Many would argue that Cervélo is one of the most innovative bike brands in the cycling industry. Back in the 1990s when they first started, almost everyone else was focusing on lightweight bikes. Cervélo, meanwhile, was busy pioneering bicycle aerodynamics. I’ve ask engineers at various bike companies which brand impresses them most with regards to engineering and innovation, and overwhelmingly I hear them say Cervélo.

The genesis of Cervélo started in 1995 when two young engineering students named Phil White and Gerard Vroomen met in the composites lab at McGill University in Canada. Over a span of 15 years they went from building a crazy aerodynamic time trial bike as a university project to creating one of the most disruptive and loved bike brands in the world. 

But what many people don’t know is that as wildly successful Cervélo was up until 2011, it was a pressure cooker of constant financial challenges which ultimately led to Gerard and Phil selling the business to Dutch holding company, PON. 2008-2011 had been the perfect storm for Cervélo with the global financial crisis, setting up a professional team that was far more successful than anticipated, and a private lender which led to the company’s turn of events.

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For many years, bike brands have been known to collaborate with automobile and Formula 1 companies in order to align themselves with their halo of high level performance, innovation and technology. But factor bikes started in reverse to that. Factor might seem like a relative newcomer in the market, and that's partially true. It's been a mere eight years since their bikes became widely available, but they got their start almost 16 years ago when a gentleman named John Bailey came along, who owned a Formula One data measurement and composites company. His company was called British Formula One, or BF-1 for short. John wasn't even a cyclist, but he wanted a project for his team of engineers to work on that showcased BF-1's capabilities and technology to his automotive market. He did this by launching a bike into the future and breaking every rule in the book.

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It’s been said that Kona is 'The Smallest Biggest Bike Company in the World'. They’re best known as the quintessential North Shore bike brand, yet their global head office is just down over the border in Ferndale, Washington.

The quirky company stood out with outrageous bike model names such as the Stinky Dee-Lux, Sex One, Sex Too, and, Jackshit, which placed them well and truly as the "alternative" bicycle company.

The business was founded by Dan Gerhard, Jacob Heilbron in Vancouver, BC along with mtb hall of famer Joe Murray as their designer.

With a rich history of iconic bikes and factory race teams, it was all overshadowed by the recent events of their former owners, Kent Outdoors, who were responsible for running Kona into the ground (my words, not theirs) before the original founders bought the company back last month. 

Only a few weeks after Dan and Jake bought the company back, I spoke to Jake about Kona’s founding story that dates back to 36yrs ago in 1988, the sale of the business to a private equity-backed company, and what happened that led them to buying Kona back. 

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In our final episode of this limited series, we turn the floor over to member questions. Thank you to everyone who became members throughout this series. Every single one of you helps make us produce more content like this. If you're not a member, you can join here: https://escapecollective.com/join/

You can listen another podcast you'll enjoy about 'Why are modern bikes so expensive' podcast here: https://escapecollective.com/why-are-modern-bikes-so-expensive/

In EP3, we heard about what much of the bike industry experienced during that dramatic slowdown of bike sales, and what resulted. In this episode, EP4, we'll hear about some of the learnings and takeaways from the past three years, and put forward some tough questions for the bike industry to ask itself.

This is the third episode in our series that takes a deep dive into what the bike industry experienced during the covid boom and how it got into the trouble it’s in now.

In Episode 2, we heard from various industry professionals about the early warning signals that told them that this bubble was about to burst, and some of the reckless behaviour and pressure that was being put onto various parts of the supply chain by some big brands. But it’s not so clear-cut. We’re also beginning to hear some finger-pointing in all directions and I supposed the fragmented nature of the bike industry makes it really easy for things to slip through the cracks and in hindsight, it was perhaps a recipe for disaster.

In reference to the postmortem of Wiggle/CRC and the interview with Jake Dudek done in this episode, you can read his post on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/postmortem-signa-sports-united-jacob-dudek-xau9f/

In this episode entitled ‘The Famine’, we zoom into the timeframe when demand came to an abrupt halt and what the bike industry was left with.

In episode one we heard about the unexpected windfall that the cycling industry saw at the start of the pandemic and how many needed to react. 

Of course that didn’t last forever, and in this episode I’ve titled ‘the storm clouds’ we talk about the early signs that this new demand was coming to an abrupt halt, and the types of behaviour that was happening and the causes of that behaviour that led to the catastrophe that the industry would later see.

In this 4 part series, I wanted to explore the events that took place that led the bike industry to the troubling point it’s at now. I spoke to over a dozen industry professionals from all parts of the supply chain. From well run bike shops, forecasting analysts, distributors, the biggest bike brands in the world, and manufacturers. 

It’s well known that the bicycle industry went through an unprecedented boom during the pandemic from 2020 - 2022. 

Jump ahead to 2024 and much of the bike industry is in trouble. New demand has come to an abrupt halt. New entrants into the bicycle market have not stayed as the industry had hoped.

We’re seeing massive inventory overruns at bike shops. Big bike brands are taking on extra warehousing space. Businesses such as Niner, Orange, Wiggle/CRC, have gone into bankruptcy. Otherwise profitable big brands have taken on debt to keep afloat. There are brands out there who are doing well, but they’re the exception rather than the norm. In general , I don’t think many would disagree that the situation in major cycling markets, aside from China,  is pretty dire.

The episode is this first of four. We’re going to bring you on a journey through the COVID feast, the storm clouds, the famine, and the lessons learned in hindsight.

In this episode, The Feast, we speak to a bike shop owner, a demand forecasting analyst for a distributor, company CEOs, and a manufacturer to hear about what they experienced during the initial stages of the pandemic in early 2020. 

There’s an undeniable truth that an overnight success takes about 10 years, not a single night. Almost no one comes up with a winning business idea all at once. And if you’re not Peter and Tom Marchment or those around them who created the aftermarket wheel brand Hunt, you might be mistaken that they came out of nowhere. 

Tom and Peter are brothers who grew up riding in a small fishing village on the Isle of Man and like most of us at the beginning, cycling was a way to get around and a source of freedom. That progressed to mountain biking and then cross-country racing then road racing and time trialling - as you do in the UK.   

At University Peter got some background in materials sciences while Tom took a degree in ergonomics, which is human psychology and physiology applied to design, which he admits that he really didn’t like. Their paths diverged after university when Tom started working in a bike shop where he got some cycling industry experience, while Peter went to work at a bank. 

Peter and Tom have been slowly putting the building blocks of their steadfast aftermarket wheelset business together for nearly a decade now, all starting with an online store called The InnerTube Shop back in 2013. 

Here’s Peter and Tom Marchment who started InnerTube Shop telling about how it all began.

DeFeet is mostly thought about as a sock brand, and that’s largely the case, even though they also make arm warmers, gloves and base layers. After 31 years of being in the trade, they’re the longest-standing business dedicated to socks in the cycling market that I’m aware of. 

Back in the 90’s socks may have been the least interesting, and most neglected piece of apparel in a cyclist's wardrobe, or any athlete’s for that matter. They were just flimsy tubes of cotton or wool that covered the feet. It was a thankless job nobody gave much thought to. 

What it took to change that was a man by the name of Shane Cooper, who had a unique set of skills, hobbies and passions that all came together to change the game in socks.