#Don’t be afraid of Innovate
An ode to small brands which are making cycling better
I work as an IT engineer for one of the bigger, if not the biggest, Open Source companies around, and I am a chronic DIY person.
Believing in progress: it is in my DNA, but the time I spent behind a monitor, and having to deal with some great pieces of software that were held back because of the user experience made me develop a very critical approach to innovation.
Do not get me wrong, I am a total sucker for gadgets and toys, and I am affected by Gear Acquisition Syndrome, but I like it when form meets function and I also like stuff that is meant to outlast me.
Only few things satisfy me (if I didn't build them myself)
This kind of critical approach makes me rather unhappy with most of the stuff I buy, and I always have the feeling that most of the products could have been made better. Just a few things blew me away a long time ago and they still do, most of them are tools, biking parts, and very few clothes. Funny enough, I was never really stocked on high-tech stuff.
Looking back at what I just wrote, all those things that I am thinking of aren’t made by big companies, but rather from a family-owned business, most of them are very expensive for what they actually are, but they have been part of my general belongings, for at least a decade. A few examples?
- King Cages
- a Benchmade Griptilian knife
- a few Park Tool Allen keys
- a pair of Shimano XT pedals (now owned by Calamaro, since I bought the XTRs)
- a pair of Redwings Iron Ranger shoes (my grandpa was a shoemaker, how can I not fall in love with affordable-ish handmade shoes — they cost like a pair of Hyped Nikes anyway)
- my Dovo straight razor
Amongst those things that I use more or less daily, there are a few other ones I dispose of more often than I should. Bike frames mostly.
And then comes bikes
When I choose frames I want something that works and looks good, and I was often disappointed with finding these two things together in the same product. And this got me thinking for a while: is that me, maybe?
Now I own 2 bikes and I am absolutely stoked on both of them! Those are two very different bikes, basically, the only thing they share is the lack of ugly colored logos on their frame and the stout black color.
Those bikes are an Open U.P. and an Evil The Offering. How come I fell in love with them being so different? They have plenty in common, even if it doesn't look like, let’s have a look at the brands.
Small but gold: the magic of the little brands
Both Open and Evil are run by a very small team, still, they have enormous street cred. Why that? I used to think this comes because the men behind the concepts are considered to be geniuses: Gerard Vroomen and Dave Weagle got a Mida’s touch. But this doesn't really make a lot of sense: it is true that most of the people I speak with — the non-bike-nerds ones aka the Calamaros of the spectrum — they have no fu**ing clue of who those geniuses are: regular people do not care about King Mida.
Then it must be because Open and Evil produce absolutely gorgeous machines? Maybe, but hey both brands have chosen some colors that I wouldn’t like on my bikes. (Why orange FCS?)
Then I found a clear and obvious reason for everyone: people like those bikes because they work! And they do it flawlessly.
Pioneering, the only spirit that counts
I mean there are other pioneers out there: Nicolai, Pole, but I am not 100% sold on their ideas the pushed it too far from my perspective, it is just like Sun Ra Arkestra, I love jazz music but at times, that might be a little too much.
I loved the futuristic approach of my friends at Alfa Cicli: they were the first one I can recall that made Gravel great again, it was heartbreaking that they had to slow down the project so massively.
The concept of “working well” is not as easy as it seems: I mean it is pretty clear to me that Specialized or Santacruz do work as well. So, if this is the case where is the hype about those bikes? Well, Open and Evil have been working well since before “working well” was a concept itself, because they've made stuff differently!
While other brands were trying to make their customer happy by giving them what they wanted, Evil and Open gave them what they needed, and, from where I stand, they gave to the world a bike for the purpose bikes were created in the first place: go biking to have fun.
Go ride and have fun
The Open U.P. is fast and aggressive, comfortable but not too much. Andy and Gerard did not sacrifice road quickness for stability: I have ridden more comfy gravel bikes, and maybe turning on your full fledge road bike is quicker, but does it count when you are offroad?
The Offering is long enough, slack enough and has a reasonable seat angle, none of those angles is extreme. The bike is neutral when you pedal up, it isn’t a monster at accelerating but it will bring you up of a hill comfortably and efficiently. And downhill? Oh my god, it is so easy to ride and be confident that it would just make you faster. Do not get me wrong I have been on capable bikes before, but they were all trading something else for with those just did not happen they were working for my use case that is it.
My point: often the big guys are too concentrated to appeal the market while, other brave new kids on the block, with half the firepower, are producing better products that are changing the market and they have been copied by most of the others years later. And this gets me thinking: does having too many possibilities make people (brands) lazy and afraid to innovate? And wouldn’t that be contradictory to cycling itself? Where are those “pushing boundaries”, those “sufferfest”, these getting out of your comfort zone? Do we really need to wait for a nearly bankrupted company to give it all and revolutionizing mountain biking? Or for two guys that just wanted to do things differently because they thought they were right?
Come on guys, show us what you have, and don’t tell me that it is another bottom bracket standard.
Calamaro's 2 cents
Yep, Calamaro here and I want to give my 2 words about this topic, because I really think Andrea scored another point and I would give out all my chips to support his statements. And, the cool thing is that we share the same points by riding on a completely different track: like on a conceptual TCR. While Andrea bases his point on his love for DIY and engineering, I don't understand so much about angles, materials, and components. You can give me a bike, tell me what side I have to go to, and I do it, I will tell you later if it hurts or not.
In bikes, I appreciate unicity, aesthetics, character. You will never see me in love with anonymous grey (aka black) bikes with no soul and with a do-all attitude (aka nothing special they can do). It is like food: I'm in love with coriander and spicy pepper and this makes me happy.
Bikes — like food — don't need to be likable to everybody: they need to push me to another level and let me discover something I like or not. Nothing personal, I don't blame who loves spending her/his night always to the same fusion restaurant to get their classic white rice yellow curry dish because “Everybody goes there, they have a few classic solid choices with no surprises and this makes me feel comfortable”; I'm just not one of you: if it doesn't thrill my emotions it is not for me, sorry for that.
So, yeah, I ride a red 3t Strada Uno as a road bike because I am in love with the unicity, the comfort, with the rocket speed I can get with it.
I ride an Open Up with mechanical Force 1x because I'm in love with its versatility, its nimble attitude and its aggressive gravel set up. And I love both of the companies because they are human, they fight to be small, they continue doing what they think is the best, they work hard to build up a community of inclusive cyclists and I can send out an email and they will answer me back with kind words and calling me by my name. Maybe you need to be small to develop your ideas and keep your personality, I don't know that but I appreciate humanity and innovation, also in bike brands (and food).
And, the last thing: I don't like front derailleurs, and I don't want any of those in my life, not anymore.
