Read how a couple of mates on a hike went from slapping a battery on a BMX and adding an electric motor to creating FTN Motion. Only in New Zealand! Photos: JPMedia/FTN Motion
From a backyard BMX experiment to NZ’s newest motorcycle manufacturer, Luke Sinclair’s journey has been anything but conventional. Now, as FTN Motion launches its Streetdog range in Australia, he reflects on the road that led him here and what’s next for the brand…
Luke Sinclair (standing) and Kendall Bristow chilling at Bondi with an FTN Motion Streetdog80 earlier this year.
Luke Sinclair never wanted to start a business. Growing up, he saw firsthand the challenges his parents faced launching a company. “I just remember thinking there’s no way I want to do that,” he says. “But then, I don’t know… I just sort of found myself here”.
Read our FTN Streetdog80 review here…
‘Here’ is FTN Motion, the electric motorcycle company he co-founded with his mate and fellow engineer Kendall Bristow. The ‘now’ is the launch of the Streetdog50 and Streetdog80 in Australia, two minimalist, retro-inspired electric motorcycles that we recently rode in Sydney and Melbourne.
Luke and Kendall in the thinking room. Being Kiwis, we reckon heaps of beers were probably consumed by the mates while the thinking was happening. “I have an idea, let’s fit an electric motor to this BMX, then create a legitimate motorcycle brand. Here, hold my beer”…
Luke, 35, grew up on a farm in New Zealand between Hamilton and Auckland and Kendall grew up just out of town. The two met at school and later studied mechanical engineering together at university. It was during a break from their studies when they tackled the then-new Te Araroa trail, that would end up shaping their outlook and ultimately their futures.
Read our electric bike reviews here…
“We ended up walking the length of New Zealand in our university break. It was about 100 days. We both come from pretty small towns, so that was a big thing for us – just meeting lots of interesting people, and we started thinking a bit bigger about the world, and that we wanted to do something with a bit more impact”.
The spark
Kendall’s interest turned to electric conversions of mopeds. “He’d been watching YouTube videos, and one day we decided to put one together,” Luke recalls, and their first attempt was a crude but surprisingly functional machine. “We found an old BMX frame in some dump in Aukland, bought some old batteries off Trade Me, bought a spot welder, made a battery pack, glad-wrapped the thing to the frame, found an old motor and, yeah, it was a pretty ugly machine”.
It was between the simplicity of the creation and the reaction from onlookers as they rode the prototype Pukekohe, that they very quickly realised they were on to something.
“There weren’t any e-bikes around back then and we were like, why hasn’t anyone done this before? We were ripping around Pukekohe at 40 kays an hour, and people were turning their heads, they just hadn’t seen anything like that before”.
The hustle
They saw an opportunity, but were realistic in terms of the technology available at the time, and were careful not to get ahead of themselves in case the advancing tech caught up and overtook their idea.
“Battery technology even back then, you were going to out-compete that low-speed commuter motorcycle already,” he explained. “So we were looking at the 50cc scooters, the moped class, but then into the 125 and 150cc class as well.” And they’re the two categories the resulting Streetdog50 and Streetdog80 machines fall into.
“Already, that was going to be the sweet spot for battery technology and where you could have a product that’s still lightweight, but all of a sudden, you know, just way easier to use”.
“Kendo built his own 3D printer and so we printed a lot of parts, and we found local suppliers to help us out.”
New Zealand’s remoteness unearthed some of that iconic Kiwi ingenuity in the pair, with Luke conceding that sourcing parts was one of their biggest challenges. “If you want to order something from offshore, you’ve got to wait a month and a half, and me and Kendo are not the best at forward thinking, so you do end up making a lot of things yourself,” Luke says.
“Kendo built his own 3D printer and so we printed a lot of parts, and we found local suppliers to help us out.” That hands-on approach shaped the company’s design ethos. And just as they were preparing for their first production run, along came Covid and the global lockdown.
“That was really challenging. All the prices went up, it was so hard to find anything. That was a bit of a nightmare,” he recalled. But that same remoteness that caused adversity in the beginning is something that Luke now credits to FTN’s success.
“I think the big strength of being in New Zealand is in terms of getting the product to market and being close to customers in that initial innovation phase,” he explains. “We went through that really fast because New Zealand is so tight-knit.
“It’s pretty easy to find your way through the system. And so we actually got product on the road much faster than I think a lot of other companies did. And sort of reiterated a lot faster as well just by having a really close connection to our customers.
“All of our first customers were in Wellington. So they would drop in and tell us that this thing’s not working, or this thing’s broken, or this sucks. And so I think after four years now we’ve been going, we’re already onto our third-generation product”.
A third co-founder, Saskia Thornton, joined the team shortly after the first prototype was developed, bringing over a decade of experience in brand and product development.
Left to Right: Kendall Bristow, Luke Sinclair and Saskia Thornton, team FTN Motion.
Growing up fast
When asked just how big a milestone launching in Australia feels after finishing the 100-day walk back in 2012, Luke admits it’s a special moment in his and the brand’s history.
“We’ve been talking about it for years, really, when you think of it. It’s pretty big,” he says. But even with years of planning, there’s still that edge of uncertainty. “You just don’t know how it’s going to be received, so it’s, yeah, it’s quite a relief… there’s a fair few punters lining up to buy one already”.
FTN’s Australian journey kicked off at the Everything Electric show in Sydney.
“We’re living in a pretty small town and I hadn’t been to Sydney in ages… I’d just forgotten how many people there are, how big it is. I was like, wow, okay, yeah, this is definitely a step up. And we should be able to sell some bikes here. I haven’t actually ever been to Melbourne, but everyone keeps telling us that the bike’s going to do better in Melbourne, so excited to see how it goes there”.
But for now, they’re keeping their feet on the ground and the scope tight. And a small-batch approach that’s deliberate.
“We do hand-build the bikes to order… at the moment our capacity’s at about five bikes a week, with a couple of guys on the floor. But this year is about… really focusing on getting the product right, looking after our first fleet of bikes in New Zealand and nailing the Australia launch.
“We’re basing ourselves at a premium price point with a premium product… so we’ve really got to get it right with the whole customer experience. And, yeah, the best way to undo all that is to grow too fast and trying to do a million things all at once”.
What’s next?
It’s no secret that complying with Australia’s strict Design Rules in order to be able to register vehicles for legal use on Australian roads isn’t easy. “Everybody just keeps saying this,” Luke says, when asked about Australia’s notorious ADR process. “But I think we were very lucky”. Luck helps, but so does planning. “We also, from day one, did design a lot of the bike to be European compliant, so the lighting and stuff like that. So we did our homework before we started the process”.
FTN Motion is small brand, hand-building electric commuters that make really good sense for Australians and New Zealanders…
Of course that European compliance wasn’t just about facilitating an easier launch onto the Australian market, and I ask if a European launch is on the horizon. “That’ll be the goal,” he confirms. “I think that’ll be the next step for us, yeah”. Because once the bike meets EU standards, the world opens up. “Not just for Europe, but then you start to be ready to really take on all sorts of markets”.
Three’s a crowd
I couldn’t end the conversation without pointing out that FTN is now the third Antipodean two-wheel electric brand, following in the wheel tracks of both Michelle Nazarri, who launched Fonz back in in 2010 and who released her first scooter four years later, and Dennis Savic, whose higher-performance Savic C-Series is all-but ready for production.
He’s had a brief chat with Dennis Savic, the guy behind the Savic Motorcycles brand in Australia. “But I’d love to talk to Michelle sometime, because, I mean, Fonz have been in the game for quite a while now. They’ve done a lot of things and learnt a lot of the lessons we’re about to learn, probably”.
But in the meantime, FTN Motion is small brand, hand-building electric commuters that make really good sense for Australians and New Zealanders looking for a way to navigate urban mobility in an efficient and stylish manner.
From a glad-wrapped BMX to a clever roadbike with goals of European-compliance, FTN Motion’s story is still in its early chapters – but if Luke Sinclair’s intelligence and quiet confidence is anything to go by, the sequel is already forming.
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