Built by a rider, for riders

I've always been into anything with wheels. Doesn't matter what it is — BMX, scooter, e-bike, whatever — if I can ride it, I'm keen. I'm not old enough to drive yet, so bikes have pretty much always been it for me.

The whole thing started over something dumb. I got a new bike and it came with a set of keys — like they always do — and no keyring. Nothing to put them on. Every brand does the same thing, just hands you a bare set of keys and that's it. So I went looking for a keychain that actually looked good, something that looked like it belonged on my bike, not some generic thing off a shelf. Couldn't find anything. It was either full-on chrome skull stuff made for the Harley crowd, or cutesy stuff for pushbikes, nothing that actually worked for how I ride. Or it was just mass-produced junk that everyone already had.

So I designed my own. Sketched it up myself, then found people who could actually make it properly and paid to get the first ones done right — no shortcuts. I wasn't trying to start a brand, I just wanted something that looked like mine.

Then my mates saw it and wanted one. Then their mates wanted one. Pretty soon people I'd never met were messaging me asking where they could get one — e-bike riders, a kid on a BMX, some guy twice my age on a cruiser. None of them rode the same thing as each other. They all just wanted in.

That's when it actually clicked for me — it was never really about the keychain, it was that everyone had felt the same gap I had. There wasn't anything out there made for riders as a whole, only for whichever group you already belonged to. So that's what X2CUSTOMS became: gear I design myself, made in small numbered runs here on the Gold Coast, never reprinted once it's gone — and a Crew built around it that's open to anyone who rides, because that's how I've always seen it anyway.

Doesn't matter what you ride. Matters that you ride.
— Luke