FTN Motion co-founders Kendall Bristow and Luke Sinclair with general manager Michel Roncara at the company's new headquarters in Te Rapa, Hamilton. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
Wellington-born electric motorbike brand FTN Motion moved to Hamilton in January. The Waikato Herald had a sneak peek at its new workshop and a chat about its move and upcoming highlights.
Despite having studied at the University of Waikato, FTN Motion co-founders Luke Sinclair and Kendall Bristow never thought they would move back to Hamilton.
Now, five months after having left Wellington, Sinclair and Bristow said their new headquarters in Te Rapa’s Brent Grieg Lane are everything they hoped for – and more.
“[Hamilton is] so much less stressful than Wellington. We were crammed into a tiny, one-way street with buildings all around, straight onto a busy footpath,” Sinclair said.
“We were tripping over each other, there was no space. Bikes were stored [in shelving] three storeys high.”
FTN Motion was founded by Sinclair, Bristow and Saskia Thornton in 2020 with the mission to reduce congestion and decarbonise daily commutes.
The company launched the first New Zealand-made electric motorbike, the Streetdog, in 2021 from the capital it had and since then, it has grown rapidly. In November last year, FTN Motion announced it had outgrown its premises in Wellington’s Haining St and would move to the Tron.
“We’re proud to be Wellington-born and really wanted to make it work. We searched high and low for a bigger headquarters in Wellington, but we eventually found what we need in Hamilton,” Sinclair said.
“It’s a central hub and the [Ruakura] Inland Port connects us directly to Port of Auckland and Tauranga.”
Hamilton has undergone some changes in the past few years: it has recently been crowned New Zealand’s fastest-growing city and several big companies, including Kmart, Maersk and Big Chill Distribution, have made the move to town.
All of this didn’t go unnoticed by the FTN Motion founders.
“We’ve always associated Hamilton with being a scungy student ... coming to Hamilton not as a student, living in a house that has windows now [helped change that perspective],” Sinclair joked.
“Although we kinda already knew, there’s definitely more manufacturing going on in the [Waikato] area [than in Wellington]. There are more opportunities [here] than we expected to use local suppliers and manufacturers ... It’s been a massive win for the company.
“If we were going to continue to stay in Wellington, we would have had to look at getting the frames moved offshore ... but with the move to Hamilton, it’s actually given us the opportunity to keep it [in New Zealand].”
The team didn’t lose any time and is now gearing up to release their first production run of Streetdogs from Hamilton in October.
But not only that, in December, FTN Motion will release a new model, the Streetdog80, and prepare for the launch of both Streetdog models in Australia next year.
The traditional Streetdog has a top speed of 50km/h, but since its release people have asked if a faster version was on the cards.
The result: The Streetdog80, which has a top speed of 80km/h, meaning it will require riders to hold a motorcycle licence.
There are 165 Streetdogs on New Zealand roads and FTN Motion wants to get another 300 out across New Zealand and Australia in the current financial year.
Sinclair said the team was working hard to “amp up” production as the company hoped to produce 50 bikes a month. Last year, at the Wellington headquarters, it produced about 25 bikes a month.
“We’ve been getting everything set up over the last couple months and we’re making a range of improvements in terms of how we make the bikes ... which will also make the bike better and easier to service,” he said.
“And we started hiring as we’re also looking to build the team in Hamilton this year.”
FTN Motion currently has 11 staff across Hamilton and Wellington.
As if this wasn’t enough to keep them busy, the company was working on a surfboard rack for the Streetdog and on another, more secret project.
Sinclair was tight-lipped on what it would be but said the company had “aspirations” for another inner-city commute product which would be in the low-speed market.
“Something we think we can really scale ... But right now, the Streetdog is doing better than we ever thought it would.
“If you look back four years ago, we were two engineers [who] didn’t know how to run a business. It’s just amazing to see ... the response we’ve got from customers ... and how it’s actually changed their way of commuting.
“More than half [of customers] are using a Streetdog for their daily commute instead of a car ... It’s [become] a genuine daily use vehicle.”
While the majority of its customers were in Wellington and Auckland, FTN Motion has about five customers in the Waikato – something it hopes to change.
Most of its customer base was male and in the mid-30s to 50 age bracket.
“The interesting part is how diverse the group is in terms of their experience with motorcycles,” Sinclair said.
“We’ve got a good portion [of] motorcycle enthusiasts who own one or two motorcycles already, you know, Harley Davidson owners, Triumph owners, Ducati owners, but they just see [the Streetdog] as a perfect commuter for ... round about town.
“Then we’ve got a decent portion of customers who have ridden motorcycles in the past and see this as an opportunity to get back into it.
“And then we’ve got another [group] who ... [have] never ridden [a motorbike] before, but always loved the idea of owning a motorcycle.”
He said the core drivers for buying a Streetdog were style, sustainability and the fact it was New Zealand-built.
Sinclair said the Streetdog’s design was inspired by classic motorbikes.
“We always thought this style was cool.
“And we had no money when we started ... which drives you towards simplicity and ... if you look towards those early designs [of motorcycles] they are so simple and that’s the beauty of them.
“That actually works really well with electric, because the electric ... drivetrain is incredibly simple.”
The year was 2015 and young engineering student Kendall Bristow, from the University of Waikato, was procrastinating.
“Instead of doing assignments, Kendall was looking at moped conversions,” Sinclair said.
With the help of Sinclair, Bristow modified a BMX bicycle into an electric-powered two-wheeler.
“We put it together in one weekend. You could drive all around town [with it], it did 35km/h ... it was 2015 in Pukekohe and people thought it was witchcraft, you know.”
Both of them were into motorbikes, such as Honda and Suzuki, and regularly had to battle Auckland traffic, as that’s where their families lived.
After creating the modified BMX bike, Bristow and Sinclair realised it might be an easy way to combat traffic congestion and clean up the commute by going electric.
The duo completed their first Streetdog prototype during lockdown in 2020. A few months after the prototype was created, Bristow and Sinclair were introduced to Amsterdam-based Saskia Thornton and together created FTN Motion.
They launched its New Zealand-made electric motorbike to the public in 2021.
Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength.
The Streetdog was named after Bristow’s dog Mac, whom he adopted from an SPCA shelter. “We thought so many motorbike companies use animals when naming their models – like the tiger – but no one used the dog yet.”
When asked what FTN stood for in the company’s name, Sinclair was reluctant to answer. “It’s very immature ... At uni, Kendall and I used to listen to this song, Township Rebellion [by Rage Against the Machine] and it was in the lyrics ... It stands for f*** the norm.”
Danielle Zollickhofer is a multimedia journalist and assistant news director at the Waikato Herald. She joined NZME in 2021 and is based in Hamilton.
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