A solid start for our ‘Further and Faster’ design principle
What is ‘Further and Faster’? We want to make the road a nicer place to be, for longer. We use this shorthand, to articulate our design approach, and check our ideas. And it seems to make sense to the people who've ridden our first bikes.
In starting the company, I set out to put the best new steel technology to work in the hands of incredibly skilled fabricators to bring our bikes to life. We add in progressive geometry combined with perfect fit (and weight distribution) to create bikes designed for the sort of riding you do.
Six months on, and it seems people do buy into what we’re doing, as an idea. And by creating platforms that give customers a solid starting point for the development of their own custom bike project, we’re finding there’s demand for what we do too.
For our customers they don’t need to come to us with all the ideas or the sort of materials, geometry and parts knowledge that you think you need to buy and spec a custom frame. We’re giving people developed platforms, designed, developed and tested to be fit for purpose, that give people a solid starting point. The frame works with the parts, and it’s been tested and developed to ensure that the underlying bike is a solid proposition. We’re finding people really like that too.
We’re also being clear on our aesthetic, and people are letting us run with that too. Happy that we’re going to produce a bike that looks like a Spoon Custom should, but that’s very personal to the individual customer.
The IzoardRR has been received so well by both customers and the press, that all the bikes on the bench just now are based on that platform. Unsurprising given it’s the bike we launched with, but we’re also getting a stack of enquiries about a more chilled platform. We’re finding loads of people who want to get out of the traffic altogether and find the roads less travelled, or less paved at least. That’s where our Finestre platform (our adventure bike) comes in.
Like the IzoardRR, its a platform or template but in this case the Finestre is a fun ‘all-road’ style bike that can be loaded up for a day, week or whole season. It’s designed to be fun, comfy, responsive and fast on the road, loaded up or stripped down, but also be a bike that can get you up and over and safely down an unpaved route, just like Colle Del Finestre (one of our local favourites). For adventures from the massive to the micro, its designed to do the job.
When Peter Stuart of Cyclist Mag tested the IzoardRR demo, he bought the idea of the Izoard as a start point. He loved the bike he rode, describing it as ‘Blisteringly fast’, but he was also excited about the opportunity to change it, to play a part in ‘developing it’ for himself, his physical and practical needs.
With a strong starting point in the Izoard RR (or Finestre) I think we’re making it easier, less intimidating and lower ‘risk’ for any customer regardless of their own technical knowledge to embark on their own custom made bike project with us.