Storm Sondors
Born in Latvia, Ivars ‘Storm’ Sondors showed great promise as a sculptor, graduation high school at 14 to attend art school. By his early 20s, he was living in Chicago building wooden prototype models for toys with big players like Mattel and Fisher-Price. He founded his own toy company to build radio-controlled cars, helicopters, and planes, and was very successful, but unhappy. A diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome helped him change course in life, which included selling his company, moving to Malibu, and taking up surfing.
While recovering from a sports injury, Storm showed interest in a friend’s electric bicycle, but was shocked to learn it cost $4000. He set himself the task of building an affordable e-Bike, and used a crowd-funding website to kickstart the project: it proved the second-most successful Indiegogo fundraiser, exceeding its goal by 7000%. SONDORS is now one of the largest e-Bike manufacturers in the USA, and is distributed in 42 countries. More recently, he turned his attention to disrupting the e-Moto scene by revealing the dramatic Metacycle, with a futuristic cast-aluminum chassis and an industry-beating low price tag.