Shih Hao Yeh / Sense 30 Co-Founder
What We Talk About When We Talk About Bikes
Ever since his father gave him an old Kawasaki, Shih harbored a love for fixing things. He loved retro bikes like nothing else, and when people suggested him to buy one, he insisted that building one is not the same. Some passion lasts a lifetime.
We all return to our first love perhaps. For ten years after graduation, Shih and his friends developed their career in the creative industry, but they eventually opened Sense 30 in the year they turned 30. Although not everyone is fond of Sense 30’s style, they stood out in their uniqueness. Shih said some even asked if they were cosplayers, but eventually, it grew on the doubters. Maybe one day we all become immune to judgements, and by then we truly live our dreams.
Why did you bring this style to Taiwan?
I used to play with this since back when I was a college student, so we didn’t really "brought it in". Some people love biking, but we turn it into a new style. For instance, many people around the world love collecting retro bikes. If we want to turn the retro style into our own style of bikes, we might make the link between the bike and clothing style and so on. (People can take this bike to picnic, or present it at a bike exhibition even.) So this is different than merely treating bikes as a tool for transportation. It is a ‘conversion’ we make when we design.
Why are you keen on take inspiration from other medium and incorporate different styles into bikes?
This may be related to me being a designer. My colleague Issa also works in the creative industry, so we often find something new and see what they can become. If we focus on making things more delicate, it won’t be very good. To make things more interesting, we must transform it into something completely novel. So we experimented a lot without knowing what it will turn into in the end. For our clothing line, we basically want to make gentlemen style apparel, so we looked at how people in Britain and old European ride their bikes. A lot of people may find it really strange, or even thought that we are cosplayers. However, as time went by, more and more people found it pretty cool, and gave it a go.
How did you fall in love with this style?
I started to fall in love with the retro style way back in high school. People used to ride only scooters and I found it rather boring - everyone is doing the same thing. One day, my dad gave me an old, broken motorcycle. I thought that it would be really cool if I work on it a little. My skills are unpolished back then, and I spent 3 months on the bike. I found that ever since I was young, I love to remake and repair things. Someone said to me “Just buy a retro-bike if you love this style.” But it is just not the same. We fall in love with things when we work on it, studying its details and history. Like our “commuter series”, we want to use colors of the 60's, like white or light blue colors of Vespa. These colors tell a story. There are different colors for different eras, so some colors naturally have a retro-feel to it. It is not me randomly choose some colors that are trendy nowadays.
Some see bikes as merely a tool for transportation, or just something for sports, so we should care about its function and nothing else. What are your thoughts on this?
Actually, I don’t really like sports. Some people go biking in order to exercise. They think that bike is about ‘power’, and they focus on speed and the weight of a bike. However, we think that a bike is the something ‘romantic’. We see it as a piece of art; we want to make something special out of it. I think that the romance of bike is more direct to most people. When we see something beautiful, we find it likable, then we want to learn about its use and function.The sportive crowd may be more specialized, and they will study the tires and brands of bike. I think that for the average person those are too technical and not as ‘direct’. We want to focus on things that people can get a direct visual feel of, like the appearance of a bike, the clothes to ride the bike with, or the place for biking.
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Video Interview by Iris Cheung
Text by Iris Cheung
Sense 30
No. 40, Lane 417, Guangfu South Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City, Taiwan 110
