(drums)
(relaxing lounge music)
- [Narrator] Earlier this year,
we brought you five boutique bike brands.
Small, independent manufacturers making incredible bikes
that we thought you should know about.
We got hundreds of comments under that video
telling us about countless other brands
we should also check out.
So here are six more boutique brands
that you should know about.
(relaxing lounge music)
In many ways at the moment,
cycling can seem synonymous with Colombia.
Just take a look at the podium of any Grand Tour.
But have you ever thought about buying a Colombian bike?
Well, now you can, thanks to Scarab bikes.
Scarab are named for the scarab beetle
and the nickname of escarabajo
given to the Colombian climbers
that burst onto the global cycling scene in the 1980s.
Based just outside of Medellin,
Scarab are made up of seven industry veterans
who decided that they just wanted to make bikes
that were above all fun to ride.
As you might expect for a Colombian brand,
Scarab, of course, produce a lightweight climber's bike
the Letras.
And they also make three other drop bar bikes.
The Páramo, their disc brake all-road model.
The Santa Rosa, a disc brake thoroughbred race bike.
And the Linear, a stunning traditionally lugged road bike.
They're all made from steel
and are finished with some very lovely
and distinctly Colombian paint jobs
that Scarab produce in a collaboration
with Latin America's leading paint manufacturer.
(relaxing lounge music)
Off to the Czech Republic now for our next company.
We're look at Festka bikes.
Festka was founded in 2010 in the Czech capitol of Prague.
From very early on, Festka started working with CompoTech,
a Czech company that specializes
in filament-winding carbon fiber tubes.
These tubes give Festka's carbon bikes their stunning look
when they're unpainted.
Their paint jobs, though, are certainly very special.
Just take a look at this gorgeous Spectre,
Festka's super stiff race bike.
But Festka don't just make carbon fiber bikes.
They also have steel, titanium, and the doppler frame,
which is made from carbon and titanium.
But instead of producing it in the standard way
of connecting carbon fiber tubes with titanium lugs,
Festka have titanium tubes with carbon lugs.
They even made a very special version of the doppler
using aluminum tubes they recycled
from around 995 old Nespresso capsules.
And if that wasn't cool enough,
they've even auctioned that bike off to raise money
for a local youth charity.
(relaxing lounge music)
Over to the USA now to take a look
at some very cool gravel bikes from Allied.
Allied first stepped into the gravel game
with the Alfa Allroad,
an adaptation of their already popular Alfa road bike.
But this summer, they unveiled the Able,
which is a pretty crazy looking bike, to be honest.
To get more tire clearance,
Allied have moved the driveside chainstay,
which we see a lot on modern gravel bikes,
but instead of shifting it downwards
like the 3T Explorer or Pinarello Gravel,
Allied have significantly raised up the chainstay,
which gives it a really unmistakable look.
But looking cool doesn't really mean much
if the bike doesn't work.
And Allied proved pretty comprehensively
that their bike worked when they took both
the men's and women's wins at Dirty Kanza 2019.
(relaxing chill music)
How about some gorgeous titanium for you now?
Titanium is a real favorite material
of boutique frame builders,
and for good reason.
If you want a bike that is going to be light,
stiff, and comfortable,
but can genuinely last a lifetime,
titanium is probably the material for you.
And despite being a reasonably new company,
No22 bikes are already making some of the coolest
titanium bikes out there.
Just take a look at this stunning
Aurora disc brake road bike.
That won best in show at the 2019
North American handmade bike show.
No22 teemed the mostly titanium frame
with a carbon fiber integrated seat tube and seat mast,
and finished it off with some amazing anodized logos.
And if those colors don't do it for you,
No22 have different anodized finishes available.
The Aurora is No22's top of the range all-around road bike,
and fits into an impressively varied range
of eight other bikes,
including a hard-tail mountain bike,
a track bike,
and a proper gravel race back.
(funky relaxing music)
No22 have some lovely, understated, elegant frames.
But how about something a little louder?
These are Squid bikes from northern California.
The company started life in their words,
as a group of cyclocross miscreants
spray painting bikes in their own garages.
And they've kept that really great, raw feeling about them.
One of the ways they've done that is by painting
all of their bikes with Spray.Bike spray paint.
They have a number of pretty crazy stock paint job options
like this torn tape option.
And if you can't decide on which paint job you want,
you can even ask Squid to paint your bike.
However, they paint what they want
with a paint job roulette.
And also really encourage their customers
to paint their own bikes if they want,
shipping them as just raw frames.
It's not just cool paint, though,
Squid produce some proper race ready cycler crossframes,
and their team riders compete and cycle across World Cups.
(chill relaxing music)
Moving down under now to look Prova cycles from Adelaide.
Prova are a brand that we first spotted
at the Bristol Bespoked Bike Show
where they actually won best in show
with this incredible Speciale.
The Speciale is predominantly made from steel
with a carbon seat tube.
Many frame builders would simply buy
a stock carbon seat tube,
but Mark Hester at Prova actually
makes the seat tube himself in-house.
That's not it, though.
With the Prova Speciale,
the seat tube, lug, and the dropouts
are 3D printed from steel
and Hester actually designs the parts himself
before having them manufactured by RAM3D or RAMD,
an industry leader in additive manufacture.
I hope you've enjoyed looking at some truly stunning bikes,
and if you have, please give this video a thumbs up.
And I know there are still many boutique brands
that we haven't covered, so I'd love to read
your suggestions and recommendations
down in the comments below.