Koga-Miyata

Koga-Miyata
Founded	1974
Headquarters	Heerenveen, Netherlands
Founders	Andries Gaastra
Website	www.koga.com
Archive	Koga-Miyata Archive Page on retrobike
	v · d · e

Koga-Miyata is a bike manufacturer from The Netherlands.

History

Koga-Miyata was founded in 1974. Koga saw light because its founder, Andries Gaastra Jr, was of the opinion that there would be room for a bike manufacturer solely committed to designing and building bikes for the upper-midrange to top level segments in the bicycle market. The Koga brandname is a substraction of Kowallik (the familly name of Andries' wife) and Gaastra. Andries Gaastra is the grandson of Andries Gaastra Sr, who founded Batavus. Andries Jr's son Gerrit became in the late 90s initiator of the idworx brand, but also contributed to the development to particularly the Koga mountainbikes in the late 80s to early 90s. A bikepassionate familly.

For the frames Andries teamed up with Miyata in Japan because they were able to supply very nice frames at a reasonable price. Hence Koga-Miyata was born. It would become a long term relationship. Untill 1996 all Koga frames were supplied by Miyata in Japan. From '96 on they come from elsewhere, but the official story is that production continued under supervision of Miyata.

In 1992 Andries sold the business to Atag.

Nowadays Koga-Miyata is part of the Accell group. The Accell group is one of the largest bicycle conglomerate in Europe. The company is listed in the Amsterdam Small Cap Index (AScX).

Positioning

Koga-Miyata is both a brand for the performance orientated cycling enthousiast and a luxury brand. The brand is premium and every bikeshop sales clerk will tell you that with a Koga you are buying "the Mercedes (or Roller) of bicycles".

From the early days on Koga established itself as a strong name in road, randonneur and town & country bikes. In 1986 Koga introduced a line up of mountainbikes and quickly became one of the prominent players in quality MTBs in its home market. The first Koga mountainbike offerings were the RidgeRunner and the TerraRunner.

Koga-Miyata vs Miyata: Koga's positioning was a bit different than Miyata in the US. Koga's line up started upper-midrange and the top end was wider. There were several Koga-only frames, for example the FullPro-L in the early 80s, the Max tubing FullPros in the early 90s and the RidgeRunner E-stays. Not rarely a Koga came with slightly nicer component specs than an equivilent Miyata US frame. The later is partly due to the fact that Koga was a very early Shimano distributor in Europe, so many models came with Dura-Ace groupsets. The same could be seen with other parts however: uebertrick Ringle TiStix and Syncros cranks for an early 90s FullPro Titanium, while Miyata refused to issue price increases (expensive Yen) by selecting more economical parts.

Natural competitors at the Dutch market are Batavus and Gazelle, but only in several segments. The Koga's entry level starts higher and Koga's upper-midrange and high end offerings compete with the nicest what Batavus and Gazelle has to offer.