Bikepacking Belgium. Concepstore for biketraveling and bikepacking

Thomas van Bunder recently opened a bikepacking/ biketraveling concept store in Antwerp, Belgium. Wouter van Engelen is the store keeper and experienced bike traveler. This is the first specialised bikepacking store in Belgium.

Check: https://www.bikepacking-belgium.be/ for more info

#bikepacking #biketravel #conceptstore

hello i’m Wauter van Engeler i’m 41 years old my 
professional career started about three years ago I was a customer at this bike shop and in 
my spare time i was helping out a little bit picking up the phone cleaning some 
bikes and when i told the guy from the bike store that i wanted to go cycling 
for half a year he was like so when you’re going to come back what are you going to do 
because i quit my job to cycle half a year i don’t know what i’m going to do 
so he offered me a job when i came back and that’s how my professional career 
started it was amazing and yeah really cool. The reason i came to antwerp to work here 
in the shop was because in a previous shop i worked at Thomas became a customer because 
we were selling Velotraum. That’s a brand he really was interested in and it was a 
lifelong dream of Thomas to open a bike shop specialized in touring bikes and we we 
we got friends there at the bike shop and at some point he asked me if i wanted to help 
him start up this shop and i was ready for a new adventure. The brands we sell are idworx, 
Velotraum and Sour. That are our german brands. idworx and Velotraum are really focused 
on touring bikes and then Sour we have as a an alternative a little bit more bike packing 
orientated brand and then our American brands are Salsa, Surly and Ritchey which where Salsa and 
Surly really are the touring bike brands and Ritchey is a little bit more the 
gravel and bike packing brand uh the biggest difference between travel bikes 
and city bikes is that a travel bike can handle bigger loads it isn’t too heavy has gears good 
brakes and most importantly dependable parts there’s nothing more annoying than if you are 
on a long trip and something breaks down. So a good travel bike the possibility of 
something breaking is really small. So yes dependable parts are really important 
on travel bikes. We would like to become a bike temple here that offers everything 
from the trip to the bike to the gear but at the moment we’re just focused on 
the bikes and the bags and everything that comes with the bike from water bottles 
to repair kits blocks and stuff like that