Black-owned outdoor business spotlight: Black Girls Do Bike
In honor of Black History Month, we’re spotlighting one Black-owned outdoor business per day. You can read the complete series here.
Monica Garrison, founder of Black Girls Do Bike sells snazzy cycling clothes for women of all shapes, sizes and colors to fund her advocacy work.
Courtesy
Owner: Monica Garrison
Year founded: 2013
What we do
Black Girls Do Bike (BGDB) exists to inspire more women, specifically women of color, to ride bikes, and we fund this work by sponsorship, contributions, and selling a variety of cycling swag in our shop designed to celebrate the body types and skin tones of women of color, including shorts, jerseys, jackets, and thermal bottoms. We are equally committed to creating more local BGDB chapters that invite new and old cyclists to join rides or cycling events at least once per month. We currently have 99 BGDB chapters all over the country, as far as Anchorage, Alaska, and we recently expanded beyond the U.S. to London and Antigua.
What makes us special in the outdoor industry?
BGDB supports initiatives across the country to get more women and girls riding bikes, such as an annual national meetup in a new city each year that brings lady riders together to ride and engage in fellowship. While we are excited about new initiatives like forming a BGDB race team to compete nationally, our top priority is to help break barriers for women in cycling, to encourage women to be bike advocates for change in their communities, and to model this healthy outlet to loved ones.
