How do you buy good quality kids riding gear that is not junk or made for motocross? Buying Quality Kids Riding Gear is hard and It Shouldn’t Be! AMERiders gives you a bit a show of how it hard it is. of We talked about ladies gear before, and how 19% of them of all riders are women. Now we need to talk about our children and how to keep our tikes safe when they ride with us and they do.
With the Holidays around the corner buying quality kids riding gear for riding with us or by themselves on a motocross bike is important. How do you find good riding gear for an eight-year-old that’s not motocross stuff or cheap novelty junk with not protective qualities? It’s hard to do. Yeah, I know what the title says but the cheap motocross stuff isn’t what you want when looking for kids riding gear you want the quality stuff if that is how they ride. I have also thrown in pics of our gear throughout the story to show you our gear.
Being limited to motocross gear and novelty items sucks and here’s why
Here is a story from someone about him and his daughter looking for gear (It is a true story but we are leaving out who it is, and were they went as to not have that store feel like they don’t help anyone that has kids. No it is not us and we have changed names as well.) Just for a note, we have kids riding gear that fits in our store. We will tell you about it after the story.
2018 has been a big year for my eldest daughter. She turned eight, started karate, made her first trip unaccompanied to the corner store with money and a list (and did very well I might add), and even did her first stint home alone for a few minutes while I ran her sister to camp. That’s some serious big-girl stuff right there. It’s also the year that she gets to ride a motorcycle for the first time. Well, in a sidecar anyway, but the point stands, and since she needs some kid-sized gear to ride in that sidecar, we set off to find something safe and relatively stylish (and fun) that would fit a pocket-sized eight-year-old.
Guys, shopping for kids’ gear is infuriating. Our day started with a drive down to a local and relatively new bike shop down in the city that sells quality riding gear and does a little bike customization on the side. That was opened late last year in an effort to serve the woefully underserved motorcycling communities in the city, and so far John’s done a hell of a job. I’ve been talking to him on and off for a while now about kids riding gear but hadn’t really come up with anything I liked for the kid.
It was all either motocross stuff—which I think is all ugly as day-old sin and not appropriate for street riding—or no-name Chinesium helmets and novelty lids. None of this would do for my angel, so I figured we’d try on the smallest adult gear we could find and see what happened. Since she didn’t have camp today and I had some time off from work, the kid and I headed off to try on some gear.
Once we got there and told John what the story was, we got right to work finding something for the kid. We started off by measuring her head. As we suspected, she’s got a small melon. Smaller than a typical small or XS adult helmet, but we were not deterred. After talking about options for a bit, John let the kid try on some new helmets.
First, we tried a Custom 500 three-quarter for the size. The Custom 500 in small was just too big for her, which was a pleasant surprise. It wobbled a bit too much when she shook her head, but she couldn’t pull it off over her head with the strap cinched up so that was a good start. Then we tried a sparkly silver in small to see how she dealt with full-face lids. It fit pretty much the same as the Custom 500 and she was fine thankfully, no freaking out or claustrophobia or anything. Since the Small helmets mostly fit her, we figured an extra small would do the trick. What helmet to get, though?
After some hemming and hawing, we settled on an adults size extra-small helmet. Not a bad looking helmet, safe enough, and pretty affordable for something she’s going to grow out of in less than a year. After we settled on the helmet, we went for jackets. Much like the helmet situation, there aren’t any good options for kids that aren’t motocross stuff or junk made out of garment leather.
After a bunch of pawing through stock, we found the smallest jacket John had in stock—an extra-small Warrior Princess by First Mfg. The jacket looked fantastic, was made really well, and even had spots for add-on armor, but it was sadly way too big for the kid. Well, shoot. It was worth a try though.
John and I spent another twenty minutes or so going through catalogs looking for something, anything, that might both fit her and meet our needs. No luck. Any company that has a “youth” line is making motocross stuff, and we don’t want that. Anything else that’s not motocross is hot garbage with no protective qualities whatsoever. In the end, I had to get her the smallest adult helmet we could find and it’s still not a hundred percent. You know what? That sucks.
Why is this so hard? Why isn’t there any good kids gear for street riding? I mean, we did get a helmet, but we’re still sans jacket and gloves. We have time since the Ural thing is still a few weeks off, but I shouldn’t have to scour the Earth for a good jacket for my kid. Also, yes, I know that there’s all sorts of stuff I could have found online and I could have driven out to hell’s half acre the far suburbs to go to other, bigger bike shops, but I’d rather shop small and local.
Where and how I choose to shop is beside the point, especially since John was able to order me what he could. The point is that If we want kids to ride and we want them to be safe, gear companies need to give parents more options. There’s plenty of opportunities here for both branded and non-branded gear for the grade school set. I shouldn’t have to by extra-small adult sizes and force them to fit my kids just to get the kind of protection I like and the styles they like. Gear companies need to get on it, man. There’s an untapped gold mine out there for, say, Batman-themed helmets and legit Hello Kitty jackets. Come on guys, get with the program.”
Many of us got the first taste of riding in our systems riding on a bike with one of our parents, or even maybe a small street bike. Regardless it got in our blood and since then we want to ensure that our children start off with the right gear. Which is why at AMERiders, we have top of the line Motorcycle Apparel For Kids that will make your little one look like a true biker they are. We have amazing leather Jackets, Vests, and Chaps for your little one, to help keep them protected while riding.
We expect this category to grow with more items as interest in children’s motorcycle apparel grows.
~And as always…
~Live Free Ride Hard~
~AMERiders
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