The Designer,
Cigno Bicycles were born in 2006 from an intuition of Gianluca Bernardi, Italian business-man and designer with a degree in Architecture and Design at the Milan Polytechnic.
He’s currently driving – together with his brother Marco – BRN Bike Parts, one of the main bicycle components and accessories distributors in Italy and Europe.
In 2006, the big passion for the “Made in Italy” and design brings Gianluca and his company to acquire the Cigno brand, known manufacturer of bike frame padlocks in crisis. From this acquisition, over to the continuation of the padlocks production, Gianluca designs a line of bicycles that inherit the name of Cigno and expand the concept, changing Cigno from simple padlocks to bicycles characterized by a strong minimalist design.
Gianluca intuits that the sales channel for these bicycles can’t be the traditional one of cycling shops and decide to promote and distribute Cigno bicycles through the fashion & luxury sales channel and clothing boutiques. The idea is winning: thanks to the care of the design, the quality of the materials and a great project, important collaborations are born with stylists as Paul Smith, marketing cooperation with American Express Centurion, obtaining important awards from the main fashion & lifestyle magazines as Vogue, GQ Italia, Vanity Fair and Icon just to mention the main publications and interviews.