25Seven

Special Edition: Lights Out

A couple months ago Zac Daab of Cascade Bicycle Studio--one of Seven Cycles' retailers--requested a special paint scheme for a project on which he was developing.  He is a serious cyclocross racer and was working with Seattle's season opener--Star Crossed--and wanted to come up with a special bike for that event.

The race occurs after dark each year and Zac had a great tie in idea:  design a glow in the dark bike.  We had previously done glow in the dark bikes only a few times over the past decade, so we were excited to work on this with Zac.  GITD paint is tricky to do well and durably.

See it GITD after the jump...

Invented Word of the Day: Calamirate

From the archives of made up words at Seven Cycles…

ca·lam·ir·ate

Pronunciation: \kə-ˈla-mə-rāt\
Function:  verb
Etymology:   From the Modern English collaboratus-disastrous .  Date:  2008.

1. When a collaboration becomes a calamity
2. When the action of collaboration becomes a product called calamity
3. When you know that working with someone(s) will become a train wreck

"Let's meet and calamirate about your proposal.  I can't wait."

In my travels, particularly in countries that have limited regulation, I’ve seen impressive examples of calamiration.  I’ve paid close attention and learned a lot—I’m quite efficient at the art of the calamiration.

Wheelchair Design: Race Version

I notice, almost without exception, that when people find out I’ve done some wheelchair design work, there is a disproportionate interest in hearing about it.  In some ways I can understand bike people’s interest in wheelchairs.  There are many similarities between bikes and wheelchairs:  mobility, freedom, self locomotion, and the augmentation of physical capability, to name a few. 

Back in the early ‘90s I spent more than 2-years working fulltime—and then some—on two wheelchair projects for Merlin Metalworks in partnership with Halls Wheels.  The reason I am posting about it here is twofold:

First:  these two projects had a significant impact on my interest in bike fit and bike performance design—and therefore in many ways it has affected Seven Cycles’ design philosophies.

Finite Element Analysis

This may seem like a blasphemous post.  Oh well; the point of this blog is to cause trouble.

At Seven Cycles we sometimes hear the question, “Do you use Finite Element Analysis—or what type of FEA do you use—in your design process.”  It’s a very reasonable question.  It’s an engineer type question.  FEA is an engineering tool.  It is a computer program that simulates the way a product might be used; in the case of bicycles:  loads, stresses, impacts, etc.

‘Finite’ is the key word.  It also stands for finite value, in my view.

I preface this conversation by explaining that Seven Cycles is lucky enough to have six engineers on staff.  For a business our size, that’s way overstaffed—it’s about 15% of our team.  Granted, they are not working on engineering and design projects fulltime.  However, they do all participate in design projects every day.  In addition, their primary roles at Seven include engineering on a daily basis.  And, lastly, while I don’t have an engineering degree, I am part of the engineering & design team.

We have a hierarchy of design tools for making products for which we offer lifetime warranties.  In this case I am only talking about tools that impact safety and durability; I’m not talking about tools that serve all the other elements of product development and design.

I will post about details of each of these tools at a later date.  For the moment, I’ll provide only a brief explanation of how and why we use and think about each tool. Of course, nothing at Seven is a true hierarchy, but for the purposes of writing a reasonably short post, here is how our tools fall in order or value.

Celebritee Shirt

Jeremy Dunn of Embrocation recently invited me to join a group of celebrities in judging a t-shirt design contest for his magazine.  I was psyched to help out with his very worthwhile periodical.

If you haven’t sent in your t-shirt design, you better hurry.

Check the celebrity roundup here.

One of these photos is not like the other.  Can you tell which is of me?  I’ll give you a hint; I’m the palest of the group—I look even whiter than the black and white photo of Slate Olson.  Another hint, my photo is the only one that doesn’t have anything to do with bikes.  Somehow, this photo array seems a fitting microcosm for my world as it relates to cycling.

At least I’m in good company—a great group of cycling fanatics!  I’m sure they’ll cover for me.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to ‘judging’.  People tell me I’m ‘good’ at that.

The Future of Fit – An Interview with BRAIN

A while back Bicycle Retailer and Industry News Magazine asked me and others in the industry about the future of bike fitting.

Here I will reprint the entire transcript in two or three parts.  Of course, it was edited down significantly in the magazine.  I preceded my answers to Sean Hong’s questions with a disclaimer.  It went a little something like this…

______________________________

It is always dangerous to make generalizations regarding topics as complex as ‘fit in the bike industry’.  Generalizations become more difficult when the outcome is so important to so many constituents and interested parties—retailers, large bike suppliers, small bike suppliers, and customers, to name a few.

______________________________

BRAIN:  Why is proper fitting so important? Is it any less important with lower end bikes, compared to the higher end stuff Seven sells?

Naming

A few days ago we found out we had to change the name of one of our commuter bikes—the District.

I always tell people that the toughest part about running a business is coming up with product and service names.  It takes a lot of time, and no matter what name you choose, it is either already in use or it stinks.  There’s not much in between.

Even when you search to see if a name is in use, you are not always right.  At times, we’ve gone with names that we did not know—and could not find—belonged to another brand.

This works both ways; sometimes other brands have used our product names.  Of course this is going to happen once in a while.  Seven has well over 100 product names.  And a company like Specialized probably has hundreds.  So, it’s to be expected that once in a while, someone will encroach on your naming territory by accident.

Operations Management - International Edition

Today we had a visit with a group of students from the EF International School of Brighton.  Since it is a true international school, the class has students from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Italy, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, and Portugal.  It sounds like a really interesting school. 

This group is in an operations management class.  Part of their schooling is to work on their English.  They decided to take a challenge by visiting Seven Cycles to understand our Operations Management Strategy.  Even for those fluent in English, Seven’s Ops strategy is pretty near impossible to understand—I certainly don’t.  However, the teacher visited a year ago with a different group of students.  She asked to return so I guess it wasn't a complete waste of their time. 

So, on Friday afternoon, about 25 students arrived.  Because the class is operations management studies, they were interested in nearly every aspect of our production systems.  Of course, we only had a short amount of time for the visit so we had to choose only a few areas on which to focus.  The three areas that seemed most interesting to the group were:

Over a Barrel

I’ve noticed this item—what is it called—a traffic barrel?  A pedestrian barrel?  A punching bag?  I’ve seen it many times over the past year or so.  It lives in the intersection a block from my house.  It is sometimes in the middle of a crosswalk—where it’s supposed to be.  And it’s sometimes on its side in the gutter—not where it’s supposed to be.

Ace Wheelworks—one of Seven’s retailers, and the sister store of the infamous Belmont Wheelworks—collaborated with the Somerville police to have it at the intersection in front of the store.  The street doesn’t look like a place that would require a traffic barrel in the crosswalk, but I have to say that I’ve had a few close calls with cars on that street.  It is an oddly and understatedly dangerous intersection.

I don’t know the details of the relationship between Ace and the Somerville police but the barrel has a plaque, on which is written, “Collaboration between Wheelworks of Somerville and the City of Somerville”.  It’s really cool that Wheelworks did this, and that they are supporting pedestrian safety.  It’s not so cool that drivers seem to treat the barrel as the centerpiece of a demolition derby.

It’s rather amazing that the barrel is still functioning—and that it can stand upright.  I love how the big bold letters of, “State Law, Yield to Pedestrians…” is completely smashed in; almost as if drivers aim for that side of the barrel. 

I feel bad for the person that drags it out to the crosswalk every morning, just to have some Death Race 2000 driver play bumper cars, and roll it into the gutter, by the afternoon.

This is a reminder to always look both ways before crossing the street; then sprint.

Interdisciplinary Bike Project at RISD

Today at Seven Cycles we were visited by two students from RISD: Danny Kim and Ryan Coil.  Seven’s production manager, Matt O’Keefe, gave them an extended tour of our factory.

The RISDees are working on a bike project for school.  They told me that it isn’t really a school project; it’s what they called an “interdisciplinary project”.  They did say that RISD has a bike building class where the entire class works on one bike together.  I had not heard about that before; it sounded interesting and challenging.

For Danny and Ryan's project they are working on a couple of titanium bike frames;  so the tour, and our conversations, focused on the challenges of frame building in titanium.  Danny and Ryan were particularly interested in fixtures and welding techniques. 

I initially talked with them on the phone for a while last week, before they visited today.  After discussing their ideas on the phone, it was clear that visiting Seven would be helpful.  Over the phone we covered a lot of topics including: