We recently connected with Nick WIgston and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nick thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Our custom bicycle business if focused on inclusivity in cycling. We want everyone to be able to have a great bike that fits them perfectly and also helps them achieve their cycling and fitness goals. That is why we specialize in building bikes for people who are not of average size. The bicycle industry in general does a great job of building bikes and components for average sized people, but not those on either end of the bell curve. We work with people who are small or tall or big and heavy or simply of odd proportions to make them the perfect custom or semi-custom bike. We also build custom electric bikes to enable more people who have health, age-related or medical issues that prevent them from riding an analog bike. Our bike offerings really open the door for people who otherwise cannot find the right bike for themselves.

Nick, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I first met Lennard Zinn when I was in college. He joined a me and a friend on a whitewater kayaking trip to Gore Canyon on the Colorado River. We had a great day, and I got to learn all about the custom bike company that he had started in 1982. When I graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in design, I reached out to Lennard about getting a job at Zinn Cycles. He hired me to manage the business and help sell bikes, and later help with learning to design and fit bikes for customers, which I am still learning. I guess I will always be learning since it’s always changing. I’ve now been with Zinn Cycles since 2006, and just in November of 2022 bought the company from Lennard so that he can move towards retirement over the next 10 years. At Zinn Cycles, we build custom bikes for people who need or want a truly perfect fit on their bike. Lennard is 6’6″ tall so we have developed a big reputation for building bikes for taller people. We also have become one of the only companies in the world offering custom made titanium e-bikes which bring a new level of performance the e-bike market. We also started a 2nd brand called Clydesdale Bicycles in 2018 that offers non custom bikes for big and tall riders at a much lower price than what it costs to get a full custom bike. Over the 16 years I’ve been with Zinn we have grown a lot. We offer custom length bicycle cranks for small and tall riders, custom bikes, non custom bikes, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, e-bikes, tandems, triathlon bikes, hybrids and everything with two wheels.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

since we operate in a niche market, the most likely person to buy a bike from us is someone who has already bought one. We keep in constant communication with our past customers by having a monthly newsletter to send out announcing new products, showcasing some unique custom bikes, and informing them of new blog posts and articles to read. We also post all of these things to our social media channels where many of our customers are followers. We are constantly writing new content for the website so that customers have interesting stuff to read. We also try to follow up with customers after they’ve had their bike for awhile to make sure everything is good. I think this connection is the key to lifetime customers.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Up to 2017, the only thing we offered were high end custom bikes. I realized that we were losing a lot of big and tall customers who had heard about us for bikes that fit them, but then they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) afford a full custom bike. I decided we needed something more affordable and that didn’t take as long to make. Something closer to “off-the-shelf”. I researched having titanium frames made overseas and found a great frame builder in asia that makes high quality custom titanium bike frames using the same methods we use for our custom bikes, but at a larger scale and at a much lower price than we can do in the US. Clydesdale Bicycles was born as a new brand of non-custom titanium big and tall bikes. This was a huge direction change in our business since we previously sold fewer than 70 custom bikes per year. Going to higher volume sales was a big change for us and we have been learning a lot more about how much inventory we need on hand, how many frames to buy at once, how to forecast what sizes we’ll be needing, etc. We’ve since more than doubled our sales volume after creating the new brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: zinncycles.com
• Instagram: @zinncycles
• Facebook: @zinncyles
• Twitter: @zinncycles
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOYq6UfbqAhSSLS5I238hSQ

Image Credits
Photos by Robert Kittila