Since 1984, the National Bike Registry (NBR®) has been helping identify and return stolen bikes and scooters to their rightful owners. With a low-cost, simple registration, bicycle and scooter owners can record the serial number and description of their property with the National Bike Registry, and tag that property with a special label to indicate that it is registered. More than 16,000 police departments’ coast-to-coast look for the National Bike Registry label on any found or recovered bicycle.

While authorities are able to recover half of the more than one million bicycles stolen each year, only a fraction (2 percent) get returned to their owners, because there is no way to match the recovered bikes to their owners for the other 98 percent. In contrast, every time a police officer has recovered a bicycle that was in the National Bike Registry database, it has been returned to the owner. Often just seeing the label can deter a thief, who knows it will be harder to resell an obviously stolen bike. The National Bike Registry is successful because it is national in scope, whereas registering a bike with the local police department is only effective if it is the police in that town who happen to recover the missing or stolen bike.

Bicycle and scooter owners purchase National Bike Registry service at bicycle shops or other retailers, such as R.E.I., apply the tamper-resistant labels to their property, and register it online. NBR labels and registration are also available at www.nationalbikeregistry.com.

For just $10, a bike or scooter owner can register their property for 10 years. Other registry packages offer a special family rate for up to five bikes for 10 years, or a 30-year transferable membership, so the recovery protection covers subsequent bike purchases.

The finder of a bicycle, either the police or a Good Samaritan, calls 800-848-BIKE or accesses the National Bike Registry website to trigger a notification to the owner so that he or she can retrieve the property.

The National Bike Registry is now part of BoomerangIt, the global lost and found service for all types of property, from personal electronics to sports equipment to luggage and other valuables. BoomerangIt, which purchased NBR in 1999, has repositioned the registry and its concept, and propelled its growth with new labeling and database technology and partnership programs with bicycle retailers and manufacturers. With more than 300,000 registered bikes, NBR has grown to become the only nationwide bicycle and scooter registration service and leader in the bike security industry.

Eddie Orton is the founder and CEO of BoomerangIt. He is also founder and chairman of Orton Development Inc. (1985), a California real estate development company. Orton also owns RSM Co., an international trading firm established in 1860. The BoomerangIt (including NBR) board of advisors includes some of the most creative minds in the Bay Area, including Jeff Goodby of Goodby Silverstein Partners, and Tyler Johnson, head of marketing for Dreyer's Ice Cream. The National Bike Registry is an official licensee of the National Crime Prevention Council, and a portion of the proceeds from each registration pack goes to support the council’s McGruff^® ID Armor^® The Crime Dog crime prevention programs.