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Made in Italy: Inside the Marzocchi factory Words and photos Cam McRae

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I set out early. My wife's uncle gave me a ride to the train station at 6 am so I would get to the Marzocchi factory in the morning and then have time to check out Bologna - one of the nicest cities in Italy - in the afternoon. The first train took me into Milan where I had to take the Subway to the main railway station to catch the train to Bologna. I was scheduled to arrive a little after 10 am. Things were going fine until I arrived in Bologna. I had been told to take a taxi from there to Zola Predosa - where Marzocchi forks are made. The queue for a cab was about 50 metres long and it seemed like something strange was going on. I finally got the word to jump on a bus - oddly a bus with no number that would take me part way to my destination. Someone on the bus told me there had been an accident but I had no idea what sort of accident she was talking about. Traffic inched along for over an hour and traffic cops directed the mayhem. When the bus arrived things became clearer; a train had gone through a red signal and crashed into an end barrier at 30 km/h. 150 passengers were injured making it the worst Italian train mishap in over 5 years.

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After snapping a few shots I jumped on a train and continued to Zola Predosa. I arrived but there were no taxis in sight and nobody from the factory was available to give me a lift. Eventually, after many phone calls and conversations I arrived - about 2 hours late.

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Our vision of a company is an amalgam of the products they produce and their marketing strategy. With this in mind I was expecting a futuristic headquarters with secure entrances and employees wearing dust suits and breathing equipment. I also figured I would be greeted by a pornstar wearing a stainless steel bikini and heels with 7 inches of travel. Instead, like other bike factories I have visited, the Marzocchi factory was in an industrial zone and it was all business and no flash. Because of the morning delay the first stop was the lunchroom. As you might expect the food in an Italian cafeteria is excellent and I was only able to polish off about half of my tasty meal. Employees pay about ¢20 a day for this. Good companies treat their workers well.

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My excellent guides for the day were Jessica Morisi from the marketing department and engineering manager Sandro Musiani. Jenna Jameson was busy at her other job.

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Over the course of the day I learned a little bit about Marzocchi's history. The Marzocchi brothers left their jobs at Ducati in 1949 and went out on their own making suspension components for motorcycles, cars and scooters. The founders' two sons run the company today. In 1989 Marzocchi began building forks for mountain bikes and now 38% of their forks end up on bicycles. Motorcycle and scooter forks accounted for 31% and 16% of the units sold respectively in 2003. The Marzocchi group includes companies that make automated fabricating machines, pumps and others that provide design and engineering services. In total the group managed to pocket over €40 000 000 (CDN$62 700 000 or US$46 800 000) in sales in 2003 with only 172 employees.

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These days visiting bike companies can be an odd experience. More often than not you find a few sales and marketing folks in an office filled with telephones, computers and bike posters, but no actual manufacturing capabilities. With that in mind it was very cool to see fork components being made by the company that stands behind them, rather than by a Taiwanese or Chinese manufacturing plant that is entirely isolated from the people who actually ride the bikes. Building everything yourself isn't the only track that can lead to a quality product, but it probably stops at fewer stations. If something needs to be changed the product doesn't have to come back from Asia for testing to figure this out - it can be done in house.

Fork Crowns being CNC machined in Bologna Italy.

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In most of the world engineers rule the roost but in Italy beauty is job one. With this in mind Marzocchi uses a process of reverse engineering to design their forks. The first step is to have sculptor Edo Ferrari (no relation to Enzo) come up with a vision for a fork model. Once his drawings are completed they are taken to the engineers who must make the fork perform within the parameters of this shell. The engineers I spoke to actually appreciate this approach because it allows them to focus on how the fork will work rather than having to juggle aesthetics as well. The organic, flowing form of the new Triple 8 is a testament to the success of this approach.

Original drawings for the M-Arch - by sculptor Edo Ferrari.

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What the hell is Cryofit? This term refers to the process Marzocchi uses to attach fork crowns to stanchions - without bolts, adhesives or duct tape. Metals expand when heated and contract when cooled. Exploiting these properties, the Cryofit machine dips the stanchions in a steaming "cryogenic" tank of liquid nitrogen which is kept at the inviting temperature of -196º celsius . While the stanchions are being cooled the robotic arm (designed by Marzocchi's industrial division) reaches for a crown and places it in an oven where it is baked at 100º Celsius. The machine retrieves the stanchions and the crown and then slides the stanchions into place. After the newly mated components are allowed to return to room temperature they are said to be as strong as if they were welded together. The machine that performs this process is straight out of Star Wars. It moves silently and faster than Bruce Lee in his prime - truly a marvel of engineering.

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Rigorous testing also takes place within the walls of the Marzocchi factory. There are machines that simulate riding like the one at left, which can cycle a fork millions of times over a few days. There is also a machine that breaks forks to assess just how much punishment individual components can take. The force required to make a part fail is used to determine whether the forks are strong enough for the real world. None of this is a substitute for actual riding though which is why Marzocchi employs riders like Canadians Brett Tippie, Wade Simmons, Gareth Dyer and Ryan Leech to beat the hell out of each new model and then report back to headquarters.

A Triple 8 being tested - forks my run for up to 5 days on this machine.

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