Velovie Cycling: Fixie Dreams do Come True
Every once in a while here on our blog we stray from writing about ourselves to recognize someone in the bicycle industry that we think as being innovative or at least of introducing a cool product. Velovie is a bicycle company based out of Tempe, AZ that makes carbon fiber road, tri and time trial bikes and they just recently introduced first alloy road bike, the Vecteur 100. Their models include the Vitesse 500, Vitesse 400, Vitesse 100 which are all carbon fiber road bikes and Veloce 500 and Veloce 100 which are time trial and triathlon bikes.
Velovie sells their bikes direct to consumer on their website and by taking out the distributor and/or bike shop, have been able to aggressively price their products so that they can undercut traditional road cycling brands by a substantial amount. This direct to consumer model has been tried before but if anyone can pull it off I think these guys will based on the team that is currently running the company.
Who runs the company you ask? Velovie is owned by State Bicycle Company, a fixed gear brand that's also based out of Tempe, AZ that's been around since 2009. We are very familiar with the guys at State and we respect what they've been able to accomplish in a few short years. State was founded in 2009 by a few buddies from college and using a mix of social media savvy and good timing, have taken advantage of the huge demand for fixed gear bikes. Unlike most of their competitors that are tripping over themselves to sell the cheapest fixie on the market, State has stuck with their $429 price point for their fixed gear bikes and have since introduced a number of higher end versions of their bikes and even a line of city bikes.
Sometime last year the Velovie brand was brought back to life by the guys from State Bike and using the profits from their fixie venture, they've been able to introduce some pretty nice looking bikes. It will be interesting to see how the lines will blur between State Bicycle Co. and Velovie over the next few years. While I'm guessing their won't be a Velovie fixie, I wouldn't be surprised if you see some similar road offerings from the guys at State.
Check out more here at: http://www.velovie.com/
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