PETALUMA, Calif. (BRAIN) – Yuba Bicycles has hired veteran bike designer and Volagi Cycles co-founder Barley Forsman as design director. Forsman will help Yuba expand its product line and take the cargo bike brand in new and innovative directions, the company said.
“Barley is incredibly talented and we are excited to have him on our growing team,” said Benjamin Sarrazin, Yuba’s founder and president. “We have several new models in the works with Barley that will really turn heads and introduce Yuba to new audiences.”
Forsman co-founded Volagi Cycles in 2010, launching the first production carbon road bike with disc brakes and also introducing his patented Longbow Flex Stay technology. Prior to Volagi he worked at Specialized for two years as lead designer for saddles, grips, bottles, bottle cages and entry-level mountain bikes.
Forsman previously worked as a senior designer and design manager at CamelBak, where he pioneered the brand's large reservoir cap and the CamelBak bottle. He began his design career at Bell, working on accessories and car racks.
Forsman is an endurance racer who has completed Paris-Brest-Paris, won the Furnace Creek 508 fixed-gear division, and competed in more than 40 double centuries. “I like the mission of Yuba, to get people out of cars and onto bikes. Endurance racing is my competitive passion, but in daily life I've always used bikes as a primary mode of transportation,” Forsman said.
Two of Forsman's new designs are scheduled to launch at Interbike 2014 this September. “We have some pretty cool projects in the works that will wow parents and bicyclists,” Sarrazin said.
