Roadtrippers alum launches international bike donation company

Two weeks ago, Cincinnati native and Roadtrippers veteran Chelsea Koglmeier decided to pursue her dream.
 
Part of the original team of six who turned Roadtrippers from a startup to a success story, she decided to leave her position at the growing Cincinnati company in order to pursue an idea she had while studying in Uganda in college.
 
While in Africa, Koglmeier noticed a staggering problem with transportation. The lack of viable transport between areas could mean the difference between employed and not employed, fed or unfed.

Koglmeier also noticed how empowering something as simple as a bicycle could be for people in these developing countries.
Chelsea Koglmeier 
"I began to see the power of bicycles to unlock opportunities," she says.
 
Then, after being accepted into the Clinton Global Initiative Conference while at Duke University, Koglmeier had the opportunity to hear a speech by the founder of Tom's shoes, Blake Mycoskie.
 
"I heard him speak and immediately thought, 'What a wonderful place the world would be if every company had a double bottom line,'" Koglmeier says.
 
The double bottom line Koglmeier speaks of involves a company's commitment to both for-profit and non-profit missions. Tom's has done it with their "buy a pair, give a pair" shoes model; Warby Parker has done it with eyewear.
 
Koglmeier left her Roadtrippers position and is now working full-time to accomplish the same thing that Tom's and Warby Parker did, only with bicycles. Her company is Bikes O.R.O.: Bikes of Reckless Optimism.
 
"Because of the rise of the socially conscious consumer," she says, "why not create a sustainable link of capital between one side of the spectrum (the for-profit) and the other (non-profit)?"
 
Koglmeier is currently in the process of establishing a L3C business — a unique fusion of an LLC and a 501c3 non-profit. Ohio doesn't recognize the model yet, but states like Vermont have long embraced the unique business category. Though she may file in another state, Koglmeier does intend to be in Cincinnati for a while to establish the business.
 
So far, she has a simple website that outlines the company's bottom line and informs interested parties as to how they can get involved. By mid-summer, she plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to start acquiring bikes.
 
Bikes O.R.O. will start with three commuter bicycles of high quality and affordability made by a skilled Australian bike maker with whom Koglmeier has worked before. Intrigued customers buy a bike through Bikes O.R.O., and the profits from that purchase are immediately donated to a non-profit organization in Africa (Koglmeier is already working with several of them). That organization would then present a recycled, fully-functioning bike to a person in need.
 
Koglmeier recognizes the hurdles involved — bike production has a much higher overhead than shoes or sunglasses — but she's more than prepared for the risk and the challenge. Plus she was invited to the Y Combinator Female Founders Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 21 — an entire event dedicated to encouraging women in tech.
 
"If people want to send extra resources to me because I'm a girl, I'm super down," she says.
 
For now, Koglmeier is working full-time on getting the business off the ground. Though she's not selling bikes yet, the process is moving quickly and we should be hearing more from Bikes O.R.O. in the coming months.