By Ben Delaney
OGDEN, Utah (BRAIN) — Enve, the boutique carbon brand known for its wheels and components, now builds custom road bikes. Handmade in the same Ogden, Utah, factory where its wheels are made, the Enve road bikes come dressed head to toe in Enve parts.
Customers can choose between a Road geometry built for 25-31mm tires, or a gravel-lite-ready All Road configuration built for 30-35mm tires. Enve will configure the frame to the customer's exact specifications — or to what a professional fitter recommends. Enve also will paint the frame, fork, integrated bar/stem and seatmast the customer's choice from a deep menu of colors and styles — and then paint on a little custom mojo to the center of the bar/stem, too. Enve also can ship a “ready to paint” chassis to one of several specialty bicycle painters.
In keeping with Enve's high-end and high-dollar reputation, the bikes run between $9,950 and $12,500. They are available through ENVE.com and a limited number of U.S. retailers. The bikes are now shipping.
Why build a frame?
Enve decided to get into framesets for a few reasons. For starters, many bike brands now make their own wheels, and often quite good ones at that. Trek has Bontrager, Specialized has Roval, Giant has Cadex, Cervélo has Reserve. Cannondale, Cervélo, Orbea, and Santa Cruz used to buy wheels from Enve, but that wing of their business has evaporated.
Enve also works with bike brands on the other end of the size scale, supplying tubing, forks, bars, stems, seatposts, and of course wheels to small custom builders, who specialize in custom-built bikes in both geometry and paint.
With its own custom road bikes, Enve sees opportunity at the intersection of the high-touch offerings of the custom builders and the high-tech machines of the big bike brands.
While Enve has never made its own complete bicycle since going into business in 2007, the brand has done plenty of work with others' bikes, from building the first carbon swing arm for Santa Cruz's famed V10 downhill bike, to crafting the front end and fork on the Cervélo P5x.
Jack Pantone, vice president of product and consumer experience at Enve, said the company's long experience with bike brands gave a leg up when it came to building a race bike.
"For 10 years we were in the wind tunnel trying to figure out how to make the flagship bikes from other brands faster," Pantone said. "We have seen how our wheels interact with a huge variety of frames and frame shapes, and we were always making notes of what works and what doesn't. It's not just drag figures we studied but stability, looking at the gap between the tire, rim, fork leg and down tube; all these things affect stability of the bike at speed."
Ben Delaney's full article on the Enve frame, and a gallery of a custom bike built to his specifications, are on VeloNews.com.
