About XJD

XJD, and twenty-seven summers of it

We started in 1996 making a single kids tricycle and we now make nine kinds of thing, all of them for the years between a first birthday and a fourteenth. This page is the long version.

What we make now

Nine shelves. An XJD toddler bike and a trike with a push handle for the months before a child can steer. A balance bike for the two years after that. Then the first pedal bike, with training wheels, 12 through 20 inch, with an adjustable seat and a chain guard. Then 20 inch BMX frames, and 24 and 26 inch bicycles with 21 speeds for a big kid who wants to get somewhere.

Beside the bikes sit the kids helmets. A kids bike helmet comes in two shells and six colourways, including the Pink Flowers print that girls in our test group pick first; the same shell covers scooter laps, skate ramps and school sports days. Then pad sets with knee, elbow and wrist protective gear in one carton, and a 3-wheel scooter with wheels that light up as they spin.

And the things that are not bikes at all. A toddler slide with a climbing ramp and a hoop, from five functions to thirteen, folding flat for a flat with no garden. Slide and swing sets for a lawn with two children on it, which is where most of the play on this list happens. And a powered ride on toy: a wiggle car at six volts and a go-kart at twelve, both with lights and a parent remote control.

1996, and a tricycle

The first thing with our name on it was a pressed-steel kids trike with a wooden seat, sold in one colour, red. It was heavy, it was indestructible, and the drawings for the front fork survived more or less unchanged into the tricycle we sell today, which is the only piece of corporate romance on this page.

What we learned in the first decade was that children are not small adults and a toy is not a small bike. A one year old needs a push handle and a footrest. A three year old needs a seat that drops. A seven year old needs a frame that can be dropped on concrete and ridden home.

The second decade went into moulds. Most of what we make is now a steel frame plus moulded parts, which is why a slide and a bike share a parts bin and why a replacement wheel costs what it should.

How we test

Badly, by laboratory standards, and well by every other one. Every new frame goes to a group of families for a summer: outdoor every day, indoor when it rains, no instructions and no supervision beyond the usual. We get the bikes back in September, with the grips chewed and the paint gone, and we look at what broke.

Then the formal part: static load to the rated weight plus a margin, drop tests on the helmets, pinch and entrapment checks on anything with a hinge, and small-parts testing on everything intended for a baby or a toddler.

The things that come back broken are almost never the things we worried about. It is the bell, the footrest, the basket clip. Those get redrawn; the frames rarely do.

• Founded 1996, nine product groups
• Seventy-four models, around two hundred options
• Prices and stock read from the live listing
• Reviews quoted, never written by us
• One mailbox, answered in writing

What a colourway means here

Blue, pink, purple, white, black and red, plus two prints. Each colour of each model is priced on its own, because the moulds and the volumes differ, which is why a blue slide and a pink one of the same model are sometimes eight dollars apart.

We do not have a girls range and a boys range. We have a Pink Flowers print and a plain black one and a child who has an opinion, and in our experience the opinion is the only thing that gets a helmet worn.

Prints run out and do not always come back. If a pattern matters to a child, that is the one to order now rather than at the next birthday.

What this driveway is

Every XJD model on sale in the United States, grouped the way a family shops: by what the child can do, not by what the warehouse calls it. Seventy-four models and around two hundred buyable size and colour options.

Each model page carries the age range, the rated weight, the saddle or deck height where we have it, the full size list, and the current price of every colour under that model. The price is read from the live listing each time this is rebuilt, so what you see here is what it costs today and not what it cost in the spring.

Stock is read the same way. Where something has sold out we say so, and where a run is nearly gone we say that too, which is more useful than a date we cannot keep.

The eight models featured on the front page are chosen by hand, not by what sells best: one from most shelves, so a visitor who lands cold can see the whole range in one screen. A powered ride on car and a pedal bike are never the same week, because the two answer different questions.

What we will not do

We do not invent reviews. Where a model page has quotes under it, the words were written by someone who bought that model, and where a model has no quotes the page says nothing, which happens on our BMX frames and one of the slides.

We do not print an age on a bike and hope. Every bike page gives the measurement we would use instead, which is inseam, and a short list of what to look for.

We do not sell an extra large slide as a gift for a one year old just because the box says ages one and up. Where a model only makes sense for a specific age, the page says which, and the pages for the smallest frames say so twice.

The parts of this we are still bad at

Instructions. Our assembly sheets are better than they were and still worse than they should be, and the honest workaround is that the modular design means almost nothing can be assembled in the wrong order.

Spares for discontinued models. A bike from 2014 can usually be fixed from the current parts bin and sometimes cannot, and we would rather say that than pretend.

Indoor noise. A plastic slide on a wooden floor at seven in the morning is a design problem we have not solved. Felt pads under the feet help and we should ship them.

Where to write

One mailbox, read by two people. Sizing, fit, a part that arrived bent, a wheel that will not sit square: those we can answer, usually inside a working day, in writing.

What we cannot do from here is look up an order. Delivery dates, tracking, invoices and anything about a payment live with the store you bought from, on the order page, and they will have it in front of them while we would be guessing.

If something you bought is unsafe rather than merely annoying, write anyway and say so in the first line. Those get read first.