Editor's note: The following interview transcript is presented by Faction Bike Studio. It has been edited for length and clarity. It originally appeared on our mountain bike-focused sister site, Pinkbike. You can hear the full podcast on Pinkbike or here.
Before we get too deep into new tech trends, let's set the stage. What is Faction Bike Studio? What do you do, and how did you get started?
Erick Auger: We do work for different bike companies. We were founded in 2010. In that era, there was a spark; we had access to outside technology and could reach people throughout the world with Skype. I've always worked in the bike industry and saw the need to push the boundaries of bicycle design. I'm an engineer by training and I've been designing bikes as long as I can remember. I wanted to offer that to different companies throughout the world. This is where the idea came about.
16 years later and the company now has 20 engineers and six industrial designers, is that right?
Erick Auger: Total we're just around 30 people. We put a lot of emphasis on the people we have on our team. The biggest problem worldwide, even with bike companies, is hiring people who understand what a bicycle is and what bicycle design entails. There's no school anywhere in the world that can teach you that. Most people in the industry learn by having a job over a long period of time. At Faction, we've been able to create talent, recruiting people with the skill set and passion, and pushing them to a level where they have the experience of an engineer who has been working in the bicycle industry for 20 years.
I think some listeners would be surprised to learn that there are bike companies without in-house engineers. I can think of a few that work with engineers overseas in Taiwan or wherever the bikes are made, but they don't have someone coming in every day. Is it typically mid-to-smaller size companies that come to you for projects, or do you deal with a wide range?
Erick Auger: At first, we were dealing with smaller companies. As time has gone on, our expertise and number of employees have deployed a lot of capacity. We became much more attractive to bigger brands that want to ensure they can get a project on time and on budget. We work with R&D groups at some of our clients, while other clients have decided to fully externalize their design and engineering services.
I can see it for special projects where a big company wants to experiment but doesn't want to take resources away from next year's projects. They could contact you and say, "We have this idea, does this work?"
We've seen pictures from Neko Mulally's downhill frame development using additive manufacturing and the 32-inch wheeled concept bike. Are those made in-house? Do you have manufacturing capabilities in your facility or do you have other contractors do that?
Erick Auger: We do. Our goal was speed to market, or speed to testing. It was really important to prove out the ideas we had as quickly as possible. That's why we ended up using CNC machining and structural adhesive to produce those. They are produced in-house in our laboratory.
If I decided to start "Mike's Bikes" and I had nothing except money, but I wanted you to design a modern cross-country bike from start to finish, how does that process work? Can you say what that would cost or what it would look like?
Julien Boulais: Cost-wise, we can't talk too much to it because it is very dependent on the project. It could be very different from one to another. We adapt to what the client needs. We could start from a drawing on a napkin and make it happen. We adapt to where they bring value and expertise. You mentioned that some don't have an R&D department; maybe they're super strong on marketing and sales. Working with them, we can support engineering and industrialization, making sure the product is up to the standard and the level of performance they're seeking.
Other engineering groups might be very strong on engineering but weaker on product-market fit or the business case. We can support them at the beginning and then move toward engineering collaboration. It's a bit different depending on who they are. The important part is to adapt and keep the strength and the flavor our partners are bringing. Otherwise, everything would rapidly become the same thing. Keeping what's unique about them is the most important part.
On that topic, if you are working on bikes for multiple companies, how do you keep secrets? How do you have one person working on something for Neko and someone else working on a similar goal for another client? How do you keep things separate and ensure there aren't shared secrets or design leaks?
Erick Auger: Confidentiality is at the forefront of our business model. That's why there's not a lot of information you can find on Faction Bike on the website or on the web generally. We always wanted to empower our clients to take ownership of the work we are doing for them. That has been really important. One question that comes up a lot is whether there is a specific Faction Bike Studio styling. The answer is “No.” We try to make a story for each brand we work with. We create the brand identity, product strategy, and design philosophy. A few people have mistaken us for projects we haven't done and told us we should be copying a certain bike that we actually made.
Julien Boulais: The partnership with Frameworks is great because, on the Faction side, we can talk a bit more and be public-facing about the stuff we're working on with Neko. For once we can be public about it. This is very interesting and we're looking forward to doing more of those collaborations or projects like Big Ben, that 32-inch prototype, where we can have the conversation and spark discussion for the industry and custome
With Neko, it's been neat to see different bikes show up over the course of the season—to see how they've helped him make things more and more refined each race. Did he approach you or did you approach him?
Erick Auger: I think we approached him. We've known each other and the idea was sparked by David, who was in charge of marketing back then. It was clever because we were seeking ways to talk about what we were doing without disclosing secrets. It was the perfect moment because Neko was curious; he wanted to see which materials, floating brakes, high pivot, or low pivot worked. He had a really good feeling and we could put numbers on his feeling. Having high-level feedback from team members or Asa is pretty insightful.
Julien Boulais: In terms of engineering with FEA analysis, gathering information and load cases by using instrumented bikes with riders of their level is interesting. As the sport evolves and riders go faster, we're able to stay relevant and adapt to the forces we're seeing. When we were at Red Bull Hardline last year with the instrumented bike, we gathered very insightful data. We learn from them as much as they learn from us.
Erick Auger: It's good to strike a balance between what a pro can do and what a good amateur rider can do. The loads are not that different; they just happen much more often. A pro rider is more skilled and softer on the landing. It's important because the bikes we're designing need to cover a wide range of use. It's always good to have the most data we can collect.
What kind of projects are people coming to you for most these days? Are you getting people wanting e-bikes, road bikes, or mountain bikes?
Erick Auger: It's waves. We're riding the first wave of a new trend where companies haven't yet put effort into understanding what it means. It often takes them one or two model-year cycles to become experts. They often come to us at the beginning. We did carbon full-suspension fat bikes, gravel bikes, and e-bikes. We were there as soon as the market emergence for those trends happened.
Speaking of e-bikes, we've seen huge growth. On that type of development project, a company might say what motor and battery they want, and then you help them put it into a frame and handle the packaging and development?
Erick Auger: It looks simple because most systems today are closed ecosystems, but understanding the limitations, the effect on the structure, and how to package it involves a lot. We see a trend regarding how e-bikes will evolve with manufacturers.
Julien Boulais: Within the e-bike wave, there have been a couple of shifts. At the beginning, it was about integrating the e-system into a bicycle architecture. Now there are many options on the market. As e-system players take leadership positions, what differentiates your brand if you're the 12th option of a Bosch-driven full-suspension mountain bike? Some of our clients are seeking a higher level of integration. The players who win in the future will be those who bring more integration within the full system, rather than just adding a battery and motor to a frame. The new Orbea seems to be in that direction of differentiating with a much more integrated solution.
Erick Auger: The bicycle industry will follow the trend observed in the automotive industry with electric cars. The winners are those who own the hardware and the software, building an integrated system from the ground up rather than a bunch of electronic control units that don't talk together. Not all companies can go this route, and many will rely on complete systems from big players, but some of the biggest brands will push integration to a new level.
There’s a "benchmark tests" service on your site. You have a library of bikes tested for stiffness and other aspects that companies can compare against. Is that how it works?
Erick Auger: It came from an internal need. When you're designing a new bicycle, you need objectives for performance, stiffness, and weight. When objectives are not correctly benchmarked, you end up making the wrong decisions. The product ends up being deceiving on the market and doesn't meet user requirements. Getting the right data at the beginning is important. Everyone does benchmarking; everyone gets better year over year by learning from one another. The goal of the teardown benchmarking service is to offer unbiased data measured with the same protocol, ensuring quality that the industry can rely on.
Julien Boulais: It's not necessarily that they're sending their frame, though they could. We select highly demanded products and produce reports that companies can purchase. Most brands do competitive benchmarking in silos. They buy competitor products and analyze them, but they often don't track the engineering time deployed to do all the measurements and testing. We know how time-consuming that can be. If engineers can access trustable information right away, they can focus on innovation rather than taking measurements. It speeds up the process and settles difficult conversations between engineering and marketing on weight targets. We're trying to solve that inefficiency in the industry.
Do you have in-house test riders to see if their impressions correlate with lab data?
Erick Auger: We do, but it's subjective based on riding style. For example, with handlebar stiffness, the feeling people have and how they communicate it varies. We don't feel we have added value in communicating that information. We leave that to our clients, product managers, or racers to correlate data with their feelings. Teardown benchmarking is all about measurable facts.
Julien Boulais: We're not taking a stance; we're focusing on facts rather than impressions. Many companies keep the bikes they test in good order to resell them. On our side, we push the bike all the way to destructive testing to bring insights they wouldn't gather themselves. It's a bit heartbreaking to break brand-new bikes, but it's for the greater good.
Erick Auger: We took inspiration from the car industry, which has outside vendors doing unbiased testing. There was nothing like that in the bike industry, so we put this together.
Are bikes the only thing you deal with, or are there other industries Faction is in?
Erick Auger: Solely bike-related. It surprises people. Competitors often diversify for business stability, but Faction is dedicated only to bicycles.
Regarding trends, are there red flags? For instance, with 32-inch wheels, is that the next big thing or just a small portion of the cross-country world?
Julien Boulais: The industry sometimes behaves based on an "echo chamber" where a small, loud group dictates direction, leading to a fear of missing out. For the industry to be healthy, you need to cater to the vast majority of riders who are not as loud. If you're an XC racing company, marginal gains make sense. But with the fear of missing out, people jump on board without asking if it answers a customer need. 32-inch wheels might make sense for a $12,000 bike where weight is manageable, but what about a $2,000 bike? Brands should be more critical of whether a trend fits their client rather than just chasing it.
Erick Auger: We didn't want to speculate on what a 32-inch wheel feels like. We did an R&D project to understand the boundaries and applications. We're further ahead than what we've shown and are understanding whether there's benefit in enduro or downhill applications and what the trade-offs are.
Julien Boulais: People thought we were trying to push that trend, but we just had questions. We have an R&D department and wanted to have answers by the time clients come to us. Unlike being on the brand side, where you ask if it will be a commercial success, here we're just trying things. Big Ben was about answering questions.
Are there other trends you are excited about?
Erick Auger: I've been excited about a motor and gearbox combination. On paper the technology is there, and it makes sense for e-bikes because one "brain" manages everything. A derailleur is a wonderful achievement, but if you had never seen one and I said a component would "derail" a chain, you would say I'm crazy. An integrated gearbox and motor makes so much sense.
Julien Boulais: With the motorized version, the consumer gets low maintenance, a silent bike with a belt, and impressive riding dynamics. Based on our patent watch, there is movement from key companies. Hopefully that materializes soon.
Do you see additive manufacturing entering the mass market, or will it stay with boutique companies?
Erick Auger: Some of it will bleed through to mass production. The benefit isn't necessarily speed, but the lower tooling investment. Bonded lugs made from additive manufacturing have no tooling overhead, enabling more features at lower prices. We're seeing interesting full-suspension bikes at handmade shows that we weren't seeing before. It gives tools to DIYers or small companies to be relevant. We've been working on making this technology cleaner. Aluminum welded bikes involve variability, heat treatment, and alignment. A bonded frame takes 10 minutes to put together and is the straightest frame I've ever seen.
Is there a dream project you wish a company would bring to you?
Erick Auger: We've been fortunate. Doing bikes for Frameworks is a dream come true. Having Asa win the World Champ jersey was amazing. We did a track bike for the 2020 Olympics. When someone wants a bike made to win medals, there are no limitations.
Julien Boulais: We've had players of all sizes, from market leaders to smaller core brands. We've been able to check quite a lot of boxes.
Erick Auger: Over the last year, we had in-depth conversations with brands. We did road shows with Big Ben, the 32-inch full-suspension bike. We brought it to the World Cup at Mont-Sainte-Anne and met with race teams and product managers. It was a great year.
Is there going to be a demand for more engineers, industrial designers, or electrical engineers? What path should someone passionate about bikes take?
Erick Auger: We've been putting together product strategy and product management services over the last two years. The bike industry sometimes misses the right business decision to move forward with a project. There is nothing as bad as a technical achievement that fails on the market.
Julien Boulais: Does the consumer need the product at that specific time? We have strategic services handling product development and spec strategy to meet prices and deadlines. Decisions in the industry are often based on gut feel, but making the right decision constantly requires robust data and insights. Engineering, industrial design, and marketing with an understanding of the market are all paths into the industry. AI can only get you so far; it hasn't proven expertise in this specific industry.
Can you tease any projects we'll see in the next few months?
Julien Boulais: At Sea Otter, we will present another prototype we're working on. We want to have the product being raced there. In that same mindset, we have questions around certain topics and want to dig further.
Thanks for coming on the podcast today - it's been interesting watching Faction's progress.
Erick Auger: We were fairly unknown. Some clients called Faction the best-kept secret in the bike industry. Being in the shadow was at the heart of our strategy. It has paid off because our clients know their secrets are safe with us. Our employees work hard to get the recognition they deserve.
Julien Boulais: Some clients mentioned that if they had heard about us earlier, they could have saved a lot of money. We want to ensure they are aware of us while keeping the important stuff secret.
