Briefly about 2down:
2ned is a new Danish cycling clothing brand created with an eye for quality, community and diversity based on our three important elements: The Clothing, The Magazine and The Club.

The clothing (launched in April): Throughout 2021, with the help of several recreational riders, we have developed our first collection "Ukendt", which is made of Italian fabrics that are sewn in BSCI-certified European factories.

The Magazine: Created for our followers with the aim of inspiring and helping Danish recreational riders to a better life on the bike. All content in the Magazine is, of course, completely free.

The Club: Created with social and community in mind. As a member of the club you receive a number of benefits, but the basic idea behind the club is to create a large Danish cycling community. Which means that we will arrange a number of Social Rides for club members throughout the year. A large part of 2ned is the opportunity to save with the Danish exercise riders, we always want to hear your opinion, so that together we can further develop the 2ned platform. That's why we would like to meet you.

Here you will find the story behind 2ned, which started with two green exercise riders falling in love with their new shared sport. But polish your reading glasses, we are in for a long read here. :)

2ned: From idea to reality

It all started one November day in 2020 with a conversation between two friends during a semi-cold and semi-long bike ride, later the conversation continued over coffee after the ride. The next day was a repeat. Bike ride, coffee, conversation. From there the conversation has never stopped.

It has to be bad before it gets good.
During a bike ride on a cold and dark November day back in 2020, my friend Thomas Overgaard and I had a conversation going. And let's be honest, the starting point for the conversation was not of a positive nature. The conversation was based on the stagnation or even decline that each of us had experienced in our working lives. The involuntary break that we had been involuntarily dictated.

My life could hardly be described as a working life. I was a journalism student, but studying felt more like work. A really, really bad job. Which eventually became too much, and sent me on leave after a minor mental breakdown. Overgaard had just been fired from his job as a salesman due to Corona. So in that way we were nowhere, but still in the same place in our lives. We were both on pause.

While I had a breakdown, Overgaard had not exactly been happy in his working life before the firing, that's my personal opinion. It was as if his self-confidence had suffered a blow, that the spark had disappeared. The firing might have actually been a redemption for him, that's my guess.

As you can probably imagine, it wasn't two friends in total balance who were cycling and chatting those days. However, it was two friends who were slowly and steadily getting back into balance. The paradox was that we had both felt much better while we had been on break. What was the reason for this? The only thing we had turned up was cycling.

I had always been a dedicated observer of the professional cycling scene, but I hadn't owned my racing bike for more than six months. And now I was starting to pay extra attention to what it gave me to be on the bike.

I discovered that the country roads were an excellent place to get rid of frustrations and bad thoughts. If I rode hard enough, there was no room for destructive thoughts. I experienced the same upside in the group rides, the destructiveness was gone when I was on my bike. For some inexplicable reason, I always felt better mentally during and after the ride, as if I had thrown all the mental garbage out there somewhere on the country roads. Whether I was alone in hilly terrain somewhere north of Aarhus, or in the crosswind along the west coast with friends, it was mental wellness, on a level I had not experienced before. Cycling really helped.

Infatuation and worry
The new shared love for cycling characterized the conversations in those November days, along with the dilemma that we were both "inbetween", because what was the next move? Overgaard, with his long experience in the sales industry, should he just move on to the next sales job? And I should just go back to study, structure and books? It was precisely now that we had gotten better, now that we were away from our previous everyday lives.

We had enough to think about, but a new concern arose. Our group rides. We were a group of friends who had created our own little unofficial cycling club over the summer. The club rides were the highlights for both of us, and we cycled with the group for a long period of time almost every weekend. The only problem was that more and more club members slowly dropped out. Of course, it was winter, not everyone felt like cycling in the cold. But several had put their bikes up for sale, or were considering doing so.

A priority we had a hard time understanding. They explained it by saying that cycling was too time-consuming. Not so much the rides, but everything around cycling. As a new rider, it was too time-consuming to become good at cycling, to a degree where you could take it out on the bike, they thought.

Timing and change
“ A timing that was absolutely world-class, ” as Jørn Mader described Bjarne Riis' all-important attack in yellow on Hautacam in 1996. Overgaard and I had the same timing in our November conversations. Because if the sun, moon and stars had not been completely aligned, our project with 2ned would never have become more than just talk. We are too conservative and too West Jutlandic for that anyway. But now the timing was perfect. We were on a break in life, we had discovered cycling, and we were frustrated with our comrades who did not find the same joy in cycling as ourselves. We felt that we had to do something.

" If you consistently spend your weekdays looking forward to the weekends, you should consider whether there is something in your life that you should change. Otherwise, you end up spending far too much of your life waiting. " I heard the quote in a podcast, I don't remember which one, or who said it, but the quote has stuck. And the quote filled a lot of our conversations in those November days. We wanted to change something. Wanted to improve something. Not just for ourselves, but for a large part of Danish recreational cyclists.

The idea began to take shape, we could create a new Danish cycling clothing brand, which in addition to delivering quality cycling clothing also offered a platform for Danish recreational cyclists who cultivated the social aspect, and a platform that made an effort to help with small and large questions to make life easier within the framework of the whole of Danish cycling. We began to believe that we could. At least we got the courage to try.

2ned takes its shape
We had discovered a number of things we wanted to do away with. Firstly, we ourselves might have had difficulty identifying with the image that was drawn of the typical recreational cyclist when we looked for cycling clothing. Models were used that looked like riders on their way to a grand tour. It was not an image that we recognized either from ourselves or from the cycling scene we encountered around the Danish roads. It was more like a relic from the fashion world.

We wanted to create a more nuanced image. A realistic image that appealed to the serious licensed rider, the weekend warrior and everything in between. To the experienced and the green recreational riders. To the great breadth and diversity in Danish cycling. To the whole.

Could we combine that with content on our platforms that was more than just advertising. Could we create content that could actually help and inspire recreational riders of all levels? We believed we could.

We thought about creating a community and a social platform for Danish recreational riders, where in addition to the clothes, they could also gain knowledge, inspiration and a community.

We believed that we could create a Danish cycling clothing brand with a focus on the social aspect, with respect for differences in level, that would appeal broadly, and that could inspire and help the majority of Danish recreational cyclists. But first we had to ask around in the cycling community.

The meeting with the “Ukendt Riders”
The decision was made, if we got a positive response around the country in the Danish cycling community, we would do it. We wanted to start a new Danish cycling clothing brand with a focus on all the recreational cyclists out there.

As the most impersonal thing in the world, we started with a survey. We formulated the questions we had in mind, and then we sent it out via Facebook. 24 hours later we had 200 responses from 200 cyclists, and to our delight, the vast majority of the responses were positive.

We divided the responses into two categories, the recreational riders we knew, and then the “Ukendt riders”. We did this to make sure that it wasn’t just friends and family who gave positive feedback. Fortunately, it was also positive across the board.

The reaction was as we had hoped, but we actually got even more out of it. We had long wondered what we should call all non-professionals who cycle in Denmark. Should we call them exercise riders, exercise cyclists, cycle exercisers, cyclists or something fifth. After the survey, the problem was solved. “The ukendt cyclists” became our Danish term for cyclists who do not ride professionally and do not make money from it, but simply cycle for fun. So that is the term for our entire target group.

From the digital to the real world
For us, it was of course not enough to simply take a digital survey with 200 responses for granted. We had to go out and meet the “ukendt riders” ourselves and hear their opinions.

We discovered how different riders were always ready to help. How we got invitations to unofficial bike races where we could talk to different riders at different levels and hear their opinion on what a new Danish cycling clothing brand should bring to the table before it could be interesting.

We also talked to cycling clubs and bike shops, and tried to incorporate the most common suggestions and ideas into our plan for what 2ned should look like both in terms of the clothing, but also in terms of the platform as a whole. It was in those conversations that the idea for the Magazine and the Club really began to germinate.

2down
We reached a point where we couldn't help but start seriously creating 2ned. The response and feedback was overwhelming. I dropped out of college, and Overgaard and I looked for part-time jobs that worked alongside our work with our new cycling clothing brand. But here we hadn't yet found the name for the brand. The 2ned name hadn't been found yet.

We went with the name “Simple Pleasure of Riding” for a few days, until Overgaard came up with a piece of cycling lingo: “2ned”. From there the discussions stopped, it couldn’t be called anything else. 2ned as in “slow down two”. For us, it described the perfect sense of community that can exist during group rides or social rides.

Cycling is one of the only places in the world of sports where you can actually practice your sport across levels, without the whole affair becoming completely indifferent to all parties involved. Of course, this involves some conditions before this can be done. The biggest and most important condition is that the best in the group slow down, yes, 2 down.

For us, 2ned is the feeling of community around cycling.

Starting today, 2down starts
With the 2ned name in place, with the positive feedback from the Danish cycling community and with the ambition to create Denmark's largest cycling community. Where quality cycling clothing, informative content via the Magazine and social rides via the 2ned Club go hand in hand, we started the hard work.

We have been in business for over a year now and are ready to share 2ned Magazine and 2ned Club with you. In April, 2ned cycling clothing will be launched. Starting today, 2ned is out in the open and not just part of an internal conversation. We look forward to showing you all of it.

Thank you for reading.

Vh
Henrik, 2down