I'm in Portland for the MADE Show and just got a tour of the Chris King factory. I felt like a little kid visiting Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory!

Shop Chris King on BikeList! And watch the blog and follow our Instagram for more MADE Show coverage!

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This week Santa Cruz unveiled their new Skitch–a lightweight flat bar e-bike. Now, back in the 90s, we called the acoustic version of these 700c bikes "hybrids." I commuted for years on a Surly Cross Check I built up with flat bars. To me it’s the best all-around configuration for urban bike commuting.

The Skitch is very cool, with a carbon fiber frame and fork, mid-drive Fazua Ride 60 motor and a claimed 30 pound weight. But the $5,999 price tag was a bit eye opening. It made me wonder: who is the customer for this bike? The marketing photos show a guy in jeans and a backpack hooning around with it like it's a BMX bike. Who is gonna do that with a $6k carbon bike? For the same money, you could have a Santa Cruz Stigmata AND a half-decent ebike–one that you wouldn’t be worried about locking up somewhere (like the REI Co-Op bike I just scored for $998).



Weight is a big issue for e-bikes. My wife has a Specialized Turbo Vado (another bike I’d call a hybrid). It’s an awesome bike, but at over 50 pounds, it’s kind of porky.

So what are your options for more affordable, lightweight hybrid e-bikes? Here are three that come to mind. Let me know if there are others I should include on this list!

Propella 7S

Propella is a cool little e-bike company based near us in Redmond, Washington. We first met them at the Seattle Bike Swap back in February. The Propella 7s features a 7-speed drivetrain, a 250 watt hub motor and 250 wh battery, with a range of 20 - 40 miles. This Class 1 e-bike has five level of pedal-assist and tops out at 19 mph. It weighs in at a reasonable 37 pounds and is generally priced around $999. Want a cleaner look and lower price? Propella also offers a singlespeed variant for $799.



State 6061 eBike Commuter

I consider State to be the king of affordable, quality direct-to-consumer bikes. So when they introduced their 6061 eBike Commuter I definitely took notice. The State has a cleaner look with an integrated 360 wh LG battery in the down tube. Like the Propella, it has a 250 watt rear hub motor. State claims a 24 miles range in PAS level 5 and over 100 miles in PAS level 1. It weighs 38 pounds and is currently priced at $1,299. Hot shot roadie/writer Phil Gaimon has one, and you can see him ride it on Instagram.



Detroit Bikes–Electric

Can you justify spending a little more for a boutique, Made-in-USA option? Then be sure to check out the Detroit Bikes-Electric. This stylish steel e-bike has the cleanest look yet, thanks to the Zehus All-In-One Motor--no need to put a battery on or in the frame! The 250 watt hub motor provides pedal-assistance up to 15.5 mph, and Zehus claims a range of 20 to 35 miles (though the Detroit guys have seen significantly farther than that). And the belt drive helps make it no fuss, no muss. The Detroit e-bike weighs in at a scant 32 pounds and is currently priced at $2,599. I’m super excited to see and test one of these in person--and we will have one in the BikeList booth at the Electrify Expo in Seattle in less than three weeks!



What are your thoughts? And what bikes did I miss? Let me know in the comments!

It’s been several decades since I locked up a bike. My bikes are my babies and bike thieves seem to get more brash and sophisticated every day. But I just ordered my first ever e-bike from REI last week (got an orange Co-op Cycles Generation e1.2 for half off–more on that soon) and plan to use it as a grocery getter and bar bike. So for the first time in a long time, I’m in the market for a bike lock.

As chance would have it, my buddy Dan Cavallari just did a full rundown of the best bike locks for 2023. He got out the angle grinder and everything. You can read his full analysis over at Tom’s Guide.

Do you lock up your bike? If so, what lock do you use?

I’ve been a big fan of American-made bikes my whole life. My basement is filled with US-made bikes from Ritchey, Ibis, Bontrager, Soulcraft, Fat Chance, Independent Fabrications and others.

I’ve also been a big fan of NAHBS for years, and have been to quite a few of the NAHBS shows on the West Coast (including one in Sacramento in 2016–you can see my pics from that show here). BikeList was even going to have a booth at NAHBS last year, until the show got cancelled.

So now I’m very excited about the MADE Show, which kicks off in Portland next week. Like NAHBS, the focus is on American framebuilders and domestic production. You can read more about the MADE Show at made.bike

I’m extra excited because Mike DeSalvo is building me a new custom gravel bike, which will be on display in his booth. I scored a silver Shimano GRX kit last year, so I decided to go with a silver and black theme, inspired by my first BMX bike, a silver Raleigh Rampar.



After going deep down the silver paint rabbit hole, I settled on Porsche GT Silver Metallic. Mike has done several bikes in Porsche colors over the years and they always pop!

The rest of the build includes Thomson stem and dropper, Chris King headset, Boyd wheels, and big fat 700 x 48 Rene Herse tires!

Mike just sent me a pic of my frame in the jig. Stay tuned for more pics of the bike, and of the show in general.



Do you plan to attend MADE? Hit me up via DM on IG or at [email protected]

Earlier this year I enjoyed following the pics posted on Instagram by Dan AKA goathead_sower from his trip to Taiwan (you can check out Dan's BikeList profile here). Turns out Dan works for the ultra cool brand Tumbleweed. Dan introduced me to Daniel Molloy, Tumbleweed’s founder, who kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions about the brand and their trip. You can read the questions and answers below!

For those not familiar with Tumbleweed, there is some basic info on their about page. Their bikes have also been covered extensively by The Radavist.

I remember seeing the first yellow Tumbleweed frame back in 2014 and have followed and admired them from afar ever since.



What are some of the main things you have learned about the bike business in the nine years since you started Tumbleweed in 2014? And how much has the market changed since you started?

I started Tumbleweed simply because I was obsessed with bikes and bike touring, wanted to put my name on products that I was proud of, and doing things that bigger companies weren't focusing on. My obsession at the time (and currently) was expedition mountain bike touring. I had already been a bike mechanic for a long time, ridden the GDMBR as well as the Manali-Leh route in India, and a section of the Carretera Austral in Chile and Argentina. I had spent quite a bit of time in Germany studying abroad and riding bikes, and loved the types of trekking bikes that are so popular over there. They definitely had a strong influence on our brand, as did my time working at Rivendell in California.

When I was designing the Prospector, I honestly didn't think the business would take off. I just wanted to put a bike out into the world that I was proud of, a no compromise expedition bike. My fallback plan if it didn't work out was to stay working as a bike mechanic and have a lifetime supply of my dream bike. I thought I knew quite a bit about the bike industry after working in shops for over a decade, but starting my own brand made me quickly realize that I knew absolutely nothing. When I look back now I'm amazed that we even made it. I had no money at all, worked my full time job as a bike mechanic in the day, and took a second job at night in a catering kitchen doing food prep to scrape together a few hundred dollars at a time to hit the financial milestones that I needed to hit to keep the project moving forward. My first production run of frames got delivered to the house I lived at in Oakland, California with 4 roommates. A semi truck pulled up on our street with a 20 foot shipping container, and we filled up our garage with frame boxes. I would build wheels and bikes every night after working at the bike shop all day. I was completely exhausted but it was an amazing time in my life.

Mountain bike touring and Bikepacking has obviously gotten much more popular in the last decade, which has been lucky for us. But I always saw Tumbleweed as a very niche brand, and we were going to keep our focus no matter what the rest of the market is doing. We have stuck to that plan and have grown steadily and organically, we don't have any investors and we only put out products that are best in class. I'm obsessed with quality, and I wouldn't sell anything that I am not personally excited about. That's part of the reason we are still so small, my primary purpose for the brand isn't to sell out, become huge or join the race to the bottom, we just want to make the best products possible and offer a solid value proposition even though our margins are lower than a lot of other companies.

Can you tell us more about the process of working with a company based overseas in a country like Taiwan?

Lead times seem to be collectively longer than you might expect. There are long development stages that involve signing off on final CAD renderings of a handlebar or rack, getting items finished and shipped for testing by us on our bikes. The Stargazer was two years in development before the final production model was ready, and thankfully supplier backlogs have been much less of an issue. We work with a company who essentially helps us coordinate and manage different projects with different factories, ensure QC, and maintain communication which is essential. So you have an idea, you draw it up, have an engineer work with you to refine that idea into their production model, produce some prototypes - which can be incredibly expensive - before you can sign off on a ready-to-sell production model.

What is the typical timeline between placing a large order from Taiwan and receiving the frames stateside?

We can have a run of frames booked in the production line and on the freighter in something like 3-4 months now, whereas a few years ago certain items we would have to book a year in advance, or longer. Sometimes clearing American customs and the final shipping leg can be a bit unpredictable, but we're talking plus or minus one or two weeks instead of several months.

What frame prep and QA do you do after receiving the frames?

Extensive QC is performed at the factory by the fabrication team and independently by a QC specialist from our trading company, but we keep a close eye on the frames as they come out of the box. We haven't faced any structural issues, as the factory we work with for frame production has aerospace grade tolerances on top of decades of experience. When sending a customer a frameset, we chase and face the bottom bracket shell, ream and face the headtube, and we'll tap rack mounts to prevent any paint buildup from making a rack installation difficult or frustrating. We also mill the fork to remove excess paint to allow for precision fit of the headset crown race.

What were the major highlights and learnings from your last trip?

There's a popular conception that much of overseas bike building is automated; in fact every process we saw in touring the factories was performed by hand by experienced welders and machinists. The radius of most welds is simply too tight for a robot to operate, much less economically. The one robot we did see was working with larger aluminum platform racks and it was doing a portion of the welding so even in that case there was a trained person working to complete the rack as well as operate the robot. All of our suppliers are family owned factories; we would sit across from the factory owner who might be in their 50s or 60s, and their children were in the meetings and often already in administrative or accounting positions. There was also an impressive number of women both working on the factory floor as well as managing projects. In the US, framebuilding is much more of a cottage industry artisanal trade whereas in Taiwan it's simply highly skilled labor. In Cjell Mone's article about a similar trip, he mentioned learning a lot from the welders he eventually used for his Taiwanese line of frames and said they were working twice as well in half the time.

Are you still seeing supply chain issues related to Covid?

Fortunately almost all of the supply chain and logistics issues related to COVID are behind us now. There are still a handful of suppliers who are difficult to get inventory from, but I think that's mainly a function of us selling very specific niche parts.

Have you ever considered making frames in the USA?

If it was possible to produce a frame of higher quality somewhere else, we would do it.There's simply a level of sophistication, consistency and quality that our fabrication shop in Taiwan is capable of that makes them unique. They draw and heat treat their own custom tubing in house as well as CNC machine all of their small parts, miter tubing, all of the processes from start to finish under one roof. We pay more for our frames than other small companies producing metal bikes, but the quality is unmatched. One benefit of being primarily a direct to consumer business is that we can really go high end on our products and take a lower product margin to deliver great value to our customers. We are charging the same or slightly more than other companies that are having their frames built in more mainstream fabrication shops that outsource a lot of the production steps like mitering the tubes, ordering standard tubesets from one of the big suppliers, ordering dropouts and small parts from open source catalogs, etc. Ordering bulk tubesets causes a lot more dents in tubing when it gets transported to the frame shops, they do a lot of putty work filling dents before the frames get painted. We could produce a $5k frame in the US that wouldn't even begin to approach the level that our framesets are currently at, and overall value is still extremely important to us. We could certainly charge more for our frames in particular, but being competitive and operating a financially sustainable business is always a balance against what the market will bear.

Will you continue to focus primarily on bikepacking?

I've always designed bikes and parts that I'm passionate about and that have been lacking in the mainstream market, and Tumbleweed as a brand has always had a very narrow focus on off road touring specific products. I can't say that this is all we will ever be known for, but I admire bikes and gear that are tough and reliable and capable, and this seems to be an area that most big bike companies have tended to ignore--focusing mainly on performance or racing oriented bikes, with maybe one touring bike as a line item to fill out a broad product line. When you look at most touring bikes from big companies, you can tell that they definitely didn't obsess over the functional and practical details as they relate to real world expedition use. One of the most fun projects I did early on was designing our Rohloff Prospector dropouts with Anna Schwinn. Little things like speccing the size and position of the rack and fender mounts made me so happy, making sure that they were the widest part of the rear triangle to prevent any interference with the seatstays, and using an M6 rack boss to allow a stronger fastener and support more weight from the rack and gear. It's little details like that which we obsess over (and that most people will never notice), and that's one of the things that sets us apart as a brand.

Any big plans you can share for 2023 and beyond?

We have several new products that we are working on, some parts and a couple new bike models that we are excited about. I just got back from riding the Torino-Nice Rally on my Stargazer Ti, which was a much needed reset from having my head down at the shop for the last three years, and it feels great to have the creative juices flowing. We have two employees now, Dan and Walt, and they are both doing a great job at running the day to day operations of the shop and giving me the space to focus more on product development and dealer relations. Honestly 2023 feels like a reset year, we are doing great work and putting out quality products, and 2024 should see quite a few new product launches and hopefully building on our small but dedicated dealer network here in the US and especially internationally.

Thank you Daniel for the amazing answers!

This week QBP notified its dealers that it plans to pull the plug on All-City Cycles, first founded in 2008. All-City was the brainchild of Jeffrey Frane, who left QBP a few years ago and recently founded Wilde Bikes.

Jeffrey posted this on Instagram today:

It was a dream come true, and I am incredibly proud of the things that the team at All-City accomplished during my tenure. We used the resources available as part of a large corporation to support the non-traditional cycling community and built one of the more inclusive and interesting brands of the last decade. We made some classic bikes too.

Without All-City I don't know where I'd be, but I'd almost certainly not have the opportunities I have today nor many of the friendships that I hold most dear. I'll forever be grateful to the riders, the shops, and my colleagues at Q.

I'll be sad to see All-City go. I love the All-City fork on my IndyFab Planet Cross. And they always do well on BikeList. The good news is that these bikes were built to last. And we have two for sale right now--a Space Horse Disc and a Def Wish frame. Grab an instant classic while you still can!

Via The Radavist

Last month Russ from Path Less Pedaled caught up with everyone's favorite retrogrouch Grant Petersen from Rivendell. I've been a huge Grant fan ever since the 80s (though I admit I questioned some of his part specs while building Bridgestones in shops in the early/mid 90s). I wouldn't have sold this Bridgestone MB2 if it hadn't been too small for me!

Listen to Russ and Grant talk everything from friction shifting to the future of front derailleurs to the general electrification of bikes.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

I’ve been a huge fan of the Santa Cruz Stigmata since it was first introduced in 2007. Back then it was a no-nonsense cyclocross race bike with cantilever brakes. The frame was Easton EA6X aluminum (and I believe still made in the USA by Kinesis in Portland, Oregon).



The second generation Stigmata released in 2015 really got my attention. This time it was carbon fiber and came with disc brakes. I shot an email to Santa Cruz to complain that it didn’t have fender eyelets and got a really thoughtful reply from Scott Turner:

“The Stigmata is definitely still designed as a performance oriented bike with CX/Gravel in mind. Fender eyelets would feel pretty out of place on a bike like this. That’s not really the intended use/design spectrum it currently fits in.”



The third generation Stigmata released in 2019 saw fairly evolutionary changes–and this time it came with fender eyelets! I came very close to buying this bike. In fact, I would have probably bought one last year but it only cleared 45mm tires and I wanted to be able to go to 50.



So I was really excited to see the fourth generation Stigmata, which was finally revealed last week. This new bike has some BIG changes. It can now clear 50mm tires. And it's definitely a lot more mtb-oriented now.

Dave Rome at Escape Collective sums up some of the changes nicely:

"Gone is the traditional and cyclocross-inspired geometry, with the new Stigmata leaning into Santa Cruz’s mountain bike focus. Here, the revamped and now progressive geometry sees reach figures grow by a whopping 30 mm for each of the five frame sizes. Head tube angles are slackened by a whole two degrees to hit a consistent 69.5°. And such changes now mean the Stigmata is optimised around the use of a shorter 70 mm stem length. Whether you think it’s the future or a fad, the new Stigmata offers a suspension-corrected geometry to handle a 40 mm suspension fork."

I think the evolution of the Stigmata from 2007 is a pretty good summary of the gravel segment in general. Has Santa Cruz gone too far with the new bike?

Which generation is your favorite?

These days reels get more views than static pics on Instagram. Plus they are more fun. Hobohubworks recently sent me a few short vertical clips of the Giant Iguana he is selling on BikeList. I edited them together into a quick 20 second reel and posted it to Instagram (with Aeorsmith, cause why not?).

If you want me to make a reel of your bike for sale, shoot me a few short vertical clips at [email protected]

Increasingly people are turning to e-bikes as car replacements. The example I hear the most is people opting to get rid of their second car in favor of an e-bike, especially a cargo bike. This seems to provide a "best of both worlds" approach and can make local trips a lot more economical and fun. I love this pic from Reddit of a Tern GSD making a Costco run!

Do you use an e-bike as a car replacement?

Shop e-bikes on BikeList!