all the other stuff you would expect - high quality, durability, value for money, etc etc.
But at the end of the day, to be considered, you’ve got to pass the TYR test!
Which brings me to one of the new kids on our block, one which we are super excited about, one which we are genuinely proud to be stocking on our internet shelves.
These guys tick so many of our boxes, I don’t even know where to start.
So I guess I’ll start at the beginning…
Well, not their beginning. I’ll come to that in a minute…
No, I’ll start with our beginning with them, just a few months back whilst I was out shopping in South London.
LTN’s have been around for a while, but they really started springing up all over the place during Covid. It’s those things where the council puts big planter tubs or other barriers across the entrance to residential streets. This allows bikes and other, small vehicles through but stops cars and trucks, the idea being that through traffic is prevented from going down residential streets making them safer and improving air quality.
They have stirred up a bit of controversy, to say the least. Some people think they’re the best thing ever, whilst others are doing everything they can to get them removed.
One thing they have done is make some people think again about the journeys they make, leaving some people thinking that they’ll use a bike for a trip and not their car.
And this is where a good shopping trolley starts to become much more interesting than it first appears. If you can walk to the shops, wheel the same trolley around while you buy what you need, and then tow it home behind your bike, you have removed several of the annoying little obstacles that make people reach for the car keys. There is no backpack digging into your shoulders, no trying to balance milk and potatoes in a pannier that was clearly designed for a laptop, and no need to own a cargo bike just to bring home a proper shop. For short urban journeys, that kind of flexibility can be the difference between “I could cycle” and actually doing it.
And on that fateful day in South London, it may well have been one of these folks that I saw as I made my way to Asda…
The Shopping Trolley That Stopped Us in Our Tracks
Something caught my eye that day…
It was colourful. It was beautiful. It was functional. It was practical. It was floral. It was perfect.
It was a shopping bag.
Not just any shopping bag though. For me, it was THE shopping bag. The shopping bag that would make me go to Ikea on a Sunday, because now matter how awful a shopping experience you can imagine, with this bag, it would be a pleasure.
A pleasure for me, but also for everyone else in the shop. For they would also get to see the bag, and their day would be brightened. They would become quantitatively happier. They would be better people.
By now I had been standing, mouth open in front of Asda for maybe three hours. A small puddle had formed from my Homer-in-front-of-a-donut-shop drooling.
People had begun to be concerned. Security had been called.
As I emerged from my stupor and my focus receded from the bag, I began to notice that it wasn’t just a bag. Oh no, there was more…
The bag sat upon a trolley!
I wouldn’t have to besmirch the bag against hard pavements, it would sit upon its very own pedestal. As it deserved!
And yes, this trolley was attached to a bike. Any bike. Maybe even my bike.
That two-in-one idea is really the clever bit. On foot, it behaves like a normal shopping trolley: upright, easy to pull, easy to take into the shop and easy to park beside you while you decide whether you genuinely need another houseplant. On the bike, the trolley becomes useful cargo space without permanently turning your bicycle into a utility vehicle. Arrive at the shops, disconnect it, walk in with it, load the bag, reconnect and ride home. For anyone combining cycling with trains, buses or walking, it also makes far more sense than a trailer that is brilliant behind the bike but rather less charming when you are trying to get it through a café doorway.
Overwhelmed, I began to fall to the floor.
But I was caught in the warm, strong embrace of the Goddess who owned this bag and the trolley upon which it rested. She nursed me back to consciousness and carried me to the beautiful world of Andersen Shopper Manufaktur. I was soon in the presence of the Creators of this divine shopping bag. Via email. In the earthly form of their regional sales representative.
I now began to play it cool. Obviously. After all, we want to make sure we get the best value we can for our customers, so I couldn’t possibly let on that I was sold on their products at whatever price they might ask for them.
How Andersen Shopper Manufaktur Began
So, he sat me on his knee and began to tell me the story of Andersen Shopper Manufaktur.
Once upon a time, in Germany in 1958, Günter and Christa Andersen heard about rolling shopping trolleys from their Danish friend, Morten. They thought the idea had some merit - after all, who wants to carry their shopping when they can roll it.
They had some space going spare in their stable, so they bought some trolleys and advertised them for sale.
It was tough going. Local folk thought the idea fanciful and they became figures of fun, wheeling their stuff up and down the high street like lunatics.
But then word spread that they had sold 25 of these strange contraptions. People were seen fearlessly wheeling their shopping, some without covering their faces!
Then it hit Günter and Christa - “we can make these things ourselves!”
Günter makes a deal with a local steel supplier and started to saw and bend the tubes himself. The first Andersen Shopper, which already had many of the familiar characteristics of today's trolley, was launched upon the unsuspecting, carrying-their-bags-in-their-hands public of Germany.
I would love to tell you that Günter and Christa are still in the stable, bending steel themselves. But their trolleys became rather popular and they are now onto their second factory, each one bigger than the last. And bigger than the stable.
It was in 1995 that they realised they could develop a hitch to hook their trolleys up to bikes - a stroke of luck for Hitchabike, if we’re honest, since hitching things to bikes is kind of what we do - and now most of the trolleys that Andersen make can be towed by bike thanks to their specially designed couplings. Or hitches, if you prefer!
Why Andersen Trolleys Work So Well with Bikes
Three principles guide Andersen in their manufacture of their shopping trolleys for bikes:
- Sustainability is at the core of their business, and with more and more people switching from cars to bicycles for everyday tasks like shopping, helping people to achieve this just makes sense.
- They recognise that their customers want to use their bikes in as flexible a way as possible, which is why their coupling system is as simple as possible, so it’s quick and easy to use. The design also means that you can continue to use your pannier rack (if you have one) even when the trolley is attached.
- Andersen know that we don’t all have huge amounts of space to store stuff these days, so their trolleys are designed with storage in mind - the bag and wheels can be quickly removed and folded away with the trolley.
There is one practical thing worth knowing before buying the bike fittings. The Andersen system uses a trolley-side adaptor and a bicycle-side coupling, so the correct set-up depends on both the Shopper frame and the bike you want to tow it with. Rear luggage racks, frame shapes and e-bike battery positions are not all identical, despite the cycling industry’s occasional optimism about the word “standard”. It is therefore worth checking compatibility before ordering rather than discovering at the kitchen table that two perfectly good pieces of equipment have no intention of speaking to one another. Once the right fittings are installed, the attraction is that the Shopper can switch between walking and cycling use quickly while the bicycle remains useful for normal everyday riding. Read the full buyers guide and choose the right Andersen trolley & set up that works for you.
It’s kind of difficult to explain how simple their system is in words, so we uploaded a nice video for you to see it in action here:
Over the coming weeks we will go into more depth about individual Andersen trolleys, helping you choose the right one for your needs. We might even do an unboxing video when we get our next one - we got a bit excited when the last one arrived and forgot to make a video, we just hitched it on and went to the shops!
For now, you can check out our Andersen Shopping Bike Trolley Range here and transform your ride to the shops!
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