Not familiar with this brand? Dont blame you. They are a young company doing great things out of the UK.
Our relationship with them started when one of our great ex-staff members James Crossland started talking about the company when he was still working for us. James was from Sheffield, as is Airdrop. He had kept in touch with Ed Brazier (founder and sole employ of Airdrop at the time).
James ended up heading back to the UK after doing a few seasons in Queenstown with us and ended up getting a job with Airdrop. James had a background in designing bikes and knows a thing or two about what makes a great bike, it also helps he can shred hard too (James hold the current record of 1000 laps of Queenstown Bike Park in a season).
We kept in touch with James and my interest grew in the brand once I started seeing what great stuff they were doing. One look at their website and you are drawn in to the obvious passion that Ed has for the company. They are very open with their customers and very open in what they believe makes a great bike.
It wasnt long before I had an Edit V2 on order and it was on its way to NZ.
I loved the bike straight away. I have always loved having something different and supporting the smaller companies. Getting this as a frame only option was a chance to build up something unique to me and pic and choose the parts I wanted. There are not many brands that give you that opportunity to buy just a frame and go nuts on the build.
I rode my V2 for over a year with not a single problem, it was a joy. I deliberately treated the bike with less care than I normally would to see how it lasted as was interested in seeing if it could be a possibility to bring these awesome bikes to NZ.
I spoke to Ed and James at Airdrop about the possibility and they seemed keen as they did get lots of interest from NZ. But we had to wait a bit for the next version of the Edit to come into production before we could start moving forward.
I got some sneak previews of the new Edit through its development process and was so excited by it. I wanted one as soon as they were available so I could start seeing what it could do. This finally happened in April 2019 towards the end of our summer.
The V3 had seen a few tweaks over the V2 version I had. Boost hub spacing, metric shock with trunion mount, the reach and BB numbers had changed. But the biggest thing was the seat tube angle which had been steepend by quite a bit.
The first week of riding on the Edit V3 had me grinning ear to ear and to be honest it still does. Snappy, playful, composed, confidence inspiring and great lines. Just gets on with the job in had. I run my V3 with. 170mm fork and coil rear shock to better suits the riding we have in Queenstown.
Stock is slowly starting to roll into NZ though us and we have a few very happy customers already. The best thing about the process of getting an Airdrop is you are always going to be getting a unique bike, no two are the same and this is what I love about it, it excited me every time I work through a build with someone.
For more info see our Airdrop Bikes page of our website.