Company profile - Knolly Bikes
Words by Baxter Redfern. Photos by Baxter Redfern (unless noted).
At some point, every rider has wanted to design his or her own bike. It may have been at trail-side while dealing with a malfunctioning frame, while at The Raven sharing a pitcher and scribbling on a napkin or at school during another monotonous math class. While most people’s designs turn out looking more like Homer Simpson’s self-titled Powell Motors concept car, a rare few out there bring some serious fire to the design table. Vancouver resident and budding entrepreneur Noel Buckley is definitely the latter.
The man and his bike - Noel Buckley holding a Delirium-T frame
Buckley started designing his first frame in 2001 after having owned several different full suspension bikes but never having found one that really met his needs. Fast forward seven years and he’s now run off his feet building the Knolly Bikes brand (a play on his online nickname) and keeping up with orders. His company has three frame designs in production and buyers from all over the world. I sat down with the local businessman to see how Knolly got to be one of mountain biking’s fastest growing frame companies.
nsmb - How did Knolly come to be?
Noel Buckley - Knolly Bikes started off simply as a project for me to build myself a freeride bike in my spare time. I had owned several full suspension bikes during the five or six years before starting my design, and while I definitely got a lot out of them, none of them really met all of my needs. In 2001, I had a pretty serious crash and broke my arm badly. I needed surgery and both the ulna and radius were plated, but over the next two years, I ended up needing two more surgeries to fix the radius properly. This really reduced my riding throughout 2001 and 2002.
In early 2002, I was working out of town and had a bit of free time in the evenings. I decided that I would start working on my own frame design. I had a fair bit of engineering and manufacturing experience by that time and close ties to a machine shop that I worked at while in university, so I figured that with a few months worth of work, I could whip up a pretty decent frame. However, of course, as I went through the process, I realized that there was way more to frame design than I had initially thought. Also, I started running into all sorts of problems that longer travel conventional frames have, such as interrupted seat tubes, lack of lateral rigidity, poor standover height, and rear wheels or linkages that would buzz the seat or the seat tube under full compression. I wasn’t happy with any of these situations
My original design then proved to be somewhat of a flop in my mind – lots of fancy computer models, but practically, not what I was looking for. The same was true of the next design and the ones there after. However, when I look back, each one of them was an important stepping stone in leading to our current frame models incorporating our unique and highly-regarded Four by 4 Linkage design.
nsmb - Tell us a bit about the first Knolly frame?
NB - The first frame was built in the summer of 2003, 18 months after I started the very first designs; a little bit longer than I originally guessed it would take me to build a bike. It took over a year just to get the conceptual design nailed down, then another six months to develop the conceptual design into a frame that could be manufactured. Obviously, this was a pretty exciting time – I can still remember getting the first parts fresh out of the CNC machine, dripping in coolant, and starting to put them together on the workbench. Of course, they still had to be anodized, welded and or assembled, but it was pretty freakin' cool!
I think we had the first frame fully assembled just before the 2003 Grouse Mountain World Cup race. I have been fortunate to have met a lot of industry people during the last 20 years riding bikes, and immediately a bunch of those people stepped up to help me get components for this first bike: Magura, DT Swiss, Race Face and Marzocchi were among the first to help me out. Progressive Suspension was also super helpful, which was awesome because in 2003, the 5th Element shock was pretty much THE shock to own.
So, getting the first frame assembled and built up was a very cool time for myself and all of my friends who had been watching and who were supportive of the whole process. Perhaps the coolest part was the first time I actually rode the frame on Fromme. Apart from a minor geometry tweak (the head angle was about 1˚ too steep), the bike rode exactly how I envisioned it would. The suspension felt just like I had imagined it should and the first Knolly V-tach was born!
I had made CNC parts for t10 frames. Because the set up costs for CNC are high, it just made sense to make parts for 10 prototypes. Plus, I wanted to build frames in different sizes as well, an X-small for my wife, a couple of larges for me, and a small and a few mediums for a couple of friends. A couple of these original prototypes are still being ridden, and are going strong in their 5th season!
nsmb - What were you doing before Knolly?
NB - Well, I had a few different jobs, all of which provided a lot of experience to define the direction that I wanted Knolly Bikes to take. As I mentioned earlier, I worked part time as a machinist for a couple of years while doing my physics degree in university. This provided a really good basis for manufacturing.
Hand-built in Vancouver. Noel doesn't do all of the work, but he oversees every step.
My first full-time job after university was with a company called Hermary Opto Electronics that made laser scanning systems for sawmills to help optimize board recovery from trees – very sophisticated and high-tech equipment that had to work in absolutely brutal conditions. This company developed a reputation for providing innovative, ultra high-quality products that had excellent reliability. They backed up their products with the best customer support possible. They also work very closely with their suppliers and their customers to ensure that their products were manufactured exactly to their specifications and that they worked exactly how they expected them to in the field. I really learned a lot about how I wanted to run Knolly Bikes from this job and also cut my teeth on mechanical design while working here.
My next job was in the hydrogen fuel cell industry – perhaps much more exciting on the outside compared to forestry, but actually a very tumultuous industry that has chewed up and spat out a lot of businesses.
I worked in applications engineering for several years there, essentially developing product specifications for our prototype products and then running field trials to test these products in the real world. From a product perspective for Knolly, it was very educational because it forced me to really ensure that I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do before we cut the first pieces of metal. In the fuel cell industry, almost all of the businesses were venture capital-funded and even to this day few – if any – of them have turned real profits. So, outside of the engineering parts of my day to day roll, I was able to see how start up companies worked, and what challenges they faced.
nsmb - How long was it before you realized you could (or had to) do Knolly full-time?
NB - After I built the first prototypes, friends started asking about being able to test ride the bikes. By the spring of 2004, we had orders for close to 40 frames – all by word of mouth!
I figured that we could build all the frames within three months during the summer of 2004, which was pretty much completely impossible to do while working a full-time job. However, the frames did get delivered, MUCH later, towards the end of 2004. At the end of 2005, the decision was made to make Knolly Bikes into a full-time business and we have been since then.
nsmb - Who does the design work for Knolly?
NB - In terms of the actual mechanical design of the frames, I do all of it myself. Obviously we bring certain key customers, sponsored riders, and others into the design process to make sure that we’re on the right track before we release a product. And we do a lot of prototype testing as well before a new model hits the dealer’s floor. We also work very closely with our suppliers to ensure that it was possible to manufacture our designs. That doesn’t mean easy or cheap to manufacture, but it does mean reasonable to manufacture. There is a big difference between those two. Additionally, we keep in touch with our component vendors – in particular the suspension vendors – to make sure that we’re always up to date on what they have coming down the pipe.
The Delirium-T all-mountain frame is attracting a lot of attention these days.
nsmb - There are a lot of suspension designs out there, how difficult was it to choose the one that was right for Knolly?
NB - Well, we didn’t really choose one – we developed our own unique design that I think suits our needs best. It took a huge amount of time to develop this design (which is also undergoing patent protection) but we’re absolutely ecstatic with the results as are our customers. The Four by 4 Linkage is a key design feature of all of our full suspension frames, and highly versatile in how it can be adapted to different applications. Overall, it has been a huge success and has helped differentiate us from other high-end manufacturers. The design is very reliable, stiff laterally, has great pedalling and braking characteristics and enables a very plush, high-quality suspension feel.
nsmb - What have been some of the challenges Knolly has run into along the way?
NB - Well, of course starting from scratch and penetrating an established market is always a challenge. I decided that right from the get-go we were going to be designing and building very high-end products. This has really helped us differentiate ourselves from most brands in the market.
Introducing a new technology is also a challenge because there are no guidelines to design within, so I had to ensure that our frames worked very well and were built to the highest standards.
nsmb - Where are the frames made?
NB - They are made in North America. Like a lot of products, it’s actually a very complicated process as we have over 20 different suppliers who contribute to each frame. We make a large percentage of the parts in Vancouver – we have a CNC shop downstairs from us that makes the majority of the CNC parts that are used in the frames.
Lots of shiny CNC pieces, made in the Knolly office building.
We also use a lot of custom aluminum extrusions and custom tube sets in the frames. There is no one in Vancouver who has the capability to produce these kinds of parts, so they come from a variety of different suppliers in the USA and Canada. Our bearings and bushings come from German suppliers. The painted frames are painted by a specialist powder painter in the USA.
All assembly and quality assurance is done in our Vancouver facility. So, the frames are truly a North American made product, using who we think are the best vendors available.
nsmb - How many places / countries worldwide are Knollys sent to?
NB - I’m always surprised at this! We actually have frames now on every continent apart from Antarctica! We have distribution throughout Europe and are starting to work on other emerging markets such as Asia and South America. Of course, the majority of our sales go to North America (Canada and the USA); the UK would be our next biggest market. I think that we’re currently selling into (with dealers and distributors) at least 30 countries now.
nsmb - Where are the frames available locally?
NB - In Vancouver, our dealers are Different Bikes (any location) and On Top Bike Shop. Our dealer in Whistler is Fanatyk Co. On the Island, Sooke Cycle is our dealer. Dealers throughout the province of BC are: Red Shreds Bike and Board in William’s Lake, Outbound Cycles in Westbank and The Sacred Ride in Nelson; in Alberta, we have Calgary Cycle and Hardcore Bikes in Edmonton.
Other dealers and distributors can be found on our web site.
nsmb – Does Knolly sponsor any riders?
NB - For 2008, we have two absolutely excellent team riders: Ryan Berrecloth and Ross Measures. Again, both fit the Knolly Bikes philosophy in that they have great attitudes, are both very personable people and are highly professional. Ross is a fantastic dirt jumper and is becoming quickly known for his inverted tables. He’s also an extremely competent technical rider and can easily tackle the most serious Shore-type trails. Ryan needs no introduction and is more of a big mountain / Shore-style rider and has been featured quite a bit in magazines and videos recently riding his own trails.
Ryan Berrecloth getting some sweet air on his Knolly.
We also sponsor two BC tour companies: Bush Pilot Biking run by Johnny Smoke and Barb Halley, and Choice Rides (formally Free Ride Tours) run by Chris Glew.
nsmb - What’s next for Knolly? Are there any projects in the pipeline you'd like to touch on?
NB - We always have a bunch of new products in the works, but for 2008 we decided to make a very unglamorous decision, which was to put all new products on hold.
Our previous models had always been late to market, and the V-tach frame seriously needed a change in how it was manufactured because it was previously very inefficient to build. So, for 2008 we decided to focus on trying to have good availability of our current products for most of the year, instead of bringing new products out but not being able to meet the demand of our existing products. It’s not perfect, but we are making big improvements in availability of our core frame products. We’ll be starting to introduce new products again in 2009 and 2010.
One thing that we’re working on this year is a small pre-production run of our new Carve pedal. This is actually a pretty cool story and fits into the Knolly Bikes philosophy pretty neatly.
Steve McMillan, who is a local rider and also a highly trained machinist (and now in school for mechanical engineering), has been designing components in his spare time and selling them locally. Last year, he designed his second-generation pedal and we were frankly blown away by it how good it felt, worked, and looked. At this stage, Knolly is strictly a frame company – not a component manufacturer – but these pedals are so well designed that we’re going to look pretty seriously at getting them into production. Knolly sells complete bikes as well as frames, and we have been so frustrated by OEM pedals that we just stopped including them in our parts packages. However, we see a great fit for Steve’s pedal design in our product range, so are working on a limited pre-commercial run of them this year to come out mid-summer.
In terms of new frame designs, we actually have quite a bit on the go: a dedicated DH race frame is in the works, as is a slopestyle version of the Endorphin frame. Also, we probably should bring out the Free Radical hardtail, which as been in purgatory for a couple of years now.
nsmb - Where online can people check out the Knolly line?
NB - Well, the best place in terms of our actual product line is our web site. We have a ton of technical information available here about our frame models as well.
Ross Measures airing it out on his new ride from Knolly. Photo ~ Harookz
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