Back in March we had a customer in the UK pre-order a backrest for his bike seat and he asked about a seat belt for Companion bike seat. He has an 8 year old son that he bought the bike seat and backrest for, and wanted to make sure he could be safely buckled-in while out on a bike ride. I told him that we didn't have anything available right then, but I would work start working on a solution once we got closer towards releasing the backrest for our bike seats.

Since we're about a month away from the first backrests being shipped out, I finally made it over to the hardware store to start working on a seat belt for the bike seat. Turns out my neighborhood hardware stores had everything I needed to make a fully functional, removable seat-belt for the bike seat that can be strapped  on to the the backrest.

I plan on doing some user-testing with this seat-belt over the next couple of weeks, and if it works well and is comfortable, I'll make these new seat-belts for the bike seat available for sale on the website soon after!

Illustrations for the backrest installation guide arrived this week as we gear up for the first shipment of bike seat backrests to go out! The backrests are designed to be installed and removed without needing any tools.

The complete installation guide for the backrest can be downloaded on our Installation and FAQ page.

The latest backrest prototype from the factory arrived today and it looks like we're ready to start manufacturing the backrests for Companion Bike Seat!

The new backrest worked like magic! We took the backrest out for a ride to Dolores Park for the day (just like everyone else in the Mission) and the backrest exceeded expectations. We brought the dog with us for the inaugural bike ride, and she enjoyed every minute of it. The backrest made it much easier to ride as a passenger, such that holding the dog in arms while riding to the park was a piece of cake.

I've let the factory know that we're a GO for manufacturing the bike seat backrests. As soon as we have a delivery date from the factory for the backrests we'll let you know!

We received some pictures from the factory this morning of prototype number three of the backrest, and things are definitely moving in the right direction. We noticed that the screws holding the cushion to the base-plate of the backrest frame are coming loose, so we're trying out a couple different ways to solve this. We should hopefully have this fixed in a week and shipping out to SF for inspection soon after!

We did some home-grown load testing to make sure that the backrest could support reasonable weight against it and it held up without a problem. We also filled a pannier with over 25 pounds of water and hung it on the side rail and there were no issues at all. It's very sturdy, and we have just a couple aesthetic elements to clean up to be ready for production.

As soon as the Chinese New Year holiday is finished the factory will start making a second prototype, accounting for all of our change-requests based on this prototype. Hopefully manufacturing won't be too far around the corner from there!

The factory is shipping this prototype out to us as we speak and we expect to receive it sometime next week. We'll provide an update as soon as we have this new prototype in hand. If all looks good, we'll start manufacturing right after Chinese New Year!

Our Indiegogo campaign finished up last night, helping us raise almost $4,300 to go towards the development of the backrest for our bike seats! Thank you to all of our supporters and backers in helping us exceed our campaign goal by over 100%. 

We continue to work with our factory on the backrest development. Here's a picture of the first prototype that the factory put together:

We're reviewing the functionality, installation, and durability of the prototype to make sure it meets our requirements. The factory will be shipping the backrest to us very soon. Once we've worked out all of the kinks with the design, manufacturing will begin, and we'll have our backrests available a couple of months later.

After a couple of weeks negotiating with our factory on pricing and going back and forth on the design, we're finally ready to move forward with prototyping our bike seat backrest! According to our latest quote, it will take the factory about 15 days to complete the first prototype, and we'll post some pictures of it as soon as we receive them. Hopefully we won't have to go through too many prototype iterations, and we'll begin manufacturing before the end of January next year. Once manufacturing begins, it will take about a month to complete, then another couple of weeks shipping across the Pacific to get here to California.

Below is the complete assembly specs for the backrest, with all of the components, both assembled and an exploded view. Initially, our backrests will only be available in black (same with our bike seats), though over time, we hope to offer multiple different colors for the frame color and for the cushion.