Click, clack, done and off you go. Thijs Jansen from Nijmegen came up with a solution to easily carry crates of beer on the bike. The ‘Krathaak’ is going viral on TikTok and orders are pouring in from both home and abroad.
Jansen was going to have some friends over for a barbecue. He cycled home through warm summer weather with two full shopping bags on his handlebars. Once he got home, he noticed that he had forgotten the beer.
Barbecuing without beer is of course not possible. Because his bicycle had no luggage rack, Jansen decided to take the car. This while the supermarket was only a few hundred meters away from him. “I thought: I have to come up with something about this. Why can’t I hang a crate of beer on my handlebars just as I hang a bicycle bag on my handlebars?”
When the beer had subsided a bit the next day, the Nijmegen resident immediately started designing. A total of 26 different designs were reviewed before the current Krathaak was selected. These are two hooks that you can hang on your handlebars or luggage carrier. You can easily hang a crate of beer or a basket on these hooks.
Order of 10,000 pairs
The hook came onto the market for the first time in April 2022. But only this year are sales starting to pick up. “We have already sold 5,000 pairs. We recently received an order for 10,000 pairs from a large supermarket chain in the Netherlands. I’ll keep it a secret for now which supermarket that is. But sales are starting to rise rapidly this year.”
You would think that this is a product that only Dutch people are interested in, because in what other country is cycling with a case of beer as normal as in the Netherlands? “We first got some customers in Belgium. I still understood that. They also cycle a lot. The interest from Germany surprised me. That didn’t really seem like a cycling country to me, but demand is currently highest from Germany. In the meantime, we have even received orders from America and Australia.”
This foreign interest does not come out of the blue. Videos of the Krathaak are going viral on TikTok. One video has even been viewed more than four million times. “I make the TikTok videos myself. I put together that video, which has been viewed four million times, in a few minutes. You could do it, so to speak, while you’re on the toilet.” Was that also the case? Jansen laughs. “Yes, that was literally the case with that video.”
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New invention is already underway
Despite the rising sales figures, Jansen cannot yet make a living from it, “It is still too early for that. Actually, I now have two full-time jobs, this and my ‘regular’ job. That means I’m working almost every evening and weekend.”
Jansen doesn’t find that annoying. “I really enjoy all the work I do, I especially love coming up with new inventions. That’s something I want to continue doing. I don’t really have to keep running the Krathaak company for years.”
And Nijmegen Willie Wortel still invents new things. Jansen is now at an advanced stage with his latest invention. He keeps what exactly this is a secret for now, but he does give a glimpse of the veil. “It is another invention that will make transporting beer easier.”
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Tags: Thijs Krathaak viral internet Sales increasing rapidly Instagram
