We’re incredibly excited to announce that we have merged with StolenBicycleRegistry.com!
We’ve combined the most sophisticated, user-friendly bicycle registry and the longest running and most successful stolen bicycle recovery service — creating the largest and most effective bike registry in the galaxy.
We made the Bike Index because there was no universal, easily usable bike registration service. Registering a bike was so frustrating that no one bothered with it. The Bike Index changed that for the better - by automating registration for bike shops and manufacturers, filling in default bike data, and providing printable registration PDFs. We’re incredibly happy that along the way third party contributors have made projects like @isitstolen, a Twitter bot that checks serial numbers, and a WordPress plugin to list stolen bikes. We can’t wait to see what comes next.
Bryan Hance (founder of SBR) supported the Bike Index Kickstarter, sheltered the Bike Index on our visit to Portland while faithfully still doing what he’s been doing for the past decade and a half - recovering stolen bikes. So far the SBR has recovered more than 2,000 bikes, nowadays more than 10 bikes a week. Over the years the SBR has partnered with many, many different people to provide an easy, fast way to list and search for stolen bikes.
Stolen Bike Registry and Bike Index are a combination whose sum is greater than its parts. SBR hasn’t disappeared - and Bryan hasn’t stopped recovering bikes (read his announcement about merging). We’ve just made it even easier for him to keep doing what he does best. This makes the Bike Index what we dreamed it would be — not only the best place to register your bike, but the best bet for recovery if it ever is stolen.
Why do we do this? Because we love bikes! We’re still an open source project, we still zealously protect your privacy and we do not - and never will - sell your information.
Help us out, register your bike if you haven’t already, and spread the word.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://bikeindex.org/news/providing-the-largest-and-most-effective-bicycle-registry---ever