Monday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Tuesday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Wednesday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Thursday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Friday: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

All times are (GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Mornings

1989

If there is a more broadly influential frame builder in the world, we would like to know who it is. Calfee was the company that showed the European pro peloton that carbon fiber could work for bicycle frames. Other companies would've got there soon, we know. But after having his carbon fiber frames tested by bicycle messengers on the cratered streets of San Francisco, by 1990 this one-man show had a frame ready for the big time. Greg Lemond's Z Team, to be precise, and his frame was ridden in the Tour de France under the Yellow Jersey. The brand Calfee Design was launched in 1997, and in 2005 he set up a carbon frame repair service - not for Calfee frames, but for those that were made by mass-producers to specifications he largely chose to avoid. The story of innovation does not stop there. In 2005 Calfee started making bicycle frames from bamboo, yet again trail blazing a new material that would prove popular. Then in 2015 Calfee made a carbon road racing frame with rear suspension, a key ingredient, he reckons in making a thin-walled carbon frame that is more resistant to breakage. The Calfee company biography tells the story of the small scale companies in a nutshell. Creative and unafraid, these manufacturers are the undisputed leaders of the bicycle industry.

It was 1987, I needed a bike frame after a spectacular head-on collision in Boston. Determined to make this frame as tough as possible, I built a bike using materials I'd used at a job making composite rowing shells. I braided the tubes and laminated them together with tooling made on a drill press. The bike worked surprisingly well and I realized there might be a future for me making bike frames.

HBG

Bamboo bicycle development projects

Shimano, Campagnolo, SRAM