An Interview with Zinn Cycles

Nick, let's start off with a little bit about yourself:

NW: Well I grew up in Atlanta GA. I started mountain biking when I was about 12 years old. I got my first job when I was 14 at the local bike shop (Bicycle South). My main sport is actually whitewater kayaking which I have been doing since I was six. I moved to Boulder Colorado in 2000 after graduating high school. I traveled around in my car for the rest of the summer kayaking rivers in Colorado. I moved into the dorms at the University of Colorado where I studied architecture. My major was more focused on design, but it was in the Architecture school. Every summer during college, I spent as a kayak instructor or traveling around North America searching out adventurous rivers to paddle. Also during college, two of my roommates and I started an inner tube rental business on Boulder Creek which has grown into a successful part time business. www.whitewatertubing.com

I met Lennard Zinn on a kayaking trip during my senior year of college. I found him to be a very interesting and intelligent person, and I was also very interested in his business of custom bike design. My dreams have always been to be a designer in the outdoor sports industry. So, after I graduated college, I called Lennard to ask if he had any design internships available. He said no, but what he really needed was a general manager for his business. I graciously accepted. So far, it has been my dream job. Lennard is an amazing person to work for. We get along well, and I hope to work here for a long time and help bring Zinn Cycles to its full potential.

Lennard, tell us about the origins of Zinn Cycles:

LZ: Hmmm. Well, this is probably more than you want to know, but I was on the US National Cycling Team, and I wanted to improve on the bikes that I was getting from sponsors. I was 6'6", and the bikes I was asked to ride not only were not big enough, but some of them had really nasty high-speed shimmies on fast descents. In fact, in 1980 I had won the Durango-Silverton Iron Horse Classic and had set the course record on a Masi that I could descend fast on without worries. The next season when trying to repeat in that same race, I had to drop off the back of the group on the descents because my new team bike shook so badly it scared the crap out of me (manufacturer to go unidentified). It was then that I decided to build my own frames.

I had been interested in building frames for a long time. While in college in Colorado Springs, I had applied for a Watson Fellowship to go to Europe to learn the craft of frame building, but I was passed over for the fellowship. Nonetheless, I was determined to build frames anyway, and my background as a jeweler and jewelry-making instructor at Colorado College (CC) gave me confidence that I could silver-solder a lugged frame without problem. I also was eager to try out my design ideas -- I have a degree in Physics from CC and did my senior seminar on the stability of the bicycle and wrote a computer model of bicycle stability for it (in Basic programming language, no less!). So, I bought a Proteus Frame building Manual and set to work building my first frame in 1981in the Physics lab at Colorado College, where I was employed the year after graduation. For tapping and facing of threads and alignment, I used the special Campagnolo tools at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs where I was in the resident program, being a member of the Olympic Development Team.

In September, 1981, while racing in the Tour of Ireland, a week-long stage race around Ireland, I tore a calf muscle (gastrocnemius) that ultimately took nine months to heal. Unable to train due to the injury, I moved to the California Bay Area and went to work for Tom Ritchey, building Ritchey fillet-brazed mountain bike frames and Bullmoose handlebars.

I founded Zinn Cycles, Inc. upon returning to Colorado in 1982 for therapy on my now-calcified torn muscle (it did not heal in California) by famed cycling doctor Andy Pruitt in Boulder. Using the $10,000 my grandmother left me at approximately the same time, I bought tools and materials to build custom road and mountain bikes. Completely caught up in frame building, my interest in my own racing dwindled, and, after marrying my wife Sonny in 1983 and with her painting the frames, the business grew rapidly.

Beginning in 1984 (and continuing until 1992), Sonny and I founded, sponsored, managed (and Sonny raced on) the Zinn/Alfalfa's/Shimano women's racing team, one of the most successful women's road teams in the country at the time. Juli Furtado, the winningest American mountain-bike racer ever, is among the team's alumni. On the road, before her introduction to mountain biking, Furtado won both the USCF and collegiate national road championships while on the "Zinn Team".

In the mid-1980s, I drove the team in the Zinn van to every race, wrenched on the custom bikes I had built for every rider, handed out water bottles, acted as masseuse, and provided a shoulder to lean on as well as arms to carry all of the warmup clothes the racers wanted to dump on me at each race start. As acknowledgement of my efforts, I was awarded with the 1986 Manager of the Year award at the Ore-Ida Women's Challenge, which was at the time the premier women's stage race in the world.

Now well into my third decade of doing it, we at Zinn Cycles continue to build titanium, magnesium, and steel custom road bikes, aluminum full-suspension mountain bikes, and titanium and steel hardtail mountain bikes. Zinn Cycles is now particularly well known for building bikes for extremely tall riders - quite a departure from the days of sponsoring the Zinn women's team, when most of our customers were small women! We were among the first to embrace 29-inch wheels for mountain bikes, and it was at my urging that the first five-inch travel 29er fork was born, namely the White Bros. BW 1.3 through-axle air fork. Using that fork, the Zinn Gigabike model was the world's first five-inch-travel (front and rear) full suspension bike for 29-inch wheels, in 2003.

Since 1989, I have written technical articles for VeloNews, the journal of bike racing in North America, and I continue to do that as well as provide an online tech column on velonews.com. Two of my books are depended on by mechanics, namely Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, now in its fourth edition and also available in DVD form, and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance, now in its second edition. Another of my books, Zinn's Cycling Primer - Maintenance Tips and Skill Building for Cyclists, instructs cyclists on how to adjust their bikes to fit them, how to strengthen, feed, and train their bodies, how to improve their road- and mountain-bike skills, and how to upgrade their road or mountain bike. I'm also the author of the Mountain Bike Performance Handbook and the Mountain Bike Owner's Manual.

Were there ever times where the dream began to falter?

LZ: There have been plenty of times along the way where it seemed as though financially I could not continue. In fact, when my wife was pregnant with my first daughter in 1985-1986, I took a job as production manager of a ski binding company. But once Emily was born, I quit that and just concentrated on Zinn Cycles. I also was so sick of the business in 1994 that I tried to quit, but I ended up coming back within 6 months or so, after having bought my partner out and closed my shop for awhile.

What are some of Zinn's toughest challenges today?

NW: Crank Supply. We have an amazing product, which are our extra long custom cranks. We have a huge demand for them, but our supply chain can be unreliable at times. We are in the process of producing our own crank design, but it is proving to be a difficult undertaking if we want to have them made locally.

Tell us what you can about the Zinn build strategy/ what makes you unique in the realm of custom builders?

NW: First of all, we have Lennard Zinn as our frame designer who is one of the most well known and respected authorities on bike design in the world. He could design a perfect bike for any human in the world.

Secondly, we have a different frame builder for each frame material that we offer. Each of these builders are of the best in their field. Since we don't hire on a production welding team, each bike is handmade by one person and the quality of each bike is consistently premium. All bikes are built off site, which means that Zinn Cycles doesn't foot the cost of machinery and production. Each builder has his own shop. Lennard uses a program that he wrote to design each bike, which we give to the builder and it tells them exactly where to cut and weld each tube. It also specifies tube diameter and wall thickness, and everything else needed. Since we do our production in this manner, it leaves time for Lennard and me to worry about selling bikes and expanding our customer base. Lennard is able to design the bikes and also work with Velonews, Inside Triathlon, and Ski Racing magazines. This helps to build more credibility for his name. I spend my time working with customers, marketing, and taking care of inventory and accounting.

We are generally considered to be in a niche market. Our niche is big & tall riders. Lennard is 6'6" so he really understands the problems that tall riders are faced with. We are the only bike company that focuses our energy toward the tall customer. Not only are our frames built perfectly for tall and big riders, we also use custom cranks in order to provide our customers with cranks that are proportional to leg length. This really improves the rider's efficiency in pedaling and they get more power from their cranks as well as less fatigue. Since we offer cranks up to 220mm, we need to design the bikes with a higher bottom bracket so there is no clearance issues. No other frame builder does this that I know of. A stock bike can take cranks up to about 195mm, but it's still getting close.

We are also working towards becoming the first Zero Waste bike company. We never buy boxes or packing materials. We always reuse them and we get recycle boxes from local bike shops in order to ship bikes to our customers. We also never use wet paint for our frames, only powder coat. Powder Coat is much more environmentally friendly since the small amount of waste can be swept up. Lennard's commitment to the environment has always impressed me.

What is Zinn Cycles most popular mountain build?

NW: Frame: XXL Megabike 29er
Groupo: Sram X.0/Avid Juicy 7 Hydraulic Disc Brakes
Wheels: DT TK7.1 36hole rims with Chris King hubs and WTB moto raptor 29" tires
Fork: Rock Shocks REBA Race 29er with poploc
Stem and bar: Truvativ Team
Pedals: Crank brothers candy C or Shimano XTR

What's next on the horizon for Zinn (2008 and beyond)?

NW: The main goal right now is to complete our new crank design, which is going to be sweet.
We are also coming out with a line of high quality big & tall cycling clothing.
Finally where should we send readers looking for more information on Zinn Cycles?

NW:

http://www.zinncycles.com

Also find our ads in velonews and inside triathlon as well as sponsor the clydesdale/tall rider forum on MTBR.com