The Beauty and Challenge of Stainless

Now that our new shop is getting up to speed, I thought I'd post a few pics of some of the latest stainless lugs coming out of the shop. One of the interesting insights for us coming out of NAHBS was that people are as excited by our lugwork as they are inspired by what we are doing with wood.

We offer stainless because of its many advantages (beauty, strength, longevity, durability, low impact). But what may not be apparent is how challenging it can be to work with Stainless, relative to other materials more commonly used in bicycle manufacture. Here at Sylvan, we have worked to develop proprietary methods of machining, joining and finishing stainless that enable us to offer our unique lugs. It's truly exacting work: there's no hiding. All the work is right out there in the open -- no paint!

I should also mention that we make bicycles with lugs from other materials – and we have some rather interesting things in development -- but more on that in a later post. Back to the Shop! John

Introducing John Coull

We are pleased to announce that we have recently added seasoned marketing person John Coull to the Sylvan team.

To many of you in the bicycle world, John Coull needs no introduction. John knows the bicycle industry from the inside-out, having owning and operating the legendary Valley Bicycles for nearly three decades. In the business development community, many of you know John for his work as the past President of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce.

John is great fit to the Sylvan team, not only because of his obvious history with the bicycle market, but also because of his long-standing engagement with socially-responsible business practice. John was one of the few business-people whom I saw back in the 1980's who actively and regularly put these practices into action in meaningful everyday ways. It's an honor to have John on our team.

John would love to hear from you; he can be reached at: JC@sylvancycles.com