New impetus for Coleen

The electric bicycle brand based at Technocité has just completed a successful fundraising campaign. The company plans to hire employees to produce these high-end bicycles whose forks and frames will be made from composite materials and produced in the Basque country.

In July, the brand Coleen received the Eurobike award at Eurobike, the biggest cycling show in the world, held in Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. This prize recognises the project led by Audrey Lefort and Thibault Halm, who have been based at Technocité since April 2017 and are developing a high-end electric bicycle with a streamlined, retro design.  

Several editions will be produced, all of which will be equipped with French motors that deliver speeds of between 25 and 45 km/h. Coleen will produce three electric bicycle models which will be sold in shops and on the brand's website. An application will provide statistics (battery, distance, recovered energy) in real time. "Everything will be manufactured in France except for a few aluminium parts that will come from Asia. The saddles will be produced by the Voltaire group in Izarbel and the frames will be made in the Basque country too. Our goal is to manage the whole production process within France in order to obtain the French Origin Guaranteed label," explains Audrey Lefort.

To finance the brand's commercial launch, series tools, approvals and working capital, Audrey Lefort and Thibault Halm launched a fundraising campaign on the SmartAngels platform. They raised nearly €500,000 as of late September and private investors have decided to support the start-up. "We're setting up a holding company to manage these funds and projects. We plan to hire an engineer in January 2019, and three more employees later in the year," adds Audrey Lefort.

Website: https://www.coleen-france.com