SPCoal
A large organized SPCarbon workshop looks right at home in the financial district.
It is the New York home of a new luxury sports bike brand founded by Chairman Shawn Powell. The company recently built a bike for Red Bull Racing Eyewear, and Powell has just released Blueprint bikes, beautiful planned builds designed by design house SPCarbon.
Powell’s passion is evident from the moment he starts talking about bikes. A lifelong cyclist who competed in the 1992 UCI World Championships, Powell made the leap from the financial industry to creating “rolling works of art” a few years ago.
“I would lose sleep at night because I wondered, what am I really doing? Everything [in finance] It was something imaginary.” Powell told DT: “I like to do something that is real, that combines my passion for art and my passion for cycling.” He started out as a mountain biker, but now he rides to the SPCarbon showroom on a custom race bike with the company’s iridium-coated paint.
Red Bull Racing Eyewear noticed this art and approached SPCarbon ahead of Vision Expo with a unique demo plan. Red Bull had people test frames in front of a green screen and take pictures. The key was that visitors had to do this while sitting on a full carbon Red Bull bike, made by SPCarbon, who also have Red Bull goggles available via their website.
But Red Bull Eyewear is just one of the brands SPCarbon has worked with so far. The company is also preparing bikes for the Galore fashion group, for example. They also work with various cycling teams and organizations such as the Asphalt Green Triathlon Team and the New York Cycle Club.
“It is a client who comes to see us. He has an idea of what he wants”.
This weekend, May 13 and 14, SPCarbon will be bringing some of their artwork to the NYC Bike Expo in preparation for the 5000 rider Gran Fondo. SPCarbon participates in the Expo for the fifth time this year.
Gran Fondos are generally demanding, and this one—100 miles from Manhattan to Bear Mountain and back with roughly 8,000 feet of climbing—is no joke. You want the right trip for such a trip. An SPCarbon rider can expect the best quality and attention to detail in a custom build. Blueprint rides offer the same quality without the crazy custom color schemes and super premium components like Shimano Di2.
Powell explained, “I like to say we’re the second bike out there.” The joke is that you are allowed (N +1) number of bikes, where N is the number of bikes you currently own. “For example, you buy a cheap bike from a bike shop and then it goes in two directions: either you like sports or you don’t like sports very much. If you like sports, then you get mad because your friends take you.” This is a client who comes to see us, he has an idea of what he wants.”
And what they don’t want is something that thousands of people have. “The worst thing in the world is to go to Central Park and see 10 of your bikes spinning around,” Powell said.
Nobody wants to wear the same shirt as another guy.
One woman in particular had a unique design in mind, a hybrid with a railing. For those new to cycling, a gripped carbon hybrid is a bit out of the ordinary: straight bars typically have a thumb-flick trigger mechanism rather than one where you twist the handlebars to change gears. March. But SPCarbon made their demands come true. It was for his 50th birthday.
“It was his first new bike in about 25 years,” Powell said. “It was supposed to be a 105 build, but we ended up doing a full SRAM Rival build with 11-speed mountain bike derailleurs (shifter handles), so it was like a mountain bike with the front end attached to the rear.” back of a road bike.
Powell noticed that one of the other brilliant builders behind the scenes at SPCarbon is about the same height as the customer, so they were able to size the bike to fit before it left the shop. The client took it directly from the company, at a display near her house.
He enjoyed seeing his art in motion. “She jumped and flew and, just for a moment, she went back to being a girl… We don’t often see that.” Your average bike shop customer doesn’t usually get that kind of service either.
Even better: Riders can bring their bikes to the SPCarbon shop in New York’s Financial District for specialized maintenance. As bikes and cycling equipment become increasingly technical, the ability to literally go back to the manufacturer for maintenance is a rare and precious gift. This means avoiding the search for a qualified “mechanic”, that is, a technician with the skills to repair your new high-end piece of jewelry.
For example, some SPCarbon kits use the latest wireless shifter group, which not all mechanics know how to fix. “Di2 has become so reliable, especially now with the Ultegra version…they run 3,000 miles between charges. But now we are on totally wireless shifts using SRAM eTAP.” ETap is SRAM’s recently released top-of-the-line Bluetooth shifting system, a competitor to Shimano’s Di2 wireless shifting system, which has been around a bit longer. eTap battery packs sit right on the derailleur gears (instead of being hidden in the seatpost and derailleur cables like Di2).
Of course, SPCarbon is already thinking about the next steps with eTAP. Powell noted that now all we need are wireless brakes, so “the frames no longer need holes,” another indication of the forward-thinking that makes SPCarbon a company to be reckoned with.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn