Petor Georgallou heads to 2025 Eurobike to report on the best, the worst, and the most off-piste of an industry in decline. There were friends and familiar faces, terrible inventions, strange interpretations, oddballs and maniacs orbiting a core of wholesome optimism and community. Reporting from between a rock and a hard place – security guards gone feral and the mythos of get-rich-quick innovation – Eurobike becomes increasingly impossible to take seriously as a bike show. Many thanks to Schwalbe for sponsoring our Eurobike coverage…

I ought to make Bespoked hats so I can wear one when I’m on official business, to make the nature of my business in a place more overt. Cari, who diligently operates a “one to rock, one to stock” policy with regard to white Radavist hats (the most fade-resistant colour), had donated her spare to me earlier in the year. It replaced my black Radavist hat (which had faded with sweat and sunshine) as the hat I wear when I’m on official Radavist business, so that no one is confused about why I’m in a place.

This trip, I was also working for Eurobike, although I’m not sure I want a Eurobike hat as well as the Radavist and Bespoked, all at the same time. Armed with tickets, press passes, bike bands, parking permits, six coffees, and a strong eight hours of sleep in me – as well as being a full day ahead of opening, with an Edglrd baseball cap as a proxy for the Bespoked cap I might one day make – I was, for the first time, confident that I’d be allowed in to unload and help White Industries set up their booth.

I rolled into Leicaland – which is to Leica as Disneyland is to Disney, but perhaps somehow even more literal in its approach – at 2 a.m. that morning, having driven from the UK. Wetzlar, the home of Leicaland, is a 40-minute drive outside of Frankfurt, and having been to Frankfurt before, I knew better than to stay in a van there. The Ernst Leitz Hotel was open but fully booked, so I checked their plumbing, which was perfectly serviceable, before sleeping in my van in the car park. It was quiet and peaceful, so I stayed asleep well into the morning, before a complimentary buffet breakfast that came with the room.

The buffet was full of thin and impeccably groomed grey-haired men wearing rimless glasses, tapered suit trousers, and open-collared white or pale blue shirts tucked into leather belts that matched their shoes. I tucked into a booth in the corner and gazed around the grey-on-grey room (with strategically placed red accents) between trips to the buffet to replenish my empty coffee cup. I’d planned to tour the factory in the morning, however the whole place was awash with electricians running three-phase cable in preparation for a hundredth-anniversary celebration, and more and more cars filled with grey-haired men were arriving, so I bailed on Leicaland and headed into Frankfurt to begin the work.

Setting the Scene

I arrived 30 minutes early to the Messe because being armed to the teeth with passes, as pleasantries have not traditionally borne fruit at Eurobike. A van seems to be the way in. I arrived at the entrance, showed the parking pass, and was allowed to enter and unload. It was miraculous, almost normal.
Inside, the halls were bustling with contractors assembling exhibition stands while smoking cigarettes and drinking beers. Madcap forklifts loaded with nonsense dashed around like feral Roombas, occasionally scraping the odd wall or driving through piles of discarded packaging materials. The recorded No Smoking announcements, periodically broadcast in German, English, and Chinese, completed the chaos. It’s a seldom-seen side of Germany – at least from an outsider’s perspective – but it was comforting, as a show organizer, to see that mine is not the only chaos.

Alec, Lauren, and Jimmy from White Industries made short work of assembling the modular booth that I’d brought over for them, so I left the Messe to shower in my hotel ahead of the Shimano GRX Di2 launch party organised by Jon Woodroof at Twotone, which was a relaxed 15-minute cycle from the hotel. It was relatively small, fun, and surprisingly genuine. It was a cute gathering. It felt like a gathering of friends rather than colleagues – I can seldom differentiate the two – in a kind of nice little bar with a restaurant upstairs.

This is where Eurobike has real value, but also where, seemingly, the show doesn’t understand its own cultural cachet. By far the best part of the show is that so many excellent people are there at the same time. With the density of super-smart and really interesting people, it’s inevitable that away from the actual show, enclaves of good people meet in smaller venues all over town. And this year, the good stuff started the night before the show opened – with Shimano. These gatherings are somewhat strange to talk about because they’re usually by invitation and seldom reported on, but they are the real value of the show, and the reason I’ve returned for years.

Carbotronics Automated Carbon Layup from Italy

They had a frame on a plinth, and behind it a little tent with two or three built-up bikes. The frame looked kind of wacky and interesting, but I didn’t want to make eye contact in case they started talking to me about electric motors and controllers and batteries and all the ephemeral nonsense people who hate cycling confuse with being associated with bikes.

Carbotronics were, however, kind of interesting. They are an Italian company based in Reggio Emilia – a region littered with luxury sports cars and luxury sports car parts manufacturers – so they approached building a motorized bicycle like it was a Lamborghini door handle.
For sure, it has a slightly kooky top tube – a bit like the race-tuned Gamux I shot last year – but way more interestingly, they’ve developed their own patented carbon layup technology, which they call Carbon Fiber Sheet Moulding Compound. It uses sheets of pre-preg short chopped strand carbon, laid up in a heated mould in a similar way to carbon forging.

Instead of making silly claims about why that’s good for the environment – or whatever nonsense e-bike people pretend to be obsessed with – they highlighted that the process is mostly automated, so they can make a finished frame in Italy in 20 minutes. This drastically brings the cost of manufacturing down to a point where it’s competitive with, if not cheaper than, manufacturing frames in China.

They seem like an interesting company in their approach. They also designed their own motor, which has a significant degree of modularity. This means people can repair it themselves, and it can be built directly into the frame of the bike – which also makes a lot of sense.
I had great admiration for the thought and engineering and process that got them to the point of building a bike, even if I didn’t especially like the bike. I’d love to see an Italian-made, recycled-motor-industry carbon cargo bike, though. I’d even settle for one with a motor – and this felt like a big step towards making stuff like that in Europe.

A Re-Shuffle

The positioning of exhibitors at Eurobike isn’t random, but it lacks nuance. The loss of roughly 30% of the exhibitors compared to the previous year really muddied the water and made someone’s job harder, which, on the whole, was a good thing. It was really interesting to see how the reshuffle played out, and even if it was only by accident, it might be a pretty eloquent forecast of what mainstream cycling culture could look like in the not-too-distant future.

Previously, Hall 12 was SRAM – premium European and American brands predominantly. Hall 11 was basically Shimano, Park Tool, and a bunch of other premium bicycle accessory brands, as well as half a hall of Bulls and some other low-grade Costco production nonsense. Hall 9 was predominantly Chinese and Taiwanese OEM manufacturers, with some lazy additions where the show obviously didn’t understand the exhibitors. Hall 8 was the chaotic mix of urban mobility and startups.

This year, the shrinkage was felt most acutely with the premium Hall 11 and 12 exhibitors, with Scott, SRAM, DT Swiss, Trickstuff, and plenty of others notable in their absence. What made it strange was the exhibitors that had been chosen to fill in. Some of them made complete sense – like Hope and Reynolds, and a row of high-end Japanese manufacturer brands now in Hall 12 where they belong, like Izumi and MKS – but there were also a bunch of bigger OEM exhibitors mixed in, probably based on booth size.

No one stays bad at making things forever, and it would be naive to think that Chinese factories are in any way inferior at manufacturing compared to factories anywhere else in the world. And looking at how many Chinese students are studying at prestigious design schools all over the world, it’s only a matter of time before Chinese design becomes very good too. Instead, Chinese factories often say yes to making unfeasible things on unfeasible budgets – often at the request of the brands having the things made. They say yes to very limiting budgets and can do so by sometimes churning out shit. But it can’t be overlooked that they also make everything – some of which is made very, very well.

Not that I have even the faintest interest in low-grade motorbikes, but last year’s DJI e-bike launch at Eurobike seemed like no big deal. However, this year the DJI e-bike system seems to have pulled the rug out from under a bunch of much more established brands. This year’s Wheeltop and L-TWOO groupsets – which seem to borrow heavily in both design and branding from SRAM and Shimano – can’t be overlooked in terms of being pitched as medium-high-end but affordable alternatives.

The difference is that DJI is already an industry leader globally in another sector, expanding into e-bike motors which are adjacent to its existing products. Whereas Wheelmen and L-TWOO are both fairly new to the market – each less than a decade old (Wheeltop is much older, but new to making its own stuff, and anything performance-oriented) – they set out to make bicycle drivetrains from the get-go.

Would I choose to run Wheeltop’s €399 OX electronic mech and shifter over SRAM’s equivalent €660 rear mech and €250 shifter? Honestly, definitely not. They might even be fine (they also might not). I guess the reason is mostly to do with cultural equity, trust, and design at a high level.

Of course, I don’t think the two systems are comparable for a number of reasons. But populism seems to be modernity’s substitute for quality, and on that basis, I don’t think that most people care – or can tell the difference. Perhaps at a shop level? With European distribution and fast, no-questions-asked warranty, even if that puts the price up by 20%, would any serious shop mechanic fit this stuff? I’m sure a few might try.

These products would never end up in a physical shop next to reputable brands like SRAM or Shimano – but while bike shops are a little different because they offer a service, the majority of selling happens online now, where everything is next to everything else. With some product given out strategically, and a bit of a copywriting and visual language overhaul, worse products have been sold.

Bafang motors, culturally, went from cheap rubbish to kind of respectable in a very short space of time – it’s not unfeasible that Chinese transmission brands will become significantly more mainstream in the next decade. This will be a tragedy if those manufacturers are not supporting the industry as a whole, or at a grassroots level, the way that brands like Schwalbe and SRAM do.

Hand Made, Not Have a Go

During the setup day, Alec from White Industries asked me 100% sincerely when they were going to finish building the handmade area. While in the middle of the fanciest hall, and surrounded by slick, over-produced displays, the visual language of handmade had been decoded incorrectly to mean something closer to home-made or DIY. It was the aesthetic of having given up halfway through framing out a barn.

This year’s Eurobike was a brutal place to be a bike enthusiast. There were plenty of gems, but the sheer quantity of awful dullness I had to wade through to find them was so physically and spiritually exhausting that I was too battered to give proper attention to the gems when eventually I found them.

The physical structure that the handmade exhibitors inhabited was significantly worse than almost any other booth space in the hall. But in spite of that, the handmade area had by far the highest concentration of good and exciting work, so I spent the rest of the day there.

However, every time I tried to shoot a bike literally anywhere outside, a security guard would feel the need to intervene. This slowed my progress significantly but also really started to wear me down. The show had gotten off to a bad start, and every second interaction was a small conflict about some nonsense rule that seemed to be made up on the spot.

The whole thing was exhausting and seemed to have very little value, and I was struggling to remain nonchalant. The first bike I shot was Leovelo’s Jungle Runner – because he’s fairly relaxed, and after a bumpy start, a bit of familiarity goes a long way.

Leovelo Jungle Runner

Leo is a fairly kooky guy. I’ve never seen him wear anything but his uniform of a blue jumpsuit. I’ve been aware of Leovelo for three years now, and his builds have always been on the kookier side – but the last few have both retained the kookiness and been built very nicely to a high standard.

His most recent personal bike, the Jungle Runner, has it all. It’s a comfy singlespeed that weighs basically nothing, has a very long, slack geometry, and loads of fun little details. The low weight comes from using a mix of Columbus tubes, a relatively light carbon fork, and Tune and Shimano XTR bits – both of which are pretty ridiculously light. The toptube and wishbone have both been profiled in-house for comfort and aesthetics; there are little brazed-on hearts everywhere, and I love the one massive down tube logo. It was powder-coated and had stuck-on decals for sure, but for that, the finish was decent, and the additional soldered-on graphic elements looked great.

After I’d shot Leovelo’s bike in my usual spot – in full view of the security guard who’d let me out into the car park to shoot – I wasn’t allowed back in, because the entrance was only for people with bicycles. And since there were two of us and only one bicycle, only one of us would be allowed back in, with the option to walk probably half an hour round to a different pedestrian entrance (where entry was not guaranteed because – let’s face it – Eurobike).

Leo had to go back in with his bike and my keys, unlock my bike, which was a couple of hundred feet away, and come back with both bikes so that I could walk back while also holding a bike. It was long, annoying, and the worst kind of stupid.

The strangest part was that while I waited with the Kartoffeltopf (potatohead) in question, he tried to convince me that he wasn’t a bad person – which, even more strangely, was an identity he clung to based on having recently completed an industrial design degree, and that his security guard job was only temporary. I interrupted his memoirs – which he’d begun to serenade me with – with: “I’m sorry, could I just stop you there? I actually don’t care about you, or your feelings, or if you’re a nice person. If you’re going to be an asshole, at least fucking own it – or have the decency to wait here in silence. I need to go back into the show. I don’t need to hear your whole life problems.”

I turned my back to him and started deleting photos on my camera while we waited in silence. Leo brought my bike to me, and the guard smiled self-consciously and waved us back in. I made a pig face at him – pushing my nose up and my eyes down with my fingers – locked my bike up again, and went back into the hall for more.

Abums Motorized Trail Bike

Something Eurobike does very well — since people travel to be there from all over the world — is being a cultural melting pot. It leads to weird and fun interactions with people from the far corners of the cycling industry who I’d never otherwise meet. Funny names are probably 80% of my enjoyment of the Chinese OEM hall.

I don’t know if it happened in a dream or at a past Eurobike; I’m sure it happened, but I can’t find a picture, so perhaps it was a dream — because it’s almost too silly to be real. There was a Chinese OEM helmet maker called SPRM, which made my year. It’s amazing when Chinese manufacturers just get it a little bit wrong, like the knockoff Deda Condor carbon bars I bought used on eBay for my daughter’s bike, which were clearly copied from a picture, because “CONDOR” on the handlebar reads “CONDOB.” Hilarious.

Abums, a builder from the Basque Country, is named by the shortening of “adrenaline bums.” However, in German, “a bums” means “a fuck” or “a bang.” I don’t speak German well enough to know this myself, but three separate Germans told me because it surprised them — so it’s likely to be true.

On to the bike… It’s a little motorbike for doing enduro, so it’s quite squarely not my wheelhouse. However, I could for sure appreciate it as an interesting and super nicely made thing. I guess two significant challenges with a bike like this — aside from normal stuff like making sure it rides well and doesn’t fail — are not making it look terrible while integrating a load of things that mostly make bikes look terrible. This is something Abums have done very well.

They’ve made something so that the build looks effortlessly simple when it’s, in fact, a super complex frame to build. The down tube obviously houses the battery — away from harmful impacts and the harmful visual impact it would make on the outside. It looks like a massive box section but is actually fabricated using folded sheet.

Taking into account the monstrous strength and stiffness of the fabricated down tube, the rest of the frame is designed to be relatively flexy, and features a bolt-in rear arch which can be replaced to further tune flex to suit individual riders.

It’s really unusual to see a build like this fillet brazed — and even more unusual that all those fillets are filed. I can’t imagine how long this build took, but if I had to guess, I’d say probably ages. All of the dropouts, pivot points, and bits are also machined in-house. I love the aesthetic of this bike, even if I’m totally not into the type of leisure this bike is designed for. There’s an honesty to it, and a respect for the materials, which are clearly visible through the clear Cerakote.

Hezo Shoes and Personomic Saddles

Hezo is making 3D-printed shoes — not just cycling shoes but also sliders! On the face of it, they seem like a very good idea. They’re made from three different materials: a very hard one for the bits that touch the ground, a softer one for the body of the shoe, and a squishy one for the inner part. Each part is replaceable individually, so there’s a modularity to the shoe.

They are really very nice-looking shoes, and while I’m a fan of laces, the Fidlock version of a BOA kind of seemed like a better idea than a BOA — its design is simpler and it has virtually no mechanism, which means there’s less to go wrong (although I haven’t ever tested it). I don’t know if I’ve ever had a pair of cycling shoes that’s comfortable — like, anywhere near as comfortable as normal shoes, or where my feet don’t go numb in the winter (which is only partly down to cold — because my feet never go numb in normal shoes). In that way, I’d be really interested to try out a printed shoe and see if there’s a noticeable difference. It seems like a solution for a problem I actually experience, which is novel.

I do have a Posedla 3D-printed saddle, and it’s great. Personomic doesn’t offer the same level of customisation that Posedla does with their saddles, but they do offer a printed saddle in eight different widths as well as four different densities and levels of cushioning — which I guess puts it halfway between something like SQlabs and Posedla, with a price point that reflects its positioning in the marketplace. It’s not quite as nicely finished as either, but I quite like that aesthetically.

Absolutely Banging Bixxis

On the face of it, there’s nothing special about the bike I picked out from the Bixxis lineup to shoot — and they did have fancier bikes — but I kind of loved their approach with this one. It was a very nicely built, super tidy, super light gravel bike, set up in touring mode with a lugged, in-house-made rear rack. I loved the subtle colour and texture combo of the gloss blue and matte khaki.

I’m not a fan of the Ekar groupset, although I believe it’s been refined since the first version, which I rode for a few months three years back. Having not-very-weather-resistant shifting might actually be an okay payoff to be able to run Campagnolo’s incredible wheels — because they are among the nicest wheels out there.

On the surface, there’s not a lot going on with this one, but something about it was super charming in a sea of raw titanium frames with additive-manufactured lugs. Probably paint.

Taranis Bike Stand

There isn’t much online about German builder Taranis, and instead of a bike, he brought along a work stand — which turned out to be one of the most compelling products at the show. Dissatisfied with existing options, he designed and built one from scratch, and it’s now available to buy.

It’s a mix of TIG-welded and brazed construction, with high-quality machined handles and knobs used where available to keep costs down. It includes nearly every material known to man: soft leather jaws, a brass pulley system, molded polymer, carbon fiber, and concrete. The carbon protects floors and prevents the concrete corners from chipping. There’s even an internal counterweight to help lift heavy bikes, which runs on a brass pulley at the top.

It’s by far the best-made and most thoughtful work stand I’ve ever seen.

Crossworx Nutcracker

Crossworx was founded by longtime friends Kiwi and Chris, both of whom previously worked at Nicolai. They studied together, rode together, and now build high-end, race-ready aluminum frames in Germany. The company only started in 2019, and the average age of the team is relatively young — which shows in their energy and aesthetic.

This year’s revamped Dash 290 looked incredible in raw aluminium, with huge, unapologetic welds connecting tubes and box sections to a massive machined BB shell. Pivots and linkages were everywhere. Again, not my personal riding style, but it was a beautifully made thing — and I’d love to experience it properly.

My favorite detail was a funny little sponge positioned between the linkage and the frame. I assumed it was there because the bike wasn’t assembled properly — which happens often at shows — but it’s actually to stop stones from getting lodged in a part of the frame design that acts like a “nutcracker.” I’ve never noticed that on any other bike, and it made me laugh out loud.

Cyclepunks Dream Cargo Bike

Cyclepunks, known mainly as a clothing brand, recently began dabbling in bike design. This was their second attempt — the first being a titanium reinterpretation of Cannondale’s popular ‘90s track frame. This iteration was a titanium “dream cargo bike,” built with weight savings in mind — which is an unconventional approach for a cargo bike, but makes sense given how often they’re ridden unloaded.

The bike was made in an undisclosed Chinese factory to Cyclepunks’ design and built with a smorgasbord of light and extremely light components, some of which really have no business being on a cargo bike. Still, I’d love to see what a made-in-Germany second version might look like — keeping the design intent but refining the details that were likely added for manufacturing convenience.

After an absolutely brutal first day, I rode 25 minutes back to my hotel along the river, listening to 17th-century chamber music. It was humid and golden and alive. I collapsed onto the overly made bed, my spine contorted by an abundance of ornamental cushions, and stared at the ceiling for a while before heading out for pizza.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!

The Radavist thanks Schwalbe for sponsoring our Eurobike coverage and our independent Reportage!