Happy Sunday,
Rad Power Bikes is a Seattle-based company, and they built something real here. They took an idea, rode a pandemic wave, scaled fast, and got a lot of new people moving on their e-bikes. Some of the decisions were great and well-timed, some… maybe not. When you grow at that speed. Business happens. This week, the company filed for bankruptcy; we have seen more than a few filings this year. What stops us in our tracks isn’t that Rad filed for Chapter 11. It’s who they owe the most money to: the federal government, in the form of unpaid import duties. Their largest single unsecured debt is more than $8.3 million to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for tariffs. That’s a wild sentence to write for any company. In normal times, this would be an unacceptable mismanagement of operations and cash; in 2025, it was an unexpected cost that tipped the already fragile scales of Rad towards its end.
If you’ve been following our newsletter, you know our stance: tariffs are taxes paid by importers, not foreign governments. They landed this year at a much higher rates, they changed multiple times with no time to plan; they stacked on top of regular duty schedules, and for most companies that already had a tight cash situation, it created an insurmountable challenge. In Rad’s case, the backdrop is a familiar 2025 mix: demand cooled off from the pandemic highs, inventory hung around too long, and trade costs kept rising. That combo will cause problems for any company.
Rad is a good company, full of talented people who helped mainstream e-bikes in the U.S. The company says it missed how fast demand would drop from the COVID peak, and the numbers in the filing show a huge revenue slide from 2023 to 2025. That’s tough medicine, made tougher when your largest IOU is a tariff tab you weren’t expecting.
Zoom out, and it gets weirder. The bike industry trade group, PeopleForBikes, has been laying this out for months: average tariffs on many e-bike products jumped from roughly 11% into the 20%–55% range as new rules took effect. This means parts and complete bikes coming from Asia got a lot more expensive, not just once, but in layers, and quickly. That’s hard to plan for, and the result is higher retail prices, stressed margins, and some companies going from a wobble to full wipeout.
Why are we talking about this in our clothing brands newsletter? Because the physics are the same across all consumer goods. Tariffs don’t magically vanish; they flow into landed cost and affect a company’s cash flow for a long period of time. For small and medium-sized brands, that’s an existential situation. It’s one reason we’ve worked to structure Arvin Goods the way we have: diversifying sourcing into areas and partners we can have better visibility and more stability with. We still watch trade policy every week, but our bias is toward tangible planning that we can try to predict. That’s just us trying to survive, especially in this environment with ever-changing economic and trade policies.
None of this erases the other pressures Rad faced. Battery safety, recalls, post-boom whiplash. These all deserve the appropriate attention, given the situation. But it’s telling that in Seattle, a city known for building new things, a homegrown brand like this has its biggest unpaid bill from US Customs. That’s a signal. A patchwork tariff regime that whacks importers after the fact probably isn’t the best driver for the future. And if the goal is healthy small and mid-sized brands, a policy that swings costs by double-digits overnight is not “liberation”.
We’re rooting for Rad, the founders, the store staff, and the HQ team in Ballard. We’ve thankfully never experienced what they are in right now, but we have experienced market-related challenges and policy-inflicted wounds. Our takeaway is always to try to build systems that can survive headwinds. Know our inputs. Try to understand the what-ifs?. Keep the product as great as we can, and when the shit hits the fan, tell our customers what’s happening and why. That’s been our play from day one: make the best basics we can with the resources available. Explain the choices, and keep shipping.
If you want the full bankruptcy breakdown, GeekWire has a clear recap with the tariff details and the timeline. We have shared it below as our Industry story of the week. If you want the two-second version, it’s this: in 2025, the rules mattered as much as the product.
As always, thank you for reading! Enjoy the news below, and we wish you a great week!
Hope you enjoy today’s Clean Up. We would love to hear from you. Comment here on Substack, hit us on social, or email us at info@arvingoods.com. Have a great week. Cheers,
The 28 Best Sneakers of 2025 - GQ
It’s been another banner year in the world of sneakers. Designer kicks rediscovered their mojo, thanks to the rise of a svelter silhouette. Dad shoes gave way to grandpa shoes. Signature hoops models are back in a big way. And a new generation of indie menswear brands broke into the collaboration game. Here, without further ado, are the 28 best sneakers of 2025.👟📊
Here are the best wildlife photos of 2025 - National Geographic
Deep within Rio Doce State Park, in Brazil’s remote Atlantic Forest, photographer Fernando Faciole set up two camera traps, and then returned every 45 days to change out the batteries and check the memory cards.
His patience—and willingness to deal with a lot of near-bites from the forest’s ticks—paid off. Fewer than a dozen jaguars are thought to inhabit the area after decades of deforestation. Faciole would have been lucky to have gotten any pictures of them, let alone one so stunningly posed.📷🙈
Rad Power Bikes’ biggest unpaid bill is $8.3M to U.S. Customs, as tariffs squeeze the industry - GeekWire
In a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition filed this week by Rad Power Bikes, the Seattle-based electric bike maker lists creditors holding the 20 largest unsecured claims against the company.
At the top of the list? Not a major supplier, or partner, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is owed more than $8.3 million by Rad for tariffs, according to the filing. The claim is one of several listed as “disputed” by the company.
The situation underscores the financial strain facing Rad and the broader e-bike industry after rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic gave way to slowing demand, rising costs and lingering trade pressures.🚲🪫
Christmas Jazz Vinyl Set // Warm Holiday Classics & Winter Vibes [45min / 4K / No AI] - YouTube
Just a melo holiday jazz set for Christmas week. Happy Holidays🎺🎄
'The Clean Up' is a weekly newsletter that mixes in some Arvin Goods news, products, as well as stories we saw during the week that are worth a share. From books to podcasts, sustainability to business news, we try to keep it interesting, and fun. If you are not a subscriber, sign up and join everyone who receives The Clean Up directly in their inbox every Sunday.
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