Apidura is a brand you may not be familiar with if you haven’t ventured into the world of bikpacking, touring or adventure racing. They are pioneers in rackless bike bags category, and support the community of ultra cyclists and bike packers. They’re a brand at the heart of this rapidly growing community and are enabling a whole new wave of this type of cycling.

Tori Fahey is the founder of Apidura and never set out to create a business out of her homemade packs and bags. She did it to satisfy her own needs with how she needed to balance her hectic life by doing long rides, tours and adventures.

What I find inspiring about what Tori has done with Apidura is not necessarily the business she’s created and it’s quick rise (although that is pretty remarkable in its own right), but the foundation she’s build the company on, and the values she holds and follows through with. She’s been outspoken about consumerism and the culture of seasonal discounting. She is conscious about the footprint the business leaves on the environment. She focuses her resources on making their products better, rather than new colorways or seasonal changes. She made a deliberate choice at the start not to be a growth led business, but to be a product led. That’s one thing to say when you have a hobby business, but something completely different when you have employees, a supply chain, and a customer base who depend on you.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed brining it together.

Zipp is an indisputable icon in the wheel and component business and they have a long history of innovation. They were one of the very first brands who thought about wheels differently and pushed the envelope to bring performance wheels where they are today.

An engineer by the name of Leigh Sargent is the founder of Zipp way back in the late 80’s, and it’s a gentleman by the name of Andy Ording who was Leigh’s first employee. Ording bought the company outright in its early days, and built Zipp during its formative years. 

Zipp now belongs to SRAM and its family of products and continues its legacy of innovation, but the origins of this pioneering brand started over 30 years earlier.

Rocket Espresso is not a cycling brand per se, but it’s arguably the best-known coffee brand within the orbit of our own little cycling world. 

Most cyclists have an appreciation for the sort of beautiful, mechanical, craftsmanship that Rocket does so wonderfully. It’s easy to see why the brand connects so strongly with cyclists.

New Zealander Andrew Meo is the co-founder of Rocket Espresso and it’s no coincidence that the brand found its way into cycling. Andrew is a lifelong avid cyclist and his passion for coffee didn’t come until a bit later in his life …

I hope you enjoy the tale of Andrew’s remarkable journey across the globe that lifted coffee machines to a whole new level.

SRAM is credited with having three co-founders, but Stan Day is the man who planted the seed. And you could very well argue he is the man where the brand’s culture and values stem from. At least that’s what I got out of speaking with him in this episode while listening to his polite, humble and understated approach when sharing his story.

SRAM all started with Stan taking on a triathlon challenge back in the 80’s and thinking that there has to be a better way than the current down-tube shifting method. Twist-shift was his answer and he was able to convince a few friends to leave their good jobs, move across the country and start a business in Chicago and sell their better way. But as successful as the company is now, it certainly didn’t start out that way. If it weren’t for one pivotal moment, SRAM might have been only a side-note in our cycling history books.

Josh Poertner isn’t your typical cycling industry personality. In fact, he’s not ‘typical’ of much at all. He’s one of those people that when you meet him, you’re taken back by a man who is filled with enthusiasm, curiosity, positive energy, and intelligence that really makes him stand out from most human beings.

These days, you may associate Josh’s name as the man who reinvented Silca, the Italian tyre pump brand founded over a hundred years ago. But as with most of these stories, it was far from a straight path, and anything but easy. He started out as a keen and talented bike racer, who later became a brilliant engineer who got his feet wet in motorsport and later went on to be an enormous influence in making the Zipp wheels the brand what it is today.

The story of how a humble man played a major part in disrupting the cycling industry.

Not only is Tom Ritchey one of the founding fathers of mountain biking, but he’s also a master frame and component builder, innovator, and entrepreneur.

Researching this episode and trying to put a timeline together to extract the major business milestones that Tom has been through was a bit of a daunting task. There’s so much there. He’s been in business for 50 years and as modest a business as he’s intentionally kept it, it hasn’t always been a straightforward journey.

So much of Tom’s story has already been documented and I didn’t want to just do that again. In fact, I can’t do justice to telling Tom’s intertwined life and business journey in a podcast of any reasonable length. But as it turned out, what came out of Tom during our interview ended up being so much better. At this point in Tom’s life I found him incredibly reflective on his experiences, with the benefit of years of hindsight and perspective.

Most businesses we’ve spoken to in this podcast have had a relatively straightforward journey, but Wahoo Fitness does not fit that mould. Chip Hawkins is the company’s founder and believe it or not, the Wahoo business started off in boat docks. That’s right, floating boat docks. But it was a good business with interesting problems that Chip loved to solve.

Chip is an engineer, an entrepreneur, a tinkerer, and most importantly, someone who loves to throw himself neck deep into fixing problems to make something better. And it usually starts with him and his own needs.

Chip’s story is one that proves that if you see a problem and you care enough to solve it for yourself and maybe a few friends, there’s likely a market out there for a business to take shape. And as Chip points out, the most important thing is that you have to try.

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Strava has become ubiquitous in the lives of over 50 million athletes and is arguably the most relevant social network to anyone who loves to sweat.

The co-founders of Strava, Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey, have been lifelong friends and have quite literally changed how we interact with our cycling in both real life and with each other online.

The reason I was so interested in hearing Michael and Mark’s story was not only because they’ve created an amazing brand and product that most of us use, but because they went about it in a very different way than most of the companies you’ll hear about in this podcast.

Creating Strava wasn’t their first trip to the rodeo. They were experienced, successful, and knowledgeable entrepreneurs that made some very deliberate decisions early on about the foundations of the company. Those decisions have taken Strava to where it is today and should help take it into the next 20 years.

Strava started from nothing but a single idea with only passion fuelling the fire, and as you’ll discover, creating Strava hasn’t been the straightforward journey that you might think about when you log on every day.

Rocket Espresso is not a cycling brand per se, but it’s arguably the best known coffee brand who are part of the orbit in our own little cycling world. 

It’s only a recent phenomenon that cycling and coffee have gone hand in hand, and most cyclists have an appreciation for beautiful, mechanical, craftsmanship which Rocket does so wonderfully.

New Zealander Andrew Meo is the co-founder of Rocket Espresso and it’s no coincidence that the brand found its way into cycling. Andrew is a lifelong avid cyclist and  his passion for coffee didn’t come until a bit later in his life...

Coverart photo by Augustus Farmer (augustusfarmer.com)

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