Your favorite squid-biking / StuntLife apparel brand is expanding from its hooligan roots into the adventure-touring market, as ICON announced its Raiden line of clothing this past weekend at Portland’ One Motorcycle Show.
The Raiden brand extension is just the latest expansion from ICON, which has already pushed into the café hipster crowd with its ICON 1000 line of clothing, with much success.
While the Raiden line’s bright colors and designs will likely attract a younger demographic, it is just one of many steps that ICON is going through in order to breakaway from its “squid gear” reputation and cast a wider net on the two-wheeled demographic.
Living in Portland, Oregon for several months now, I have been able to see the early pieces of the product line out in the wild while riding (ICON is based in Portland as well), and the results have been favorable, though I should point out that I haven’t ridden in the gear myself.
Still, it is interesting to see a brand like ICON pushing into the ADV space. The clothing obviously does not fall far from the ICON tree — you will either love or hate the Raiden designs, there is no middle ground — but we think that many adventure-tourers will now have to add ICON to their list of brands they look to for protection from crashes and weather.
Hardcore ADV riders will surely see an ICON representative at the major national rallies (if you haven’t already), and in case you don’t, ICON just released a 22-minute YouTube video about them tackling the Mexican 1000 rally with custom Triumph Tiger 800 race bikes — it’s actually pretty entertaining.
Source: ICON
- Mitchel Durnell
I really like my Icon Airmada helmet. I love Icon’s design styles and colorways in general, even if half aren’t anywhere near my wheelhouse. I think they’ve done an excellent job presenting safety gear, long looked down upon bu United States riders as uncool, as something to aspire to own and wear to a demographic that often times can’t be bothered.
Indeed, Icon doesn’t offer any open faced helmets – a very conscious decision on their part.
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