Custom is not a secret language developed in shops and factories where there are initiated whispers in hushed tones about the craft of metal work. Custom is not a collection of technical terms that necessitates the reading of obscure manuals or classes in physics to understand.
If you’ve ridden a bike, you can speak the language of custom.
We don’t speak Korean, but we’ve built nearly 3,000 bikes for South Korean riders, all through our partners Mr. Cha and Mr. Kim at ES Korea. When we met Mr. Cha and Mr. Kim at the Interbike trade show many years ago, we couldn’t have known what the relationship would become. Reserved and unassuming, Cha and Kim would turn out to be master communicators.
Once a year they come to Seven, so we can meet and plan for the coming season. Despite our language challenges, we invariably run out of time before we run out of things to discuss. ESK’s partnership confounds every idea we’ve had about how the bike business works. We are not able to communicate complex ideas to them in the ways we are accustomed to with our other business partners, and yet every year we execute ambitious projects with them. We don’t seem to get half as far, half as fast with anyone else. It suggests to us that the proverbial “language barrier” is sometimes, in reality, a solution to the problem of effective cooperation.
Our partnership confounds every idea we’ve had about how the bike business works.
In order to determine the ideal bike fit for an individual rider, the bike industry has developed an array of different fit systems. Each is a dialect unto itself, focusing on different measurements or movements. Working in just one of these systems isn’t an option for Seven.
You have to keep an open mind. You have to believe that if someone has an idea about their bike that is important to them, then there is a good way to understand it.
Sometimes customers come to us unsure they know enough about bikes to order themselves a custom bicycle, but this misgiving misses the point of custom. It is not for the riders to understand the bikes they want us to build. It is for us to understand the riders and the way they want their bikes to feel.
When we first met ES Korea, there were zero Sevens on the road there. Today there are thousands. We do more business with ES Korea than any other international distributor, and so, on a Saturday, just outside Seoul, you can see large groups of cyclists on gleaming new Sevens. These are the sorts of things that happen when you understand that the language of custom is really just a willingness to listen.
