I like to think I’ve got a half-decent handle on what’s worth highlighting when it comes to custom bikes and gear, but I’ve also always found it immensely valuable to look at things through someone else’s perspective. So far I’ve been showing you what caught my eye at MADE. For my penultimate gallery from the show, I wanted to look at things through a different lens so I enlisted the help of my old industry (and personal) friend, Anna Schwinn.
Yep, as in that Schwinn family.
She’s the great-great-granddaughter of Ignaz Schwinn, who founded the legendary American bicycle brand in 1895. Her father, Richard Schwinn, founded Waterford Precision Cycles in 1993, and ran it until he decided to close up shop in 2023. Anna and her brother, Tucker, started working on the factory floor in Wisconsin while they were still in elementary school, first sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms, and later graduating to stuff like mitering tubes.
“I grew up going to trade shows instead of trick-or-treating,” she said, “because CABDA [the Chicago Area Bicycle Dealer Association show] in the fall would fall on the same weekend.”
As longtime professional mechanic and bike/component/tool designer Bre Rue described to me, “Anna is like cycling royalty.”
That may very well be, but I’ve never been one to attribute value to someone just because of who their parents were, and that’s certainly not why I asked Anna to lend her expertise here. It’d perhaps be easy for someone in her position to ride on the coattails of her family name, but Anna is no nepo baby.
“You walk around with my last name in this country in this industry… yeah, it’s there,” she told me. “It’s the first impression whether or not I’m in the room. It’s the second head on my shoulder in many conversations. We had privileged access to cycling growing up, as kids who worked in a factory, with special access to bike museums, special bike paint jobs, stuff like that. But there wasn’t a family expectation that we would go into the business.
“If anything, dad had a policy of not extending lessons or knowledge to us. We had to find and establish our own relationship with bikes and cycling. He told us, ‘Everyone is going to think you’ve been handed everything. At least this way, you’ll know you haven’t.’”
She put her mechanical engineering degree and fabrication background to work straight out of school designing aero components at Zipp like the original Vuka Sprint drop bar, Vuka Bull base bar, and Vuka Clip clip-ons. Following that was a stint at Quality Bicycle Components working on stuff like carbon forks, dropouts, and other frame fittings for their in-house brands (All-City, Whisky, Foundry, Problem Solvers, etc.). Afterward, she worked with legendary custom brands and builders like Richard Sachs, Fat Chance, Demon Frameworks, and 51 Speedshop.
Yep, she did these. Photo: Anna Schwinn.
Yet unless you were in the industry at the time, you almost certainly had no idea she was behind any of this stuff – particularly since she’s been intentionally quiet about it.
"Anna is one of the few people I've ever come across who blends the eye and instincts of a naturally gifted artist and designer, with the rigor of being a solid engineer, and the life experience and curiosity of a maker/craftsperson,” Josh Poertner told me [he managed Schwinn at Zipp]. “She can talk your ear off about fashion history or product design history or a comparison of modern graffiti artists or fonts and brand logos, and then show you the sand casting rig she built in her garage to try and understand how to eliminate voids that are leading to stress cracking in a design she's working on because her FEA of that part wasn't predicting the failure properly. So I've always really appreciated her ability to both design and critique design not only from her personal perspective, but also from the perspective of each of those viewpoints.”
The double guides for All-City (left) offered a tidy way to secure a rear derailleur housing and rear brake hose (back when mechanical shifting was still a thing). Schwinn designed these dropouts for Richard Sachs to help him cut down on finishing time. “He was doing a lot of modification and refinement on each frame to finish. I just built all of that style into an 11-speed compatible dropout.”
Schwinn has been on sabbatical from bikes entirely for the last few years, currently working in “service design and strategy/organizational design” in the healthcare industry.
“It’s one of our time’s most pressing needs and a very worthy problem space,” she explained to me. “For me, I’m just generally a holistic designer. Design is design is design; you can practice in any number of industries and contexts and channels. I like to play in all of them, which is why it’s important for me to have an outlet for fun projects in the physical and artistic realms through Wow What Studio. That’s where special projects (like bike part doodles for friends and secret books) live.”
Yep, Schwinn is back in the bike business, though in a limited capacity and on her own terms – in particular working exclusively with friends that she says she wants to help succeed, like Danielle Schön of Schön Studio, a custom builder in Squamish, British Columbia.
“Anna is a visionary at large who has touched more product in the bike industry than most people will ever know,” Schön said to me. “She has a technical prowess and cunning eye for design that can be developed only from decades of immersive experience. She has built product from ideas for some of the biggest names in the building. Anna not only knows what’s cool, but why it’s cool – and often well before anybody else does.”
Long story short, she’s one of the most fascinating people in the bike industry that I’ve ever met. So yeah, I wanted to know what Anna thought was cool at MADE, and I thought you might want to know, too.
Welcome back, Anna. We’ve missed you.
Want more unique content like this? Then please consider becoming a paid subscriber to n-1.
Saltair Cycles builder Matthew Nelson brought this ultralight steel road bike to this year’s MADE show. It genuinely was shockingly light, and the lavender paint job was gorgeous, but that’s not why Schwinn directed me to take a closer look at this thing.
“This is my favorite seat cluster of the show,” she told me. “This one is nice for a couple of reasons. The transition from the fat seatstays to the clamp is clean; I like the way he solved that. I like the continuous top line from the top tube to the top of clamp, and the way that crimps and continues down the top of the stays. I also like the way he uses the ‘lug’ (I’m not positive if this is a modified lug or an assembly with a sleeve and independent clamp) as a fat interface for the wide top tube. It works on a micro and macro level. It’s interesting while still being very clean.”
Fastback-style seat clusters aren’t all that unusual, but the way Nelson has carved and sculpted the seatstay caps helps to set his apart from the rest. “Seat clusters are one of my favorite bits of the frame,” Schwinn told me. “In addition to it being a very busy part of the bike (many tubes coming together), it’s an interface that riders frequently use/wrench themselves. It’s also a bit of the frame that’s very 3-D. I like when a builder does something clever, beautiful, and functional to tie it all together.”
The seatstay bridge is pretty darn slick, too.
The Columbus Max aero-profile steel fork blades are striking, as well as rarely seen.
If you’re going to use rim-brake calipers, these eeBrakes (originally penned by Craig Edwards of eeCycleWorks and now manufactured and sold by Cane Creek) are still far and away the best I’ve ever used in terms of power and control. It sure doesn’t hurt that they’re astoundingly light, too. “I love rim brakes,” Nelson said. “I think it’s nice that we have an opportunity and live in a time when we can choose. Forget what’s better or worse or lighter. We get to choose. That’s the beauty. So any time one of my customers is down for doing a rim brake bike, I’m all for it.”
The frame may have built primarily with low weight in mind, but the sculpted shape of the chainstays promises some very good rigidity, too.
Ritchey’s socket-style dropouts have long been some of my favorites for their compact efficiency and the way they allow the uninterrupted cross-sections of the stays to reach almost all the way to the hub axle. There’s also a nostalgic value to me in that some of my favorite steel bikes over the years have been built with these.
That is one fine head tube badge there. And I love all of the bright detailing used throughout.
Gorgeous.
This mixte gravel setup from Wilde Bikes was another build that Schwinn insisted I check out in detail. “I’ve always been fascinated with mixtes and I wanted to try one out for myself and see what we could do to update the idea,” explained Wilde builder Brad Wilson (who, coincidentally, also used to work at Waterford Precision Cycles). “It’s just something we’re trying to keep alive, to keep it in the conversation in the American bicycle scene.”
What drew Schwinn’s eye here was the way the twin lateral tubes are so carefully bent as to perfectly match the profile of the seatstays and chainstays. It’s a subtle detail that many would miss, but one that contributes to the overall beauty of the frame.
Up front, the twin lateral tubes are given a subtle bi-laminate treatment.
The way Wilson joined the twin lateral tubes to the seat tube is stunning. “It’s just two tiny little pieces of plate metal that I kind of cut into shape,” Wilson explained. “And there’s a little gusset back here to reinforce it because it’s such a thin tube and has to absorb a fair amount of vibration through there. It’s a design aspect that we’re definitely considering. I really like the way this one turned out.”
The way the seatstays are capped is both functional and beautiful.
Schwinn told me she loved the way Nelson resolved the twin lateral tube around the brake caliper on the non-driveside. In her words, it’s almost like it’s just “floating” in space.
Mixte frames may be seen as old-school, but Wilde dressed this one up with modern fitments like UDH-compatible dropouts, thru-axles, disc brakes, a carbon fork, and modern high-performance tubing.
“Fucking Rob English with his bike that literally screams aero,” read the text that Schwinn sent me. Can’t say I disagree.
“I love Rob because as a former aero designer, it’s nice to be reminded of what a world without UCI equipment requirements fossilizing forms could look like.”
“The integrated fork/cockpit is tied together so cleanly, and those stainless bullets on the grip trails are a really nice touch.”
Inside the head tube is a hidden steerer stop that most people would never even think to look for – but Schwinn made sure to point it out to me, because she certainly did.
English trimmed the bottom bracket spindle by 16 mm to yield the narrower Q-factor that he wanted. Doing so necessitated some pretty dramatic bends in the chainstays.
The seatstays are bent to match, and Schwinn described the bends as “severe,” but in more of a dramatic way, not a negative one. “I love how the bends stack when you look down on it.”
“The aero profile junction at the seatstay-seat tube junction is a riot and a generally really smart way of pulling things together.”
Evolve says it Aeroto disc rotor cover can “potentially” save 0.5-2 W based on the company’s in-house testing. It also advises against using it when “prolonged heavy braking is required,” but that thankfully is rarely a concern in time trials.
Does this down tube extension do much for aero efficiency? Probably not, but it sure does look cool.
Schwinn described this neo-retro build from builder Marco Pedretti as, “a stunner.”
“The paint is a special obsolete (literally from the 70s) buttery yellow with the perfect red accents, painted by one of Joe Bell’s folks.”
“[It’s] nothing new and novel,” Schwinn said. “Just a very tucked-in version of what it is.”
The Benotto cello tape matches the red accents on the frame and fork perfectly, but wow, was this a visceral reminder of my youth of how it was also wholly lacking in any sort of padding (or grip, for that matter).
I dig the old-school cable routing.
Why aren’t the Paul Components brakes also red? I don’t know, but I’d say the purple is a nice complement regardless.
Coordinating the colors of the bar tape and frameset accents is one thing, but doing the same with these felted wool flowers, too? Bonkers.
Schwinn also raved to me about this steel coaster-brake mountain bike cruiser from Monē Bikes. “The concept is just to make something cool that has old Schwinn vibes,” Cjell Monē explained to me. “This is my favorite Schwinn layout with the single-bend top tube.”
What Schwinn specifically found so impressive is Monē’s use of unsanded fillets. It’s rarely seen because it’s so difficult to get right. Most builders instead rely on sanding for a smooth look. Monē told me his reason for doing it this way is something else entirely: “Laziness” – and he wasn’t entirely joking.
“I was terrible at fillets for quite some time as most people are,” Monē said. “I had to figure something else out because sanding these things takes a lot of time. It’s an art in itself. So I just started getting really detail oriented as far as laying [the beads] down correctly.”
The double-plate fork crown has a wonderfully industrial look to it.
There’s an awful lot of work involved in just this area.
And can we talk about this coaster brake hub? Monē took a stock hub and transformed it into a rotating piece of art.
Yeah, it bugs me, too, that the lettering on the dropout seems to be backwards.
Details matter, as always.
What once was old is new again, right? Many bring up John Tomac in regards to the currently hot topic of drop-bar mountain bikes comes up, but as Schwinn made sure to point out to me, Charlie Cunningham was decades earlier with the idea.
Cunningham was an early pioneer with wide hub spacing, and the rear was even so wide that it could be built with zero dish. “Charlie is one of my favorite engineers of all time,” Schwinn said. “And this bike is such a cool example of his early work because it’s all in the details. You can see all of this future technology starting to emerge.”
Toggle-cam brakes were admittedly nothing compared to modern hydraulic discs, but they offered a lot of mechanical advantages compared to cantilevers.
A 1x drivetrain with a chainguide? Like Schwinn said, Cunningham was way ahead of his time. “Charlie never really ever built for style. He wasn’t pretty and refined like Steve Potts. You can always tell what his intent was with his design and build work.”
Cunningham was also a pioneer in his use of oversized aluminum tubing.
Another toggle-cam brake is mounted underneath the chainstays. Check out how this section of brake line is not only sealed from the elements, but also equipped with a grease fitting to keep the whole area running smoothly. And notice how those bearings are installed in the bottom bracket shell? Yep: press-fit.
That’s no off-the-shelf seatpost, either.
The thin-walled aluminum tubing required reinforcement for the bottle cage mounts. Cunningham didn’t have to make his pretty, but I’m sure glad he did it, anyway.
Bitchn’ Bikes uses an array of 3D-printed steel parts, not only for its frames, but also for handlebars and seatposts. “These are my favorite 3-D printed parts of the show,” Schwinn told me. “3-D printing for me is largely pretty disappointing. With cast parts and machined parts, the barrier to production is so high you have to know what you’re doing. You have to really think through these things from every level. It takes a lot of practice to get things right. With most technological jumps in bikes, the opportunity of the technology takes a while to get realized. 3-D printing is in this moment where it’s opened up all of this awesome opportunity for innovation, but they are a lot of people who are doing it really poorly. The opportunity of 3-D printing is in iteration, but people aren’t doing it.”
“The Bitchn’ parts are really doing it for me for this reason. There is clear iteration. It’s clear somebody’s done a structural analysis on the part before printing it. It’s designed to be easily produced into a frame. And the junctions are solid, even if they’re not seamless. It’s really well thought out.”
What’s perhaps even more impressive than the level of refinement on these parts is that they come from a very small builder like Bitchn’ Bikes. It’s not necessarily extensive resources and deep pockets that make something good; sometimes it’s just determination, creativity, and the ability to see something in a different way.
Schwinn designed and made these shop aprons herself through her Wow What Studio brand, which were quietly offered for sale at the Moondust Apparel booth. They feature not only multiple sizes, but pen pockets specific to right- or left-handed mechanics. The strap configuration is also shockingly comfortable even when the pockets are loaded up with tools, and they’re anchored in big brass eyelets. And why yes, I did end up bringing one back home with me to Boulder. Multi-talented, indeed.
Want to see all of my coverage from MADE? Click here – and then click below to support my work by becoming a paid subscriber to n-1. No ads, no affiliate links, no sponsored content, no hidden investors, no corporate legalese, no bullshit.
James always has the best tech articles, and his Made coverage this year has been excellent. This article, though, takes it over the top and is probably my favorite over all the years I’ve been following (ok, stalking) him. This shows why he’s the best in the business and exactly why this subscription is worth every penny.
James always has the best tech articles, and his Made coverage this year has been excellent. This article, though, takes it over the top and is probably my favorite over all the years I’ve been following (ok, stalking) him. This shows why he’s the best in the business and exactly why this subscription is worth every penny.
Fascinating, totally appreciate hearing another expert perspective