The Story Behind Helemill
We regard ourselves as very lucky; we live and work in a lovely environment and we deal in a small number of select products that are both beneficial and beautiful. We have a large and growing number of customers who like what we do and how we do it and keep coming back. You should get a good experience if you phone for advice - we love our products, we like sharing our experiences and we are regularly told how enthusiatic and helpful we are.
Helemill is a small family run business based from an office in the grounds of our home, Hele Mill, near Bude on the North Cornwall coast. There are three members of staff; Maggie Shaw, who works full-time and Mike Shaw and Hayley Forward who help part-time.
The idea for the business was conceived in early 2004. We became interested in balance bikes when our first son, Harry, was about 18 months old. A friend, locally, had bought one whilst in Germany and as soon as we saw her little boy effortlessly cruising around in perfect balance, in harmony on something that was patently 'good' but also looked beautiful, our jaws dropped, we had one of those 'Harry HAS to have one of those' moments and since then we have become fanatical evangelists. Harry was too young for one at that point, but when he was 2½ we started looking round for one and realised that there were only a couple of companies selling them both from shops and online, with the products buried away, deep inside confusing websites full of bike parts.
We resolved to make a new website, dedicated to the German balance bikes, with large pictures and helpful descriptions. Mike built the first website as a guinea pig for another project he was working on and during the first week we sold 6 bikes. We knew immediately that we were becoming involved in the dawning of a quiet revolution, a 200yr-old 'new' way of learning to ride a bike, a great way to get kids active and mobile at a very young age.
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What's Happened Since?
We quickly established ourselves as the favourite place to buy the German pedal-free balance bikes - we were the top seller in the UK every year since 2004.
However, with the collapse of the pound against the Euro in 2008, we feared that the German brand had become just too expensive, their most popular model had gone up from £120 a year ago to £180 pounds now! We had always resisted supplying anything else knowing that the alternatives left much to be desired. We have many anecdotes from our customers coming to us with tales of woe and wasted money, replacing their awful lookalikes with the real thing.
Things have changed in the last few months with British company Early Rider now looking set to overtake the German model as the no.1 wooden bike on the market. Cool styling coupled with no-compromise quality at a reasonable price (£85-£110) and a 2 year manufacturer warranty all add up to make Early Rider the new first choice for our customers.
It didn't end there - we also took on the Adventure Zooom manufactured by another reputable British company, Ridgeback. Also known as Scoot, the Zooom is a great alternative to the German aluminium model, but at a much more affordable price - just £85. Once again though, as you'd expect from Ridgeback, there are no quality shortcuts, just a good looking bike that ticks all the boxes for learning to ride the natural way - it even has a brake!
So we have now transformed to the UK's premier one-stop supplier of top-drawer learner bikes offering a choice of options to suit all budgets but always with no compromise on quality.
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