Justin Kosmides of Vela Bikes in Detroit and Chris Nolte of Propel Bikes in Brooklyn, N.Y., have joined forces to form Bloom, a supply chain solutions company for the light electric vehicle market such as e-bikes.
Bloom will work with partners across the micromobility industry to handle supply chain issues and provide new capacities for domestic contract manufacturing, assembly, delivery, and servicing.
The goal is for Bloom to offer its partner brands improved control over supply chain and significantly shorter production windows, all while bringing sustainable manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Bloom also has partnered with Newlab to launch its operations in Detroit’s Michigan Central in the Corktown neighborhood, founded in 1834. Newlab is located east of the former Michigan Central Depot, which Ford Motor Co. is converting into a campus for mobility innovation.
The Newlab space offers flexible, specialized manufacturing capabilities, and world-class prototyping equipment, with a rollout of additional physical expansions to be announced in 2024.
Bloom states it is actively working with a growing list of more than 25 mobility companies in various stages to explore the relocation of their manufacturing, logistics, and service to Bloom’s platform.
Bloom adds it started fundraising in the late summer of 2023, with the first round being oversubscribed. Based on the positive industry reception for a domestic system, Bloom is fundraising for future expansions in partnerships with a combination of private and public capital sources.
Bloom seeks to future-proof the electric mobility industry through vertical integration and collaboration and was launched by Kosmides and Nolte in response to the growth of light electric vehicle adoption and an ensuing demand for reliable, quality-built products.
The company adds it is working with the state of Michigan to lay the foundation of making the state the micromobility manufacturing capital of the country, positioning Bloom’s ecosystem to be a facilitator for the transportation industry.
Nolte, a pioneer e-bike retailer since 2011, who has opened bike shops in New York and L.A., while Kosmides, who joined São Paulo-based Vela Bikes in 2020 to expand the brand globally and helped shift their production center to Detroit, recognized the importance of interchangeable service parts for scalable national maintenance, as well as the benefit of domestic manufacturing and assembly to combat supply-chain bottlenecks and carbon emissions during the pandemic.
“Light electric vehicles like e-bikes are selling twice as fast in the U.S. as electric cars or trucks,” says Kosmides. “The industry recognizes the incredible opportunity to capture a massive movement entering the market and a once-in-a-generation adoption. With this growth comes pressure to prioritize short-term sales of cheaper products over a true lifecycle cost of ownership.
“As an industry, we’ve been focusing so much on growth without stepping back to properly evaluate the costs of what we’re building, and it has resulted in some prominent recent setbacks and failures of brands.”
Bloom executives see the company as a resource and platform for the industry to support and relieve the pain points, while offering the best American manufacturing and assembly options available. Bloom will offer customers transparency on the origins of their products and the use options available to them, helping to ensure the greatest potential for the micromobility revolution to change the way we haul, commute and travel sustainably.
“Bloom’s decision to launch its operations in Detroit is a testament to our state’s commitment to fostering cutting-edge mobility solutions and our ongoing mission to drive the future of transportation,” says Justine Johnson, chief mobility officer for the state of Michigan. “I am thrilled at the prospect of Bloom leveraging Detroit’s rich talent pool and robust industrial ecosystem to optimize production timelines and elevate the electrified micromobility sector.”
