Seven Customers – Page 20

Carole’s Orange Crush Evergreen

This is Carole. We built her this steel, Orange Crush Evergreen last year with our friends at Halter’s Cycles in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. A recent email let us know a few things about Carole. First, she has ridden her bike a lot, including right through this last snowy winter. Second, she loves it. Third, she is one hell of a photographer.

Right away we asked if we could share some pictures of her Evergreen with you, and not only did she say that was ok. She sent us more pictures. We were going to pick just a few, as we normally do, but they’re all so good, we’re including every one.

We say it over and over again, we put a lot of time into building bikes for people, but they’re the ones who make us look good.

Check out Carole’s photos below:

Chris’s Evergreen SL

This is the kind of letter we love to get. Not only does Chris love his new bike, even more importantly he loves the type of riding his Evergreen SL is helping him discover. His photos and letter, below.

Hey guys,

The Evergreen worked out great. Since I got it in March, I’ve taken it to CA and cycled down Rt. 1 from Carmel to Cambria. This was a 10 day trip full of camping and kayak surfing with the family (my wife and 2 yr. were driving with the gear). I have never had such an amazing cycling adventure – the handling, speed, and ride quality of the Evergreen exceeded my expectations. Putting it together in a hotel room in Monterey was a trip! So great. Now I’m looking for routes for Evergreening my commute in Houston, TX. I’m surprised at what pops out once I start looking!

All the best and more to come,

Chris

David’s Mudhoney SLX

We built this Mudhoney SLX as a race bike. It has a bare titanium and Superhero Blue, modified-panel paint scheme, and is optimized for a 1x drivetrain. Disc brakes complete the ultra-modern picture.

Will all CX bikes look like this in the future? They might.

On the Road – Bob Kruger Grinds Oregon Gravel

When you finish a bike, put it in a box, put that box on a truck and send it out into the world, you never know what kind of adventures it’s going to find. We built Bob Kruger a Mudhoney S last year with our good friends at Cascade Bicycle Studio in Seattle, and, like so many of the cyclists we admire, he put it to good use as a cyclocross race bike, a bad weather commuter and finally, as a mixed-terrain explorer.

Bob’s gorgeous photos and prose from the Gorge Roubaix Gravel Grinder below:

Last spring I was looking for a new bike. I had a number of intended uses for this bike: commuter, cross racer, gran fondo and all around performer. I wasn’t looking for a plastic race bike, nor a heavy city bike. This bicycle needed to look great, take a beating and come out the other end looking just as good. It needed to perform well 365 days a year for the next 30 years. That’s a big ask.

I found the perfect bike. It was a Seven Mudhoney S. Although I thought it was perfect throughout last autumn’s cross season and a winter of commuting, I verified it this weekend at the Gorge Roubaix Gravel Grinder.

Throughout the day I was continually reminded of how much I loved my Seven Mudhoney. The 28 mm Continental 4-Seasons performed spectacularly both on the treacherous gravel descents and fast paved sections. The CBS-built Hed Belgium + Chris King hubbed wheelset was bomber and rolled smoothly and perfectly throughout a day where many, many large rocks were hit. The Mudhoney S: titanium frame was solid with zero chatter or skittishness. The gravel and rocks we encountered didn’t even faze the polished titanium’s shine. The Avid BB7 disc brakes gave me a massive amount of confidence and between that and the solidity of the bike I had no fear descending rough gravel at 35 mph for extended periods of time. While others complained of numb hands and feet, I experienced none of that. I couldn’t have been happier with how my Mudhoney performed over those 85 miles.

That night I rinsed the dust off, lubed the chain, screwed on the fat PDX fenders and was ready for the rainy Seattle commute the next morning. In the fall I’ll pull my Contis, install my fat tubeless CX tires and try to win some old man Cat 3 races on this Mudhoney. I’m serious about riding this bike for the next 30 years. I’m sure it will look better than I do in 2045!

Bob Kruger is an Environmental Scientist who grew up in Skagit Valley, Washington and currently resides in Seattle. All of his energy is focused into family, friends, work, travel and being active outdoors, in that order and often together. His outdoor passions include cycling, skiing, golf and being on the water.

See more on this ride here. There is also a great video from the event here.

The Big Ideas – The Rider/Retailer/Builder Partnership

The Big Ideas, as a series, is about this whole bike building project we embarked on in 1997 and the foundational ideas that make what we do possible. The first installment was about Single-Piece Flow (SPF). The second installment was about Just-in-Time manufacturing (JIT). Last we explored the 5 Elements of Customization.

We started with an idea, a different kind of bike company, one that offers a product and a service, an experience, and we found a build method that would support it, Single-Piece Flow. Then we backed it up with a manufacturing model that would streamline the process and hold down costs, Just-in-Time manufacturing. Then we created a language that would free rider’s from the constraints of production models, that would allow them to speak the language of custom, the 5 Elements.

Finally, we needed a way to connect all the dots.

Everything we’ve done so far, philosophically, has been about gaining focus on the individual rider, so how do we understand the roads they ride? How do we see and measure them effectively? We always want to be a local builder. The machine shop we get most of our small parts from is local. The builders who work here all live nearby. If we can’t be near all our riders, how do we get closer? How do we localize ourselves?

We needed partners in every cycling community, and the obvious way to get that was to work with bike shops who wanted to collaborate with us and our riders on custom builds. Seven riders are de facto bike designers. We are only building them the bike they tell us they want, and our bike shop partners facilitate the process.

We are the only builder who does direct, systematized interviews with each customer while also working with the shop. Together, the three of us create the custom experience, and THAT is how we get from the idea of fully custom bicycles on a short timeline to delivering fully custom bicycles on a short timeline.

These are our big ideas. They’re simple when you break them down, even though we are still refining them, even after 30,000 bikes have passed through our hands.