Following his visit with Crust Bikes, Nic Morales‘s road trip across the southeast continues with a trip to Velo Orange in Baltimore, MD. Given his longstanding appreciation of the brand’s ethos and product offerings, it felt only right to finally put a face to the names and influences that had influenced so much of his cycling life.
Through an extensive tour of their headquarters and an interview with co-founder Igor Shteynbuk, Nic learned of the logistics and mindset taken up by those behind the “VO” adorning many of our builds… Check it out below!
Velo Orange HQ
Arriving off the back of a shoddy truck in the dimly lit parking lot of my apartment complex, Velo Orange’s new Rando couldn’t have looked much cooler. While the speckled trout colorway is best enjoyed in the shining light of day, the slender lines of its thin, glittering tubes somehow sparkled in the late fall evening light. Bike companies make bikes for many reasons. Some are practical and some boundary-pushing; some are simply intent on paying homage to an ideal. Velo Orange started as a small outfit intent on perpetuating ideas inherent to classical randonneuring bikes. Though some may say its geometry has deviated from that stringent tradition, everything about this build felt like a culmination of purpose. Like the hometown band you actually like listening to hitting their stride in all the most fulfilling ways, the paper-thin tubing and versatility provided by the interchangeable dropouts oozed both class and function. It was, by all accounts, the sexiest bike I’d ever laid claim to.
When I visited Velo Orange HQ just outside of Baltimore, MD, things were less than sexy. The bikes had arrived off the truck where they were unloaded, inspected, and sent out to their first stockists, clients, and customers. As I walked through their small warehouse-like facility, Igor Shteynbuk, co-owner of Velo Orange, showed me through the warehouse doors, between the piles of neatly organized components, frames, and shelving that held thousands of the kinds of things that made up a bike. The magic of the bike industry was facilitated via computer programs and tireless employees alike, right here. It was a lot less visually interesting than the sparkly frameset of their new Rando, but it was as, if not more important, to the equation of how it got to both myself and others.
Where the Magic Happens
Walking through the halls of their small office, the workshop/studio was the most interesting bit. Stacked high with prior models, future products, and a mountain of cycling goodies, the stage where Igor had shot so many videos that had guided me through more builds than I could count was a dream for a nerd like me. In the corner sat a 3D printer. Burgeoning ideas for projects just starting their journey as realized ideas lie in wait. Critiques and alterations scribbled nearby. The dichotomy of it struck me; a decade or more of history strewn about, alongside the molded makings of future neighbors.
In the showroom, one of these plastic devices had escaped – a standoff for larger, traditional saddlebags that wasn’t quite a cradle but wasn’t a full mounting system either. Igor said, “It’s amazing how much quicker we can turn stuff around now. We can hold something in our hands and apply some light testing to it without having to go back and forth overseas. It’s one of the things that has made a massive difference to how we create products.”
After some pleasantries, Igor and I cut to the meat and potatoes. Though I’d come to learn of the origins of Velo Orange, about how he and his wife, Adrian, who co-owns VO alongside Igor but was at home taking care of their new child, came to grow from entry-level employees to company leaders, I had my own motivations within the conversation. How does the owner of a bike company think? We all have fanciful ideas about what it is we would or wouldn’t do when we see a new product released, but for someone whose proverbial rubber is meeting that arduous road – what direction are they guiding that wheel toward?
I joked, “So, VO doesn’t have plans to take over the world?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Igor retorted.
What are you noticing about the industry today and what are people asking?
“What we’ve really seen is a shift in how people think about the bike. We used to do a lot of drop bar stuff. A lot of retro road bike building and componentry stocking. Now people are asking about whether a certain rack will fit, how big a tire they can squeeze, whether our fenders will work with a certain bike. I think the tide is turning.”
How does that meld with the reality and identity of the company? You started out doing classical French randonneuring style bikes, right?
“We want to strike the balance of modern comforts with classic style. The thing about the original French and Japanese randonneuring bikes is that they were practical and they also had great aesthetics. 650b wheels, dynamo lights, fenders, lugs, and comfortable geometry. We borrow from that to make a more practical, modern bike. As much as the complexity of the modern stuff has its place, I’m not sure it will last. We ask ourselves, ’Do we want to work on this bike?’ If the answer’s no, we pull from that.”
So VO isn’t making an e-bike?
“Maybe. That’s what I tell people. Maybe. We’ve got so many other projects that e-bikes are at the bottom of the list. When Adrian worked in DC proper, we had a Trek Valencia. It was a great e-bike for the time. But after a while, the componentry and systems were abandoned. Luckily, it was built in such a way that you could make it into a push bike – but people aren’t building e-bikes like that anymore. The question that has yet to be answered is that of waste and disposal. Not just for the batteries, but for frames that are e-bike specific. If we make an e-bike, and that’s a big if, we’ll lean on the third-party kits that can turn regular bikes into e-bikes. They’re not going to have vectoring and torque sensing and all that jazz, but, we’ll make sure it’s good.”
Speaking of modernizations – I know there’s a new Pass Hunter in the works. I know it’s an aluminum alloy gravel-ish bike. Is alloy just a marketing ploy or is there more to it?
“I’ll put it to you this way – the Rando is one of the lightest steel production bikes you can make. We did that with good tubing selection and getting as little margin as we can feasibly justify out of a production run. And we do that with most of our frames. We like to give people bang for their buck. But with alloy these days, you can stretch that dollar more. We can make a lighter, better, more capable bike for less money. There are tubing selections and processes that didn’t exist twenty years ago. The material is better than it’s ever been – but so are tires and wheels and handlebars and everything else that makes a good bike. We figure it’s the best way to give people something affordable and approachable. I think that’s why alloy has seen a resurgence. It lets companies do more for a bit less. For example, we’re creating the tooling for stuff we feel we need for this bike. We could buy some off-the-shelf stuff, but it doesn’t fit our MO. So, we’re making it. But the material cost still lets us hit a lighter, more aggressive bike.”
You’ve talked a fair bit about approachability and accessibility – mind if I call you out on that? What are you actually doing besides price points to appeal to more people?
“A great example is the Polyvalent. Naturally, when making a bike, designers and companies have to make certain concessions when creating smaller sizes and step-throughs. A common, albeit unintended, consequence results in a bike that has an ideal size, but anything significantly smaller is effectively a different machine. With the Polyvalent, we made the diamond our standard frame and the low-kicker, or step-through, with no discernible difference in ride. It’s the same geometry and spec. So, if you want to ride that style of bike but you have an injury or something that’s stopping you from riding what is a fairly level top tube, you don’t have to make any compromises there. And we’re proud of that.”
Marketing spin or not, I found the mindset Igor imparted throughout the conversation to be particularly powerful. Not because I’m so immune to fanciful ideas and seemingly earnest promises, but because for all my cynicism about anything these days, the proof is in the product. For as long as I’ve been a customer, everything I’ve come to know about their catalog has echoed Igor’s words.
As he put it a few minutes later, “We’re in a privileged position to have more control than others, so we think about the user. What is this person going to be riding in ten years? We hope it’s our product. But we also make sure that person has a solid chance of fixing it or being able to replace some or all of it both now and ten years down the line. New standards and proprietary technology can push boundaries and achieve cool things – but will it last? When we make a product, we think, ‘Can this person go out and buy a part to fix or replace it if need be? And will they be able to do that a few years down the line?’ That’s what matters to us.”
Just like the rest of us, Igor and the rest of the small crew at VO are taken by two wheels. They toured Eastern Europe with Adrian’s wedding dress packed in a pannier. Heck, Adrian worked through two pregnancies just to ensure things like payroll, backend logistics, and other behind-the-scenes elements kept rolling. They rode from DC to Pittsburgh for a bike swap in the nascent days of their ownership so a bike magazine could review a new model. They’re psyched on bikes like we all are, and they’re finding ways to make sure other people have the chance to feel that feeling, too.
I’d be remiss not to mention the other half of Velo Orange’s ownership team – Adrian. While my interactions with her have been limited, Igor spoke about the invaluable work his wife and business partner has put forth to keep the company running. Aside from the day-to-day mundanity of payroll and other less exciting, albeit exceedingly important, work, Adrian is and has been an essential part of Velo Orange for the last decade. Through tours, product testing, media management, and about a million other things, Adrian has often been as involved as her husband in the operations of the company – just not always in such a front-facing fashion. True to form, Adrian’s absence upon my visit was due to her staying home to take care of their newborn, her and Igor’s second child and the second pregnancy she worked through while performing her duties as an owner/ operator.
With so much of the bike industry being male-dominated, it felt only right to ensure I gave her due credit, even if she wasn’t around for my visit. After all, everything from bike design to pricing has been touched by Adrian. The fruits of her labor are as pertinent to this conversation as Igor’s, even if she wasn’t around to make mention of them herself.
While it may not be sexy, I think there’s a lot of merit to finding the careful balance they’re striving for at Velo Orange. They’re not the first company to adopt the outlook of perpetuating classical bike design in a modern context, but I think they’re one of the only ones doing so in ways more people can afford. The best bit is they’re not some faceless amalgam you can’t speak to or know in some way. If you call, they’ll answer. It’s a hard, largely unexciting reality running a modern bike company, but boy does it matter.