Pearl Izumi

Before there was a Pearl Izumi, there was a man and a bike. He rode that bike 38 miles a day, every day. Not for exercise or for the fun of it, but to deliver 90 pounds of clothing to his customers in a neighboring village. The year: 1955. The man’s name: Kinji Shimizu. And in nine short years, he’d go from lugging clothing on a bike to redefining what every cyclist wore on them.