The post-pandemic buzz regarding the bike industry has not been happy. Doomsday predictions swirl around the news of unsellable inventory, unpaid invoices, and cycling brands and bike shops shuttering.
But for three glorious days, the MADE Bike Show showcased smaller brands and true artisans, proving that an industry segment is thriving. Innovation, artistry, personal expression, and forward thinking were on display at an old shipbuilding facility on the banks of the Willamette River. Portland’s well-established and strong bike culture was the perfect environment to soak in all the positivity generated by a passionate tribe of cycling lifers.
Some of these smaller brands employ high-tech help from robots and Formula 1 racing, while some brands have a single person with a torch in the garage. The span of builds and the stories behind them were as wide-ranging as the materials and construction techniques. Bikes made of wood, carbon, and exotic metals were all in-house.
Here’s my roundup of the most impressive and impactful builds I saw, touched, lusted after, and inquired about during the 2024 MADE Bike Show.
Most Impressive Technology: No. 22 Prototype Reactor Aero
This is the first bike I saw at the 2024 MADE Bike Show, and it stuck with me for the remaining days. The thinking, effort, and technology of the “world’s first fully aero Titanium road bicycle” was a cleanly executed result of cutting-edge manufacturing methods and forward thinking.
The predominant tagline on this prototype bike is 3D printing with titanium. This additive construction technique has been in cycling for a few years, producing things like plastic or titanium computer mounts, chain catchers, cleats, and other small bits. But No. 22 took a huge leap by printing the Reactor as a single, monolithic frame. This, in itself, was mind-blowing to me.
But wait, there’s more! In addition to creating the entire frame as a single print, some frame sections have internal support structures. In cutaway sections used for display purposes, it looked like airy, open-cell foam or moss within the tubular titanium structure. The ability to print these internal structures allows No. 22 to control ride quality, which traditional titanium bicycle construction limits.
The only departure from printing out of Grade 5 titanium powder is the carbon-integrated seat post. No.22 also printed the prototype’s stem and fork from titanium, but the staff expressed that they may use a carbon fork for its damping ability.
No. 22 claims the Reactor Aero underwent multiple Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, producing a 30-40% reduction in aerodynamic drag compared to the current Aurora model, which is constructed using traditional round titanium tubing. The brand stated the Reactor Aero is heading to a wind tunnel for testing and validation before launch.
No. 22 will print the Reactor Aero in sections and weld them together in-house on production versions. The smaller prints will result in tighter control over quality, tolerances, and finishes, which diminish the larger a print gets. And this will aid in fully customizing each frame for every customer.
No word on pricing yet, but officials were hopeful it would rival other top-end road race machines from the big players. For more information, refer to the No. 22 Bikes website.
The Lowest Tech: Renovo Wood Bikes
In stark contrast to the No. 22 Reactor Aero, Renovo Bikes’ wood-only frames utilize old-school construction techniques. Yet the frames are the product of just as much thought and prototyping to ensure strength and desirable ride qualities. And man, did they look good, like fine wood furniture or cabinetry, displaying expert craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Wood is strong along the grain but weak against it, and Renovo’s construction plays to this characteristic. Renovo bends long sections of wood to maintain the continuity of the grain. The brand reinforces any interface with metal components, like the bottom bracket, head tube, seat tube, and dropouts, with aluminum or carbon fiber.
The damping quality of a wood bicycle must be unique. Another characteristic vastly different from modern carbon bikes is the ability to repair and refinish a Renovo wood frame.
Renovo offers a Whiskey Jack Gravel frame, a Barrel Stave Commuter frame, and a Blackwood Pursuit road frame, each priced at $7,500. Find out more on the Renovo Bikes website.
The Painters Are Out of Control: Black Magic
Many of the bikes at the 2024 MADE Bike Show are one-offs or custom-made-to-order bikes. Some are strictly show bikes, flexing the ability of the builders and artisans in attendance.
One underlying theme I felt during my 2 days of taking in as much as possible was the incredible creativity, artistry, and attention to detail the best bike painters possess. The visual impact of a bike usually made me stop in my tracks and investigate one of the over 250 booths.
I don’t have the space to plaster an image of every bike that nabbed my gaze, but one bike painting service that undoubtedly had incredible skills was Black Magic. The one bike in its booth that held my open-mouthed stare the longest was the Pinarello Dogma F in the image above.
The more I looked at the bike, the more I saw. It displayed painstaking, time-consuming, exacting artistry that demanded laser focus and an incredible work ethic. The Black Magic painter told me he used more than 350 feet of tape to execute all horizontal details.
The Black Magic Pinarello Dogma F drew so much attention. Deservedly so; there were countless award-deserving paint jobs at the show, but this one was the loudest and proudest.
Here’s another impossibly done Black Magic paint job, this time on a Mosaic titanium gravel bike.
Find out more about Black Magic and witness more of its magic on the site.
Pure Art at the 2024 MADE Bike Show: Tomii Bikes
The Black Magic Pinarello Dogma F demanded attention. But the bikes in the Tomii booth soothed the soul. A former sculptor from Japan named Nao Tomii crafts painstakingly artisanal steel bicycles out of his garage in Austin, Texas, and the results are impossibly beautiful.
Every detail receives his incredible attention to detail, down to bolt heads and cable housing. Tomii’s handmade stem caps and bicycle bells are more jewelry than they are bicycle hardware.
The bike shown above is an example of Tomii’s handiwork. It took me several long visits to fully appreciate it. I cannot overstate how clean the execution is on this bike. Every movement of my eyes was distracted by another beautiful detail that I hadn’t noticed before.
Tomii does have stock bicycle frames, but bicycles like this are fully custom, commissioned works of art. And, like a true artist, he’s not in a hurry to improve his revenue; Tomii explained to me that he does around eight projects like this per year.
Learn more about how Tomii sculpts bikes and see more of his artistry on his website.
When Motoheads Build a Bike: Btchn’ Bikes Geo Shift
Moto and Petrol Heads tend to apply mechanical solutions to problems that maybe you didn’t even know existed. One of these potential problems can occur on mountain bikes in super hilly terrain. When ascending super-steep trails, especially when they are ledgy, you must get way over the front to keep the front tire down but maintain load on the rear tire for traction. The frame geometry affects this ability, especially the seat tube angle and the horizontal length of the bike.
Bitchn’ Bikes staff has a history in motorcycle racing. The always-tinkering-for-performance-gains motorsports mentality shined through in a super-unique solution to the above problem. Instead of being stuck with static frame geometry, Bitchn’ Bikes’ Geo Shift technology amazingly delivers multiple seat tube angles and effective top tube lengths.
Toggling a thumb lever steepens the seat tube by a significant amount, simultaneously shortening the effective top tube. This can drastically improve climbing prowess when the trail tilts skyward. At the summit, toggle the thumb lever again and push the seat back with your butt, reestablishing the more stable frame geometry. Amazing.
The titanium prototype bike displayed at the 2024 MADE Bike Show worked to perfection every time. I hope this concept makes it to production. Where I live, the climbs are rocky, steep, and full of ledges. This is a potential weapon that may slay climbs I’ve never topped.
Find out more about Btchn’ Bikes on its site.
Stealing Hearts at the 2024 MADE Bike Show: Officina Battaglin Roma
Being an older cyclist who started road racing in the ’80s, I have a soft spot in my heart for classic steel road bikes hand-built by legacy brands — especially Italian brands with deep racing roots. The vision of an Italian craftsman sitting in a brick-walled shop, brazing lugs with a cigarette in his mouth for his campion who races on nothing but “pan y agua” (bread and water), still fills my soul.
Giovanni Battaglin won the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España double in 1981 and started the Battaglin bicycle brand in 1982. He retired in 1984, the year I started riding seriously. I knew about his racing exploits and bicycles and romanticized riding a Battaglin one day.
Then, in 1987, Irishman Stephen Roche became the second cyclist to win the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, and the World Championships in the same season. The only other rider to do it is the legendary Eddy Merckx. Roche won all these races on a Battaglin, and the brand seared itself into my mind.
I hadn’t seen a Battaglin bike since the ’80s, but when I saw the pictured Officina Battaglin Roma, my heart swelled. The rose gold Chromovelato finish was absolutely stunning, and the Columbus steel and carbon fiber tubes melded the old with the new. I couldn’t stop looking at it and took more images of this bike than any other by a large margin. It was as if I would never see one again.
And then it happened. I realized that Giovanni Battaglin was standing next to the bike. I bowed in reverence, and both he and his son graciously hosted me for hours. We spoke in two languages with the help of a translator. We talked about racing in the ’80s and ’90s and the bike. This wasn’t a conversation about sales or technology. No one spewed marketing speak or tech specs. It was a conversation about the love of cycling and the heart that went into this bike.
I don’t know how else to say it. The Officina Battaglin Roma in Chromovelato rose gold stole my heart. Thank you to the Battaglin family for making me feel like part of the inner circle. I’ll never forget. Learn more about the legacy brand on the Officina Battaglin site.
The Final Say on the 2024 MADE Bike Show
The 2024 MADE Bike Show was such an enjoyable departure from the usual pitches I get as the Cycling Editor at GearJunkie. Only once, when appropriate, did I hear or utter anything about watts, weight, stiffness, or aerodynamics. It was almost always about the love of cycling, cycling culture, and the bike as an extension of the person behind it. I rarely discussed sales, never heard “millimeter” or “grams,” and I touched so much more than I read.
After seemingly years of reading industry press releases about the dark demise of the post-pandemic bicycle industry, MADE was the injection of joy and happiness we all needed. Every bike on display absolutely showered attendees with the love, innovation, and creativity that went into its creation. The uplifted feelings about the direction of cycling were palpable all weekend.
I left the show with renewed hope that the bike industry would recover. As long as the people behind the bikes and brands at MADE are breathing, I think we’ll be all right.
