GETTING ONE UP ON THEIR RIVALS

OneUp Components’ Sam Richards explains how they stay ahead of the curve

“OneUp originated when Jon Staples [one of the three founders] bent his SRAM XX1 cassette and couldn’t believe how much it cost to replace. His hack solution was to piece together a Shimano cassette with an additional 42t sprocket. It worked so well that we launched it to the market, and proved so popular that we’ve only just discontinued it.

“The three of us who started the brand – Jon, Chris Heynen and I – all met working as engineers at Race Face. It was the biking that sucked us into Vancouver, and originally brought me over from Scotland. Wanting to break away from the shitty commute and do our own thing, we moved to Squamish. For the first year we ran the company out of our basements. Now we’ve graduated to a little office at the base of the trails.

“From the 42t sprocket, we expanded into making derailleur cages, then narrow-wide chainrings, chain guides, pedals and now the EDC tools. The biggest challenge is coming up with new ideas in such a fast-paced industry. A lot of them come while out on a ride or shooting the breeze afterwards. Staples is a workaholic and never switches off. He’ll have these crazy eureka moments at 3am and go to the office to smash out a CAD model. Within a week he’s got a prototype, and we’re thrashing it on our bikes a few days later!

“The trickiest thing now is that nothing sucks on bikes any more. Even five years ago, when you bought a new complete bike you’d switch out a lot of parts, but now so much of the stock kit is awesome. We’re always looking for things that can be improved, but at the end of the day, if it’s not something we’d run on our own bikes, we won’t develop it.”