Martin Banke is the Managing Director of Ceramic Speed. Ceramic Speed is a manufacturer of high-performance bearing technology. They also produce high-performance bottom brackets, pulley systems, pulley wheels, and headsets.

Martin has worked in the cycling industry for over 20 years. Initially on the distributor side with EnergySport in Denmark and then on the brand side.

Martin was the first employee of the Ceramic Speed cycling division and in our conversation, we talk about his journey building the unique brand around a culture of innovation and performance.

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Alessandro Basso is the Chief Executive Officer at StarDue Group. StarDue is the parent company of the brands Basso Bikes and Lee Cougan Mountain Bikes.

Alessandro comes from a family of bike enthusiasts and entrepreneurs in the industry. Alessandro's Father and Uncle founded Basso Bikes in 1977 and his Mother's family is responsible for creating the mega motorcycle protection brand Alpine Stars.

I spoke with Alessandro about his path from professional mountain bike racer to CEO of one of Italy's last remaining family owned bike brands.

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To end the year I put together a collection of interesting moments from 2023 conversations focused around COVID and the after effects of the pandemic. I thought it would be an interesting take a look back at some of these anecdotes and experiences these cycling professionals went through to take a look closer to that moment.

In the recap provide clips from my conversations with Jonathan Sherwood of Bell Helmets, Davide Rossetti from SIDI, Samuele Bressan from Pirelli and Gaspare Licata from Crank Brothers.

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Simon Summerscales is the VP of Marketing at Canyon Bicycles. Before joining Canyon in 2018, Simon was the Head of communication strategy at the prestigious Wieden+Kennedy agency in London. Simon was also Director of communication strategy at 72andSunny in Amsterdam.

During his tenure in the agency realm, Simon was responsible for creating numerous global campaigns for both Nike and Adidas.

Simon is among the most experienced and accomplished marketing professionals in the cycling industry today.

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Marco Galli is the marketing manager for the cycling division at Kask Helmets in Italy. Marco started his career at Red Bull, where he spent time coordinating sports events, motor sports events, as well as athletes. He then worked for Scott Sports in Switzerland where he was the marketing coordinator for their motor sport division.

Marco has been the head of marketing at Kask in Italy since 2022. W spoke about his early experience at Red Bull as well as at Scott and that how he's bringing that multinational experience to fairly young Italian brand that is seeing a meteoric rise on the market in the last 20 years.

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Samuele Bressan is the head of Global Marketing of the cycling division at Pirelli tires. Samuele got his start in cycling as the product manager for Vittoria Tires. He also worked as the product manager for Bianvhi Bicycles, as well as line builder and product manager for clothing brand RH+.

In our conversation, we really explore how closely related the product teams are with marketing. And how this is quite unique to cycling because of the nature of the business.

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Jacob Dudek was until recently the VP of commercial operations at SIGNA Sports United for the USA entity.

Jacob came onto my radar recently when I saw his article on LinkedIn titled 'A Postmortem of the Collapse of SIGNA Sports United'. It's a deep look at what happened from an insider's look as a VP. I highly recommend it as it goes deep into the reasons behind the collapse. It gives a clear picture as to why the company went went bankrupt. I was lucky to get Jacob on and talk a little bit with him about the situation from his point of view.

Link to the article: A Postmortem of the Signa Sports United Collapse

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On October 27th online cycling retailer behemoth Wiggle has entered into administration due to financial turmoil at its parent company Signa Sports United.

This news sent shockwaves through the cycling industry as Wiggle is essentially the 500 pound gorilla of online cycling retail.

I spoke with industry veteran Jonathan Sherwood to try to make sense of the news.

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Rocket Espresso is a darling of the cycling world and the coffee machines could be found in every pro cycling team bus starting in the 2010s.

In the podcast I speak with Rocket Espresso founder and New Zealand native Andrew Meo about how he captured the imagination of cycling.

We also discuss Andrew's early career as an auto repair and restoration shop owner and restaurateur, how he left a profitable business in New Zealand to start Rocket Espresso in Italy together with his wife, Nicky. How they grew the brand and eventually exited in 2018.

We also dive into his latest project Box Altitude which makes high altitude simulation equipment for competitive athletes.

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Mark Hopkins is an expert in carbon fiber production and design. He spent much of his career working as a composites engineer at DuPont. In our conversation, we talk about how he came to design the three spoke bicycle wheel in 1989, which was sold by Specialized.

The wheel was a huge innovation at the time and was the first composite bicycle wheel to be commercially available. We talk about how DuPont spun off its composites business in 1995. And how he started up a factory in Spain to make bicycle wheels, which eventually became HED bicycle wheels.

Mark is currently a consultant at 3T where mark and his team are working to bring the production of their historic brand back to Italy.

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