Two opening ceremonies will be held at Mission Hills Centreville on Tuesday, one for a Colossi Cycling store and the other for a Tin Toy Museum.

    Marjo Crompvoets, consul general of the Netherlands in Guangzhou, will attend the opening ceremony for Colossi Cycling. Colossi Cycling sells bikes with steel frames, a material that is increasingly rare in modern bicycles.

    Colossi Cycling was founded in the Netherlands by Jan Kole. Colossi is one of those companies that has a good story behind it, a story that comes from having history and heritage. Kole, now in his early 60s, likes to do things the traditional way, and if you look at coverage of some of the big Asian races over the past decade, you’ll see plenty of references to Colossi cycling teams standing out at races in a sea of carbon fiber frames.

    Just as he still gets his hands dirty on the workshop floor, Kole still participates in races today, over two decades after officially retiring.

    Like his hero and mentor, Kole got into professional cycling almost by accident. In the early 1970s he met Jan Raas, a Dutch professional cyclist whose 115 wins include the 1979 World Road Race Championship, the Tour of Flanders in 1979 and 1983, Paris-Roubaix in 1982 and Milan-San Remo in 1977; and 10 stages in the Tour de France. Raas took Kole under his wing and took him out training until Kole himself became a pro racer in 1976.

    Like Raas, Kole was also forced to retire due to an injury after a particularly bad crash, and like many ex-professional racers of the day, became a custom frame builder, working with steel frames.

    In 1982 Colossi was formed and soon began to make waves with local bicycle companies in the Netherlands. With keen insight into the way the manufacturing industry was evolving, Kole was routinely commissioned to help bicycle makers in Holland move their production facilities to Chinese Taiwan and eventually to the Chinese mainland throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

    Kole has a love for steel, believing it to be the most stable and comfortable material for frames, whereas materials like aluminum require special processes to get the same qualities steel has naturally.

    The company now runs two workshops, one which produces handmade stock frames sold by retailers all over the world. And another which makes custom builds to order, where the tubing is filed and lugs polished by hand and only silver brazing material is used.

    The Tin Toy Museum was founded by famous toy collectors Marvin Chan from Hong Kong and Kanam Cheung form Japan. Chan opened Singapore’s first toy museum and has written two books on toys. Cheung has five toy museums in Japan and has written more than 40 books on toy collection and about his life experience.

    Venue: Mission Hills Centreville, 1 Mission Hills Road, Longhua New District (龙华新区观澜湖路1号观澜湖新城艺工场Colossi单车行和TOK铁皮玩具馆)

    Metro: Longhua Line, Qinghu Station (清湖站), Exit A, then take a taxi (fare would be 70-80 yuan) or bus M338(Windy Shao)