Specialized Bicycle Components Turns 50
An anniversary—and a program that endeavors to get one million bikes back on the road by the end of 2025
In 2024, it seems unfeasible for someone to sell a VW van for $1500 to fund the first chapter of a half-billion-dollar company’s journey, but in 1974, Specialized Bicycle Components founder and former CEO Mike Sinyard did just that. Now, 50 years later, the brand remains an incandescent leader in the bike industry, in part due to their insatiable need for innovation.
Innovate or die has been one of the rules of Specialized Bicycle Components since the late ’90s when they underwent a soul-searching rumination after an unsuccessful attempt to sell low-quality bikes. The experience was a huge teachable moment that Sinyard describes as one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. However, decades later, the vision established after that era has been the guiding direction ever since and in some ways, it always was. Now, Specialized remains steadfast in its complete devotion to performance.
“We say that we focus on the rider’s needs to provide technically advanced products that provide a performance benefit,” says Todd Cannatelli, Specialized’s Mountain Program Manager, “but I like to think what sets us apart is the amount that we’re willing to invest in our people and our facilities to deliver on that.”
Specialized has six product/innovation centers around the world—one in Taiwan, two in the US and three in Europe. As high-end bike brands have come and gone, it has been Specialized, the ever-evolving stalwart, that has found the best ROI in investing in R&D and listening to the rider. “Whether it’s here or our off-road office in Auburn or our e-bike development office or innovation center in Switzerland, we put so much into our team and to the facility to be able to do that,” says Cannatelli.
At the same time, the brand finds the inspiration for the products they are developing directly from the source: the riders. “We definitely pay attention to how people are riding, where they’re riding and what types of trails are being built,” says Cannatelli. “Every riding scene, everywhere you go, there are super-dedicated diggers that are in the woods and they’re always building new features and younger riders are coming up. I’m almost 50 years old, but the stuff I was riding when I was a teenager was so pedestrian compared to what some 12-year-old throws a leg over these days and it’s just nuts.”
The Specialized team that is designing and developing bikes is always asking about what the riders are trying to do with their bikes, and how Specialized might try to be able to solve a problem that riders didn’t know they had. Much of this problem solving is informed by the various Specialized race teams that experiment with products for maximum performance. This input shifts what riders are able to do in various categories and allows them to push the limits. An example of this evolution, and blurring of trail space, is both the Epic and the Stumpjumper series. For years, the Epic 8 was a light, fast and snappy XC racing bike, and the Stumpjumper was the brand’s all around trail bike.
“Things were sliced pretty clean. You would never take an Epic on a trail ride 10 years ago,” says Cannatelli. “Some Specialized Factory XC Team members specked out the Epic EVO frame last year for some really technical courses.” This resulted in a lot of podiums and the Epic 8 getting much more capable and the Epic EVO becoming even more capable to take on the down country category, “basically taking the place of the Stumpjumper that we had this past year, and the Stumpjumper 15 now really takes the space of Stumpjumper EVO. So these things are all kind of shifting in the spectrum.”
Specialized’s innovation is not limited to performance or even current riders. “For our 50th, our mission is to pedal the planet forward,” says Cannatelli “We’re focusing on the bike and getting more people on bikes. We feel like the solution to a lot of the world’s problems is on the bike.” With the same ethos of Outride, the non-profit organization founded by Mike Sinyard that “provides research, cycling programs, and funding to empower all people to experience the social, emotional, and cognitive benefits of cycling,” the ReSpecialized Program endeavors to get one million bikes back on the road by the end of 2025—citing that cycling can contribute to the betterment of the world.
Specialized estimates that ReSpecialized will “light up one million brains, delivering significant social, emotional and cognitive benefits” based on the research done by Outride. With the one million bike aim, the program estimates that they’ll reduce global carbon emissions by 438 million kilograms of CO2, burn 25 billion calories and reduce screen time by 66.6 million hours.
To get the wheels turning on this mission, Specialized is offering free tune-ups and discounted repairs at participating retail locations worldwide to “any rider, with any bike bike, from any brand.” For a formidable brand like Specialized, the ReSpecialized program is an opportunity to bring innovation into their sustainability and their “the rider is the boss” mantra.
“I think listening is the most successful thing the company’s done,” says Cannatelli. “There’s a culture of curiosity here, and I think a lot of the company’s success is due to that curiosity and to genuinely listening. I don’t think we would be where we are if we thought we always knew the answer.”
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