Ideal Bikes is a Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 bicycle manufacturer located in Agios Vassileios, near Patras

Patras

Patras , ) is Greece's third largest urban area and the regional capital of West Greece, located in northern Peloponnese, 215 kilometers west of Athens...

.

History

The company Maniatopoulos Bros S.A. was founded in Patras in 1926, originally as an importer of bicycles and (later) motorbikes. In 1987 it was renamed Nikos Maniatopoulos S.A. The brand Ideal is used since 1977; in 1991 production moved to its present modern factory in Agios Vassileios, while an aggressive export campaign established the brand in over 20 countries. The company maintains very advanced Design, Development and production technology infrastructure and Ideal Bikes is an extremely popular brand, especially in Europe, with a network of distributors throughout the continent. Other branches of the Maniatopoulos family have been involved in the automotive sector, like the owners of MAVA (the Renault

Renault

Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

 importer in Greece, who designed and produced the MAVA-Renault

MAVA-Renault

MAVA Company was the Greek importer of Renault automobiles. In 1979, it decided to enter the car-production business introducing a passenger-utility car, a type then very popular in Greece for tax cetagorization reasons...

 Farma automobile).

Teams

In its first year as a professional team the Team Volksbank

Team Volksbank

Team Vorarlberg is a cycling team based in Austria. The team was previously known as Volksbank until the 2009 season, when the Austrian state Vorarlberg became a title sponsor. They were registered as a UCI Professional Continental team in 2010 until June 12, when their license was suspended...

 started as Volksbank-Ideal. The swiss/lettonian team Rietumu Bank-Riga is sponsored by Ideal and begun as Rietumu Bank-Riga-Ideal. Several mountain-bike teams have won international titles on Ideal bikes: :

• Ideal Bikes Team

• Team Emmedue

• Team Zwillingscraft

• Team Biking Cyprus

External links

• http://www.idealbikes.net
• The "Ideal Bikes Team" (based in Varese/Italy)