Let’s face it: “local” is a trend with staying power.And it’s one worth following—how can you argue with keeping the doors open to a buddy’s business or frequenting a different brewery every weekend? If we’re already making weekly trips to the farmers market for locally-grown greens and filling our baskets with Colorado-crafted booze, shouldn’t we be doing so on a bike that was also hand-built in the Centennial State?
A herd of craftsmen are challenging the corporate bike world by fabricating handsome and durable bikes right here in our backyard. Fat tires or skinnies, titanium or steel, when you work with a custom builder, you get to call the shots (and pick the paint color).
When Matt Nunn called his wife with a typical Colorado problem—he really had to have this new single speed 29er—she put her foot down.
“Absolutely not,” Nunn recalls her saying. “You already have five bikes! No more!”
He hung up the phone and had a realization.
He was already a welder with a manufacturing shop, so Nunn built a jig and ordered some materials. He soon had a design for a bike that rode exactly how he liked to ride. Then, interest on the trail and from friends prompted him to buy insurance, create a name and start building frames for other people.
After all, his wife never said he couldn’t build the bike he wanted.
That was 2007. Now, Samsara Cycles is Nunn churning out road bikes, fat bikes, gravel grinders, track bikes and mountain bikes in his Frederick, Colorado shop. When you decide to buy a bike from Nunn, he’ll sit you down to collect data—hard numbers like inseam and wingspan—and quiz you about what you want out of your bike. In the process of creating a blueprint for the bike, he starts building something else—relationships. Although he admits he took a big financial risk in entering the bike industry, this is an area where Nunn believes that the “little guy” wins every time.
“I can say that I’ve become good friends with a number of my customers, and that’s something many bigger companies can’t touch,” he said. “When a customer calls me to build a frame, they talk to the guy who answers the phone, designs the bike, cuts every tube, welds every part, specs every component, torques every bolt and sweeps the shop floor.”
A relationship with the bike shop that doesn’t end when cash is exchanged has a value that far exceeds the cost of brakes and wheelsets. When you buy local, your bike is much more than moving parts; it’s a conversation starter, a vehicle for fun and adventure, and most importantly, a Colorado work of art.
—Betsy Welch
