Why Velocite?
Velocite was started in 2008 for one reason only. To be the best. We test, we research, then we do it again. We verify everything until we know it’s fast, light, strong and best in class. We do not make anything without doing this. We will not tell you fanciful stories just to sell you something. There are plenty of alternatives in the market who do that already.
Our product design philosophy reflects this goal so we do not employ any industrial designers, nor do we ever consult with external industrial or product design specialists. Our product philosophy is that of functional design – or better known as “form follows function”. You will therefore also not find many fanciful design features on our products – for example box sections, extreme edges, or other design devices whose function is to grab attention, not perform a function. What you will get is the best possible bicycle products for the intended purpose.
Each of our products is a result of careful consideration and at times exhaustive research and development (R&D) efforts. Our R&D capabilities extend to our own CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and FEA structural analysis equipment, to outside providers through whom we have access to a wind tunnel and any number of material and structural testing machines. This means that our product design choices are backed up by and based on scientific research.
Every product with safety implications is put through exhaustive safety testing program (European Norm (EN) and live rider testing) before it is put into full production.
Finally, every single carbon frame and fork that we make is tested not only for geometric precision (alignment, dimensions) and weight, but for stiffness as well. The stiffness measurements are independently validated and correlated by dedicated third party test centers, for example CHC and EFBe.
Despite our youth we have been recognized and awarded with many industry specific and national awards such as the Eurobike Award, iF Design Award, D&I award, Golden Pin Award, National Entrepreneurship Award and several others. More information and references can be found here: Velocite Bikes
Personal message from the founder
I am the founder of Velocite and the current CEO. I am not a former racer, or a machine shop owner or a tinkerer who happens to like bikes or anyone else who either had a history in the bike business, or excess manufacturing capacity in his existing business. I started my bicycle (industry) journey just like you. I liked to ride bikes. This also means that I started as a consumer – I had to buy bikes and gear with my own money.
Back then, same as most of you now I relied on several sources to help me make my purchasing decisions; I read bike magazines, participated in bike forums (user name vmajor, look me up), read everything written by bicycle manufacturers, talked to bike shops, and talked to my mostly more experienced friends and took their knowledge and opinions on board.
Perhaps it is due to my peculiar professional background but after several bikes and a lot of gear have passed through my hands, I started to feel that something is not right with the information that I was being fed. See, I always enjoyed science and was doing my first year of postgraduate degree in the field of Biochemistry when personal and general reasons intervened that made me realize that I would make a poor research scientist or lecturer. I thus stopped my studies and joined the workforce. I spent 8 years of my life working in multinational pharmaceutical and healthcare companies in sales and marketing. One thing that was drilled into me was “Do not make things up, always have references because we are not allowed to deliberately mislead our customers.” Clearly this mainly applies to the junior cadre, nevertheless this instilled a very strong ethical approach to how Velocite works and how we do things.
Thus, after collecting all the information available to consumers and realizing that it is all mostly fiction written to justify a particular products’ price or market position I started visiting the factories that make these products to hear their side of the story.
What I found, in summary, is that the reality of the bike business is vastly different to what is fed to the consumers – you (and me, back then). While it is not true that “all carbon frames or wheels are the same” or that “I can buy the same stuff on e*ay”, my extensive personal research confirmed that a lot of the information written by the bike brands is not based on any fact, or any known laws of physics. The product descriptions and press releases are mostly just marketing stories devised to appeal to you to encourage you to part with your money. In essence there is nothing wrong with this as bicycles are after all just consumer items – not something that has critical performance requirements like military equipment or airplanes, however very often disinformation and pseudoscience is used to explain a product’s claimed performance, or to justify its high price. I consider this to be highly unethical.
Thus Velocite exists only to deliver on the largely unfulfilled promises made by others and to provide you with products that do exactly what we claim they do.
I am now firmly embedded in the bicycle industry and have constant dialogue with factories and other bicycle industry executives and associations. Also due to our peculiar performance based positioning I am also deeply involved with the material science and manufacturing methods side of things, as well as with external researchers and service providers. Actually I am not “just” the CEO of Velocite Bikes, I am also Velocite’s R&D Director.
This makes me personally involved and invested into every one of our products, and every decision made regarding each product is driven by the functional design philosophy, and by my stubborn regard for ethics.
I can thus extend to you my personal promise that Velocite products will perform exactly as claimed, which in reality means that they will outperform anything else that you have tried before. This is why Velocite exists.