Building The Dream

“Why a handmade bike? It’s like trying to define love”

- Simon Smythe

Why a handmade bike? You either get it or you don’t get it,” says Phil Taylor, the organiser and founder of Bespoked, the UK’s annual handmade bicycle show. “It’s like trying to define love.”

Let’s have a go at unpacking why something made from — more often than not — cold, hard steel makes fans of custom bikes feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“The most obvious one is that a bicycle made to measure fits you, it’s tailored to fit you for your specific riding needs,” says Taylor. “When you sit on it you know that all the contact points are in the right place for what you want to do. But there’s also the emotional response. For a lot of people it’s about riding a bicycle that’s unique in the world and that they’ve created the initial idea, they’ve gone about finding the right person to build it for them — the partnership between the frame builder and the customer. It didn’t exist in a shop somewhere before.

“It’s also that you’re going to be supporting a local industry, you’re helping people within your community to keep something there – it actually feels good to be building a bike made just for you by somebody just down the road.