French e-bike startup Angell nears bankruptcy

Angell, a French smart electric bike startup, has announced in an email to customers that the company is declaring insolvency and approaching a court to ask for judicial liquidation.

“It’s over for Angell,” said company co-founder and CEO Marc Simoncini on Instagram. (He also happens to be a judge on the French version of “Shark Tank.”) “A hardware problem has put an end to the adventure, despite all our efforts and the incredible work of all our employees.”

Originally founded in 2019, Angell set out to create an electric bike with several smart and connected features. Its original bike packed a small color touch screen in the middle of the handlebar to display relevant information and give turn-by-turn directions. It could also connect to your phone using Bluetooth.

With its integrated lock and alarm system and its built-in GPS chip and cellular modem, the Angell bike competed with other European smart bike manufacturers, such as Cowboy and Vanmoof. It’s also worth noting that Vanmoof itself had to file for bankruptcy in the Netherlands in 2023. A new owner is now trying to relaunch the brand.

With its all-in-one package, Angell suffered from reliability issues. In an email to customers, the company explained that its latest issue with its first-generation bike was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“The fragility of the bike’s frame represents a risk of breakage,” the company wrote. “We understand that it is a defect connected to the manufacturing process of the frames, and more precisely to the welding of the tubes together.”

Angell doesn’t manufacture its own bikes. Instead, it has partnered with SEB, the French industrial company behind All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, and Tefal, to outsource the manufacturing process. Similarly, it has worked with a third-party design company, KickMaker.

In the rest of the email, Angell attempts to shift the blame to these two partners for these severe design flaws. Nevertheless, Angell is financially responsible for these faulty bikes, as it is the company that sold those bikes. It could either recall up to 7,000 bikes or reimburse its customers.

But those two options seem too costly for the startup as the company has opted for an insolvency process. There will likely be other cases to determine who is responsible for those manufacturing issues between Angell, SEB, and KickMaker.

As for Angell bike owners, people who own the first-generation bikes are now left with a bike that isn’t safe to ride. Customers with recent Angell bikes will also be affected as the company says it may turn off its servers at some point. Let’s hope that it isn’t going to affect the electric assistance and smart lock.

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