Values
Equal access to transport. This sword cuts both ways: Predictably, it means that all people should have the option of moving themselves and their goods in a fast, efficient, health promoting way; that all humans should be free from lives of extreme physical drudgery; that moving and traveling means discovering, a uniquely human experience that should be nurtured. But it also means that the citizens of the "developed" world need not be confined by the drudgery of the gridlocked automobile; that they should have the opportunity to feel the freedom of the bicycle; that there is a middle road where all can ride cheaply, happily, healthfully, freely.
Beauty. You may notice frequent references to "beauty" on this Web site. We think that despite the efforts of Xtracycle to do what's "good" and "right" for the world, in reality it's difficult or impossible to know what's right and what's good. It may seem good to buy a poor Kenyan woman a cargo bicycle so she can make better use of the time she traditionally spends carrying water on her head while also saving the purchase price of the bike to spend on other necessities. Then again, perhaps if she pays for it by taking out a small loan she'll value it more and put it to more productive use. Or maybe having a sturdy bike will enable her to go farther afield to gather firewood and therefore concern herself less with getting a more efficient cookstove, and this will in turn place greater demands on her local forest. Such uncertainty leads to a bit of a quandary: we want to devote our lives to good and truth and doing what's right, but more often than not it's really beyond our ability to divine these qualities from life.
And so we turn to beauty, an aesthetic, viscerally experienced phenomenon that often transcends right/wrong, good/bad, true/untrue dilemmas and reaches right into the heart of the basic human condition. It is beautiful to imagine a liberated woman riding down a dirt path with a firewood-loaded Xtracycle SUB. So when we are failed by empirical or philosophical analyses, we turn to beauty for guiding inspiration.
Support lives and communities; minimize harm. We believe in using business as a tool for beauty. That means that as a company we endeavor to create durable products that are more than useful—that are essential for the creation of a new, more sustainable society; meaningful, rewarding employment; a positive community presence; and an efficient means of reaching and helping the world's less fortunate. What's more we hope to be a model for others to follow by showing that such a values-driven business itself can be sustainable; which means first, that it must be profitable and thereby persist, and second, that our manufacturing must eventually be a closed-loop process that produces no waste and uses only renewable resources and energy.
De-emphasize consumption. Buy less, use less, live more. We believe that consumption for consumption's sake does not nourish the human spirit. What's more, the buying and discarding of stuff exacts an enormous toll on the systems of the Earth. We in the industrialized nations are stuck on a treadmill; we work more to buy more things to make us more happy—but often not only don't we get happier but we're left without time to pursue true sources of fulfillment. Our company believes in stepping off the material acquisition treadmill to focus our lives instead on restorative, humanistic, social, spiritual paths of meaning.Ironically, this Web site is designed to make you want to buy an Xtracycle SUB™. We think it's a wonderfully useful machine with amazing potential—but that doesn't mean you should buy one! First ask yourself if you would really use it. Would it enable you to depend less on polluting forms of transportation? Would it make you enjoy running errands more? Would you carry your boyfriend on back? Or would it just collect dust in your garage?
One aspect of minimizing consumption is avoiding disposable items. To this end we endeavor to make all of our products of such high quality that you never have to recycle them.
Quality. Integrity. Openness. Humility. Respect. Optimism. Rule breaking. Overconfidence. These are the values that guide our day-to-day activities and relationships. They keep us proud of our work, thinking fresh ideas, aware of our shortcomings, upbeat about the human prospect, palatable to those who don't share our views, trustworthy to our customers, excited about our jobs, and ready for any challenge.
