Mar 1, 2022
This week we sit down with Unicorn Cycles founder, Jason Turner to talk about Asian made custom titanium gravel bikes.
This episode is sponsored by Hammerhead and the new Karoo 2 GPS computer.
Hammerhead Website: use code THEGRAVELRIDE
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Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:
[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to the gravel ride podcast. I'm your host Craig Dalton. This week on the podcast we have jason turner from unicorn cycles coming to us to talk about custom titanium gravel bikes . Before we get into today's show, I need to welcome a new sponsor to the gravel ride podcast. Hammerhead, you may be familiar with the Hammerhead Karoo computer. What you may not be aware of is that the Karoo two is now available. It was named bicycling magazines, editors choice in GPS computers for the past two years running and continues to collect accolades throughout the sport.
Funny story a few years back when I did the Oregon timber trail with a couple of friends, we each had a different make of GPS cycling computer. And it actually took the three of them. To try to find our way through this trail system. Each one had its own attributes. And the one thing that stood out about the hammerhead kuru, the original one.
Was the mapping capabilities. The screen and the design of the mapping functionality is much more akin to what you'd be familiar with on your iPhone or Android phone. It's beautiful mapping, and to be able to pinch and zoom and blow up that map. It was a key component of our navigation on the Oregon timber trail.
On that original Karoo device, I found it to be a bit big and heavy, so it never became a daily driver for me. So when the crew two was announced, I was super stoked that they've been able to reduce the size well, actually improving the capability of the device. What I really love about the latest one I've been testing.
Is that you can swipe through the screens very easily and customize them to the nth degree. For me, as you guys know in Marin county, everything's about vertical feet and climbing mileage is less consequential to how a ride feels or it's going to look after the fact than the amount of climbing I've been doing.
So by setting up the crew to, to have a climbing feature to it, I can see exactly where I am from an elevation perspective, which gives me an idea as to where I am on. On the mountain.
So I basically have one screen that's dedicated specifically to elevation and climbing. And that's one of the ways in which I can navigate around the mountain. And then I swipe over and I've got another detailed screen that has the mapping capability of it.
I'll get into a much more about the Karoo 2's features in the coming weeks as Hammerhead is agreed to come on as a sponsor for a number of episodes. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free custom color kit and an exclusive premium water bottle with the purchase of a Hammerhead Karoo to computer.
Visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. That's a free custom color kit and a premium water bottle with the purchase of a crew to simply go to www.Hammerhead.io at all three items to your cart and use the promo code, the gravel ride. This is an exclusive limited time offer only for the gravel ride podcast listeners.
So be sure to head over and don't forget that promo code, the gravel ride. With that said let's jump right into this week show Hey
Jason, welcome to the show.
[00:03:12] Jason Turner: Thanks Craig. Thanks for having me on the Gravel ride podcast. This is
[00:03:16] Craig Dalton: I'm excited to learn more about unit unicorn cycles. We always like to start off by setting the stage, get a little bit of understanding about. Your background as a cyclist. And obviously that goes hand in hand with the development of the brand and the company unicorn cycles.
So why don't you tell us about that journey? How did you find riding bikes? What kind of bikes do you like to ride and then we'll get into unicorn.
[00:03:40] Jason Turner: Okay. Yeah. I think for most people, the seed for cycling starts as a child. Growing up as a kid in the city, I lived on 19th street and I wasn't allowed to leave the block.
You could just a little square inner city. And so, but that didn't stop me, me and a friend on many occasions. I remember we'd ride our BMX bikes up to a hundred 19th street. And we thought that was like really far that took us hours with stoplights and everything else. And so just that idea of like freedom as a kid on the bike and going far later on as an adult, I mapped out.
That distance in, in the old neighborhood where we read ride and realized it was just six and a half miles each way. So it wasn't very far, but flash forward to it to an adult. I was living in Austin, Texas. I was running, swimming, really active. Everyone in Austin was doing a triathlon. And so I decided to just try it.
So I bought my first real road bike. It was a steel Biyanki. It's about a thousand dollars in immediately after getting the bike. I was, I was just hooked. I had a bike before, but training for triathlons. So literally three weeks after getting this first road bike, I did my first century.
Probably not very advisable, bonked hard. So I like to educate myself anytime I get into anything. So I was reading books on cycling and one that stuck with me. I still have today is the long distance cycling by Edmund Burke. I think it is. And so in the book he covered stuff like Ram, but one of the ones I remember reading about was the furnace Creek five week epic ride, death valley, Mojave desert 29 palms.
And so, Point I've been only riding a road bike a couple months. And I publicly, when my friends and family said, Hey, next year, next time they do the five way on a do it. So needless to say I didn't, I didn't think the Biyanki was up to the task and the 5 0 8. So I was looking at getting a different bike and.
Long distance cycling book. There was mention of soft ride and tightened flex. Some of your writers may recognize a tightened flex they're a San Diego. And so, boom, bike being bike, whatever you want to call it, similar to the Trek. Why foil? Anyway, it seemed like the best bike for long distance cycling.
So I contacted the owner, Tom at Titan flex. Hey, I'll redo your website, to get a deal on a Titan flex. So he took me up on the offer. I redid the website and got a Titan flex. So a little over a year after purchasing my first road bike, I'm there at the start of the 5 0 8 with your crew that you have to have with the Titan flex with a bike.
I rented in Southern California, just as a backup bike. Just wanted to see how far I could go. And. It literally crashed at 300 miles. I thought I broken some bones, but I'm like, no. And I keep going. I pushed myself, wrote another a hundred miles. So for a total of 400 miles, but at this point I wasn't going to finish.
There's a 48 hour cutoff. And so I called the race organizer, cell phone reception in this remote area at, I don't know what time it was. Eight, two o'clock in the morning called the race organizer dropped out. And so then a couple hours later, Directly from the end of the race where we stopped, it was still about two or three hours to the ER.
And that was basically my next stop. Didn't break anything. But over the next few years, I did similar events to the five wait I'm in Texas. There's something called the Texas time trials. They have 12. 24 48 hour events. It's a 26 mile loop. So psychologically it's a little bit different doing a loop.
And you don't have to have a crude, which is kinda nice. You don't have to carry things with you. But I bought another bike and it was a you or at least a frame. It was a titanium Lightspeed. I built it up and at that point I fell in love with titanium. So, due to change.
[00:07:19] Craig Dalton: Is there anything in your background that suggested that you'd be well-suited to these ultra endurance type events?
[00:07:25] Jason Turner: Maybe my mentality of just like push myself, going hard, going long. I was real gun-ho as a kid for the military, but I didn't, I ended up not joining. I always had strong legs playing football and stuff like that. So I dunno, maybe it was the strong legs in that don't quit dedicated mentality.
And also the idea of just going farther, going, 500 miles nonstop. Kind of set well with me, the, the farther distance. So yeah, nothing specifically in my background. I was just hooked. Yeah, it's
[00:07:55] Craig Dalton: interesting. I imagine like, being relatively new at that time to cycling as you started just a few years prior, Any issues around like fit or bike performance probably became very apparent to you.
So, whereas others of us, it might've taken years to start to understand, like, what does a steel bike feel like versus a titanium bike versus a carbon bike. All of a sudden you've got all these miles underneath you imagine you're developing a fine kind of tuned mentality to frame materials and design.
[00:08:26] Jason Turner: I think there was in the back of my mind, like always wanting to try out different things, different setups again, reading about what other people were doing and recommending for those things. That's I think that's why with the steel Biyanki, but I think I was young enough at that time that, I could beat up my body and it would take it.
But there was a point where I had to stop writing due to just changes in life. So in 2010, I moved from Austin to Denver. I wrote a bike a surly long haul trucker. It had a two wheel trailer behind it. I literally, that's how I moved from Austin to Denver. As I rode this bike. And when I got to Denver, I sought out another cycling club the Rocky mountain cycling club, and they're focused on longer rides and purveys kind of similar to one of their factions or one of the outfits in Rocky Mount side include club.
It is similar to the triple crown series in California. So you do these long 200 mile rides in short timeframes, 20,000 feet worth of climbing, and you can get a triple crown. So I, I do consider myself, I call myself an ultra cyclist, twenty four, forty eight hour events, 750 mile, or even a thousand miles.
That's the longest one I've done. Self-supported races, 200 mile gravel rides with strict time cutoffs 1200 K purveys. But the point of me mentioning kind of not bravado or bragging about like all these long rides is that I think because the nature of the rides in the long distance, I was constantly trying new.
And setups new components every year since starting unicorn, I would build a new bike for myself just so I could try out. Try something new different scene. If there was, so many advantages and it's not always about speed, especially when at that distance, it's about comfort. It's about bike packing.
There's so many of the things, just staying on the bike. Even if you're not fast, if you're on the bike and moving, that's better than maybe sleeping for four hours in some cases, Yeah.
[00:10:17] Craig Dalton: It's, it's definitely an interesting perspective to bring to the business. So you started to mention it and we should get into it now.
So you've got a business called unicorn cycles and it sounds like it was the result of this journey. You took on finding the right bike for you and the right material. So let's talk about, I mean, obviously aspiring to have a custom bike for you that fits your needs is not unusual for cycling. But going ahead and starting a company around it is unusual.
So why don't you talk about that step and what led to you believing that unicorn cycles was your future professionally
[00:10:55] Jason Turner: speaking? So at this point, living in Denver, I, I had a titanium bike that I bought from online, from another company that does something similar to unicorn. And I was looking to buy another one from them a few years later.
I basically thought maybe I'll do something similar to tighten flex. So I contacted the owner of this other company, which I'd rather not name and said, Hey, can we work out some sort of deal discount, help with marketing website. So, something along the way, and they didn't seem that interested in anything I had to offer.
So at this point I started thinking that. I know they were on their website. I'm transparent in that they don't build the bikes it's from overseas, but I thought to myself, you know what, I can do that better. And so, and I think a lot of ideas, not just in cycling, but any industry start with someone thinking.
I see what you're doing, I can do it better. And so, I still wanted a bike for myself, accustomed titanium frame. And so, I contacted different companies outside the U S not just in Asia and settled on one builder, one shop to build a frame for myself. It was what I consider the first unicorn.
This was in 2016. And then I started design bikes and, and, and go through that same builder and process for some of my friends. I tried one time I would try this particular shop and then this shop just to see, with the idea that. I didn't know where this was going with unicorn. I didn't have this ambition to start this big company or anything like that.
Or make lots of money. I just liked bikes. I liked the design aspect of it. I have a, a background, a little bit in our architecture, design drafting sort of thing. So it kind of fit well with that aspect of it. But I finally kind of picked two companies that I contracted with. Unicorn. And it was clear to me at the time that there was a gap.
Certainly writers could go direct to some of these companies overseas and have a bike built for them. Unicorn kind of fill the gap where it wasn't boutique American made very expensive custom frame, but it wasn't. I think there's a lot of apprehension of writers going directly to Asian companies and having a bike built and them thousands of dollars talking to someone who.
Isn't a native speaker that has different, isn't a different time zone. They're not cyclists. They're just kind of taking an order. They'll make changes to the design if you want. But so I felt where I could differentiate unicorn and myself is, would that consultative sort of sell? And maybe it's not scalable.
Long-term we'll see. How many of these custom frames we can do in a week or a month? Scalability is definitely a concern, but then again, I'm not necessarily looking to be a multimillion dollar company. I just, I like writing. I like helping out other writers. And so it just seemed like a win-win.
[00:13:41] Craig Dalton: So obviously listeners to the show are familiar with a lot of the titanium frame builders in the United States, whether it's a moots or Lightspeed or a Dean or a mosaic.
You've sort of talked about how titanium was the material you felt was the best performing for the style of writing that you were looking to do? What is it about titanium that you think makes it a great material for these long gravel?
[00:14:08] Jason Turner: Sure sure. Not just gravel events but I'll just say for a custom frame in particular.
So thinking about, the reason behind titanium for a custom frame. So I'm hard on my personal bikes. I'm a heavier writer. All the miles I put in on the, the rides and races Means, there's a lot of scratch. There's a lot of Nicks there. It's exposed a lot of wear and tear. My personality, I'm a little bit OCD.
I like my bike clean and looking new. And so I think a lot of listeners understand titanium is easy to keep clean, remove scratches. Scotch-Brite even if it's a polished frame, it's, it's easy to keep a polished titanium frame looking good. In titanium lends itself to custom frames. There are a few handful of carbon fiber builders out there making custom fiber frames, but it's expensive and there's not very many of them.
I don't think. I haven't looked, but I haven't really seen too many aluminum custom frames. Steel is, is definitely, has been around and is a good option for custom frames, but then it has that added step of needing to be protected, painted Sarah coded or something similar. In my experience, steel frames, they tend to use smaller diameter tubes, which you know, to keep the weight down, but then that contributes sometimes to lateral flex and speed wobbles.
So. To me having gotten to expose to tight titanium early. I'm definitely a, more of a function over form guy. I do like the look of titanium, but it just seems to function well. And especially for a custom frame and with in particular with gravel, that they're just the beatings that it takes up, whether it's leaning against a tree falling over crashing sometimes getting mixed from rocks and stuff.
Titanium is great material. Just for the longevity of it.
[00:15:48] Craig Dalton: Let's talk about vetting, the manufacturing partners you've chosen overseas. Obviously there's very few of us who would order a titanium frame, even from a U S builder and have the opportunity to meet the gentleman or woman who's welding that.
But. So it's not in many respects. It's, it's not that different, but why don't you talk about what that process was like finding these vendors and how do you feel the quality stacks up to the rest of them global marketplace?
[00:16:17] Jason Turner: Sure, sure. W I think backing up a little bit, I gravitated towards Asian production just to keep prices low when that was helped differentiate unicorn, but also pass that savings on to clients.
I did. I think early on titanium was wasn't expensive material. It was thought of some mysterious material, but titanium prices have come down a lot since the nineties and two thousands. And so again, I gravitated to Asian manufacturers and I think I don't have the statistics, but I think Asia probably makes more bikes than any other region quality.
I think for any company is always a concern, especially if you're going to outsource it through a third-party. So just the fact that they're in another country Maintaining quality as a challenge, even for four, if I contracted with us company, not, not to mention another company. So just because it's a us company doesn't guarantee quality or consistency just because it's fabricated, even if it is fabricated in house, there could be challenges with that.
Titanium, unlike maybe carbon fiber lends itself to you. It's hard to hide flaws in titanium with carbon fiber in the layup process. You can't necessarily see inside of it. Sure. You could cut some samples apart, depending on the mold, but titanium itself. There's a chart for welding titanium and depending on the color of the Titanic.
Where it's welded. Certain colors are acceptable just because titanium is very sensitive to the heat at the higher temperatures. And if it gets past a certain temperature or a certain amount of oxygen exposed to it, you can literally see that There's not, and because it's not painted. So when I received the frames whether it's a sock frame or custom frame, it's inspected inside it.
Now I can stick a little scope inside. So, I can see the welds on there that thickness if it's a stack of dime, a stack of quarters,
[00:18:07] Craig Dalton: great. So every frame, as you mentioned, comes through your facility in Colorado, and you're able to do a careful analysis of it before going out to the end customer, which is great.
So you can see the quality of the frames. What does that process look like? I know you mentioned that you do a stock frame, but it sounds like a lot of your framework is custom. What does that process look like? And working with customers.
[00:18:29] Jason Turner: Clients come to me through various means most of the time it's an online forum, but it could be through a bike show.
Here in Denver, somehow. To me referral. We'll talk on the phone. If they're local, I might meet them in person. We might do a zoom session. In fact, most of the clients for unicorn aren't in Colorado, but so we'll exchange ideas. And at some point, they're going to say think yes or no. And if they're wanting to move forward with unicorn, we asked for a $200 design deposit, which is applied to the cost of the frame.
We set up a shared online document to keep track of the various frame specifications and components. You can imagine building a custom frame. Even if we don't supply the components, we want to know how it's going to be built out with what forks and what cranks and what sort of wheels and all that.
So this online document is, is a great source. Once through these exchanges, once we understand exactly what we're designing we first focus on the frame geometry. So we'll create a basic CAD drawing with main focus of nailing down the geometry. Once we get that done. We'll do a deep, detailed CAD drawing, which then shows two diameter tube thickness, tube shapes.
The cable routing, the dropouts bottom bracket. You name it all the spacing. And again, we'll make as many changes going back and forth. To the design or even the geometry as necessary. Once the client is satisfied with yes, that's what they want. Half the cost of the frame is due at that point, minus the deposit.
If they're ordering any components, we asked for the full price and the components and. Production time is varied pre COVID. It was probably six to eight weeks. Now it's probably eight to 12 weeks. Once the frame is complete, I'll send pictures to the client. There's frame will be shipped to Colorado where it's inspected, verifying the geometry.
Like I said, inspecting the welds inside the frame. We might apply decals. We might brush up some of the finishing off our frame frame set frame set, and maybe some components complete builds. In some cases we're not doing complete builds right now as the component shortages, but it looks a little different from everyone.
Different people are coming from different backgrounds, different knowledge levels. So we might get to a completed CAD drawing that's approved in a week in some cases. So. Clients may want to take a longer period of time and it might be a month or two. Before the CAD drawing is approved.
[00:20:55] Craig Dalton: You mentioned sort of tube diameter being one of the variables you can play around with.
Can you walk me through what that conversation looks like? So say I'm coming to you for a gravel frame and you know that I'm, five, nine and 170 odd pounds. How's that conversation go.
[00:21:12] Jason Turner: The conversation would be, it wouldn't be much of a conversation at first. You may not want to be that involved.
You may not have that much knowledge in a, and so, so for the tube selection, you might just leave it to our best judgment, but you may want to be involved in it. You may have specific needs. So, a lot of it is based on previous builds and kind of ride quality feedback we receive, I think. In generally over an engineer.
So he make it stronger, sturdier, thicker. Of course at the expense of weight the necessary, but better to be kind of safe. But. So the conversation itself, it just depends on the client. But yeah, we can control almost all the aspects of it. I mean, because they are titanium tubes and the tubes may be hydro farms and have special shapes.
There's not a whole lot there, there's a few number of strings that you can pull. On it. Yeah. ,
[00:22:05] Craig Dalton: does the factory have sort of the same number of tubing options as you would find elsewhere in the world?
[00:22:10] Jason Turner: For the most part? Yes. And that's why I think we have two shops that we work with. One shop is a little bit more adventurous and has hydro-forming capabilities and so they can do some things that the other shop can't.
It also depends on production levels. Why we might choose one shop over the other. And also to keep it a little bit competitive. So, yeah, some shops do have different supplies and different capabilities, especially around hydro-forming.
[00:22:37] Craig Dalton: Yeah. I'm the unicorn cycles website. I've seen a gallery of some very interesting bikes that have come through there from the very traditional to, pretty unique tubing shapes, et cetera, designed around.
Very specific criteria. I think one maybe triathlon bike for a smaller woman comes to mind in terms of the very interesting Benz in the tubes.
[00:22:59] Jason Turner: Yeah, I think she was four foot six. She had a custom Mooney frame that was 10 or 15 years old steel, very heavy. But stand over height was a big deal. That was challenging.
Just cause the fork and tires. I think we use six 50 C we just did another one recently, a 36 or the guy wasn't really tall. He was six foot, but he wanted a 36 or we hadn't done one before made a custom fork for that. He works at a bike shop, I think in Houston. Just received the frame recently.
Hasn't built it up yet, so we'll see what he does with that. But that was challenging because here it's a big 36 or frame, but it's a six foot guy. If you have seven foot, that would have probably been easier. Yeah, fat bikes ultra cycling boom bike for myself. So, well, I mean, as long as we think it's safe the design that the client's proposing.
Well, we'll give it a try. And like I said, if if necessary we'll, we'll overbuild it,
[00:23:53] Craig Dalton: what kind of guidance? What's the sort of basic spec of a gravel bike these days for you guys? Like if someone comes to you and says, I want one that's in the sweet spot of the market. What size tire diameter are you designing around?
What are some of the basics that kind of would come into play?
[00:24:09] Jason Turner: Well, okay. So for tire size, I would say like R w we'll have a new stock frame out in March, we're building around 50 millimeter tires. That'll be both 50 millimeter for 700 C as well as six 50 B. So I think that's the upper end. I mean, People may want something larger.
We get a lot of requests for a salsa cutthroat type bike. They like the cutthroat, but they want it titanium or they want more water bottle or braise on water bottle mounts for storing extra gear. They want to slack her head tube. So, I think the sweet spot for gravel, tire size is a large part of tire size is the writer's own weight.
If 40 millimeters is good for me, but I'm a certain way. And 45 or 46 millimeters might be better for someone else. It also depends on the train. So there's, that's what I like about customer. It's not a one size fits all, but I am seeing probably 40, 44 millimeter tire size as what I'm seeing a lot of, a lot of slacker head tubes, 70 millimeters with a trail of like 68, 70, 75, 80 millimeter trail combination of the fork and the head tube.
A lot of mounts under the down tube on the top two on the chain stay a lot of bike packing, lot of, kind of do it all all around all road. Not just all roads, but they may want to use it for bike packing. They may want a. And the seat stay for a future belt drive. They're not going to use one now, but Hey, can you put a split in the seat, stay for a belt drive?
Sure. Let's do that frame couplers do that. So, it varies and a custom frame isn't necessarily for someone who's four, six, or someone who has a short torso and in long legs. It may be for that rider who no. It has very specific requirements. They want slack, a taller head tube on it. Cause they're too hunched over.
They're getting older, they want something more upright. They want the extra mounts, so where they want a certain type of bottom bracket, they want a a frame that could accommodate either a suspension for core static forks. So it's just making those little tweaks that they can't find in an off the shelf bike somewhere else.
Yeah. That
[00:26:17] Craig Dalton: makes a lot of sense. The comments about fit, resonate with me a lot as I just got a bike fit myself, and I'm finding, there's just sort of little things that it's been pretty tricky to find on a stock frame, particularly around a desired head to blunt. Then it's not that I couldn't achieve a similar result.
With sort of stacking spacers, but it's not an elegant look. It's not something that, someone has been around cycling my whole life. It's not a look that I aspire to. So the idea of designing a bike that has a little bit more head to then maybe a stock frame to accommodate my lack of flexibility and age dare I say is attractive to me.
And that makes a lot of sense. I also think, titanium as a. Frame material is. Aspirational for a lot of people in their cycling life, right. We all want to have some titanium underneath us at some point in our lives because of the, the, the lore behind it and the door ability and the flexibility, which I think does make it a really great material for gravel cycling, because.
The durability, but also compliance built in. And the terrain in which gravel cyclists are pursuing these days, I think tends to be rougher and rougher. You may, we may all get these bikes thinking like, oh, I'm just going to turn down that fire road. But that fire road then becomes a single track.
And all of a sudden you're kind of pushing the capabilities of these drop bar bikes.
[00:27:45] Jason Turner: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was thinking of something that you mentioned, but now it alludes me about a custom bike and the custom fit.
[00:27:53] Craig Dalton: I apologize. Yeah. It takes a while. I think for me, it's taken awhile and it's been a journey ever since I got my first gravel.
Like, I discovered what I didn't want. I discovered the limitations of that particular first bike and I have leaned into things going forward. And for me, it's sort of been progressively larger on tire size. And I, I do think to your point, that 700 by 50. Seems to be the sweet spot. Like, I'm not sure I necessarily were ride that big all the time, but I would like to have that in the bikes capabilities.
So should I go bike packing or what have you, I can throw on some big, wide, high volume tires to add to that. And then if I'm racing or maybe my daily driver, I might be down to a 43 or 45. But that's, that's the beauty, right? We can have this flexibility with these bikes.
[00:28:43] Jason Turner: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:28:44] Craig Dalton: Have you sort of come to the ideal customer in your mind?
Like who, who is the customer that you feel like when they come knocking on your door? Unicorn provides like the perfect solution for.
[00:28:57] Jason Turner: I don't know if there's a perfect customer per se. I mean, obviously the one that's the easiest that already knows what they want. I've had clients bring drawings to me that they've just scratched in the, in the geometry.
Like a kind of a typical customer. They already have a bike. If not more than one bike, they'd been riding for several years like yourself, they know what they don't want. Surprisingly. I don't have to do a lot in terms of bike fit. Usually they have a bike that fits them fairly well already that they've been riding for a while, but they just want to make some tweaks on it.
Like you said, the head too. One of the things that I try to do in designing a frame isn't is to make it adjustable for the future. So if, when they do get older, That it'll grow with them. Maybe they, maybe they start to ride more and they get more flexibility. So I would never want to sell a custom bike where the head tube is slammed.
I always want at least 20 millimeters of space below the stem, just so they could lower it. Cause you're not going to be able to just take that away. So allowing some adjustability in the saddle, looking at pictures of their current bike to see where the saddle is. So I could see that their current frame.
Has a 74 millimeter or 74 degree C2 bangle, but I see that they're pushed all the way back on the rails of the saddle. So maybe we make the unicorn 73 and a half degrees, and that will give them more adjustability, also keeping into account the, the seatpost setback, but going back to who's the best or ideal customer Yeah, a customer who has a bike who's been around, who wants to, who likes titanium?
Like you said, either it's that elusive that they've always wanted a titanium bike. Of course a customer that's that's patient because the, the design process, the fabrication process takes time. So if they're looking for that instant gratification Probably isn't for them. That's why we've started carrying a few stock frames out there.
But yeah, we get all kind of righties budgets, ambitions, just from a commuting bike with maybe opinion, gearbox. They want low maintenance, they want a belt drive or they want something very aggressive. They've won state, gravel races, one gentlemen locally. Racer costs Iowa. He's won that and placed in that a couple times.
Built him a gravel bike with a Lew fork on it. So it really varies. And I think that's the flexibility of unicorn being unique is that it is what you make it. I mean, every writer out there is different. How they're writing, what they're writing, their ambitions is different. And so the bike should be as unique as them.
I like to think.
[00:31:37] Craig Dalton: I think Jason, that's a fine place to end the podcast. That statement. I think it sums up unicorn in a nutshell, it's finding a bike that's right for you, the perfect bike for you. Yeah. Jason, thanks so much for the time today. I really enjoyed the conversation and I'll point people to your website so they can get to know you a little bit more and find out how to get in contact
[00:31:57] Jason Turner: with you.
Thank you, Craig. And thank you to the gravel ride podcast. Really love what you're doing and appreciate this time. Cheers.
[00:32:06] Craig Dalton: So that's going to do it for this week's episode of the gravel ride podcast. Big thanks to Jason Turner from unicorn cycles for coming on board and telling us all about how you can get accustomed titanium, gravel, bike of your dreams.
And also a big shout out to this week. Sponsor hammerhead,
And the new kuru to computer.
Make sure to grab one of those cool custom color kits and a free premium water bottle.
. By visiting hammerhead.io, the website. And use the promo code the gravel ride at checkout
If you're looking to connect with me, please visit the ridership@wwwdottheridership.com and join our community.
I love hearing from you. And I love even more seeing the community interact by itself. If you're looking to support the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride.
Where am I sharing this podcast with a friend? Sometimes I forget that ask, but it's really important
If you're enjoying this podcast and have cycling friends. I would love for you to ask them, to give this podcast to listen.
Word of mouth is definitely the number one way in which a podcast can grow. So considered a huge favor and thanks in advance for your effort. Until next time here's to finding some dirt under your wheels