Om HF Christiansen A/S

HF Christiansen A/S is an international manufacturer of bicycles. We are one of the world’s oldest bicycle companies.
We design, manufacture, and sell several well-known Danish and international bicycle brands.
The company has grown steadily since 1903 when Hans Frederik Christiansen started his bicycle business in Randers. Today the company is led by the fourth generation, Henrik Lunn Christiansen and Charlotte Rye Egegaard Christiansen.
For us, a bicycle is not just a bicycle. Each model must be designed to satisfy a specific cyclist. Our mission is to form a product range that makes it possible for every cyclist to find a bike that fits their needs and desired design. That is the task of the house’s designers when they create next year’s bicycle models.
Our Danish designers define the bicycle’s geometry, colors, specifications and send the drawings to our external partners, where the bikes and e-bikes are built at quality-controlled factories. Then the finished bicycles return to Denmark to be distributed in Denmark and Europe. Selected models er build at our workshop in Randers, Denmark.

• In 1903, a 28-year-old accountant settled in Vestergade in Randers and started selling bicycles. Hans Frederik Christiansen sold his bicycles where there were customers for them. Out on the farms, one bike at a time.
• By 1904, his customers had for a while been asking him to ask him to bring spare parts for their agricultural machinery with him when he was going out to them anyway. The business, therefore, had a new dimension.
• In 1906, Hans Frederik Christiansen published his first catalog. It contained bicycles of the brand Roskopf, which became a regular part of the range for the next many years. Later came other German brands: Simson, Göricke Westphalia, NSU, Wanderer and Corona, and also English ones like Conduct, Mignon, Florida, Sterling, and Royal.
• In the 1910s sewing machines became an important product for the company. Later toboggans were also included in the catalog.
• In 1922, HF Christiansen became a pure wholesale company.
• In 1933, HF Christiansen also included radios in its catalog, e.g. from B&O.
• In 1948, the company was transformed into a joint-stock company. The year before, the founder Hans Frederik Christiansen had died, and his sons Otto Egly Christiansen and Ove Willy Egly Christiansen took over the company and began a modernization of the company.
• In 1967 and 1968, Thorkild Christiansen and Jørgen Christiansen, the third generation after the founder, started working in the company.
• From the 1980s, HF Christiansen again began to add foreign bicycle brands to their product range. Among the first were the Gitane from France and Mont Blanc from Germany.
• In 1988, HF Christiansen took over DanBike and in this context also the brand Bugatti.
• In 1996, HF Christiansen became a distributor of Trek on the Danish market. Along with Trek followed three other American brands, Gary Fisher, Lemond, and Klein.
• In 1999, HF Christiansen took over the bicycle division from the transport company Vilhelm Nellemann which meant that HF Christiansen now had both the brands Raleigh and Nishiki added to their range of brands.
• In 2002, HF Christiansen took over Aage Krøll A / S. in this context, the bicycle brands Centurion and Kona joined HF Christiansen’s together with bicycle parts from well-known companies such as CatEye and Panaracer.
• In 2003, Trek established its own subsidiary in Denmark.
• In 2005, HF Christiansen took over the rights to the Danish sports bike brand Principia for the Scandinavian market and two years later for the rest of the world.
• In 2006, HF Christiansen took over CycleVision A/S and the brands MBK, Motobécane, Taarnby, and Avenue.
• Almost simultaneously in 2006, HF Christiansen agreed with Winther A/S to be responsible for the design, production, and distribution of adult and children’s bicycles under the Winther brand in Scandinavia.
• The fourth generation of the Christiansen family now assists the CEO, Jørgen Christiansen, with running the more than a hundred-year-old family-owned company towards new goals – Peter Christiansen with responsibility for IT and logistics since 2010, Henrik Lunn Christiansen with responsibility for export and finance since 2012 and Charlotte Rye Egegaard Christiansen with responsibility for HR and marketing since 2015.
• In 2015, HF Christiansen took over the Swedish bicycle manufacturer Unicykel, which manufactures Nishiki in Sweden.
• In 2016, HF Christiansen opened a new production of bicycles in Denmark under the name Bike By Gubi.
• In 2021, Jørgen Christiansen announced his retirement as CEO, and Henrik Lunn Christiansen was named the new CEO. Charlotte Rye Egegaard Christiansen was, in this context, named the CMO of HF Chrstiansen. 

Today, the house is responsible for the development, production, and distribution of the Bugatti brand on the Danish market, Nishiki and Raleigh in Denmark and Sweden, Centurion in the Nordic and Baltic countries, MBK and Motobécane in the EU and Winther, Principia, Taarnby, Avenue and Bike by Gubi in both Danish and international markets.