John recently visited the Hudski Bikes headquarters in San Rafael, California for a Shop Visit and a chance to ride the brand’s all-new Dualist rigid MTB ($2,400 complete). What he uncovered at the brand offered a much deeper look into how process is king at this small bike company…
Cannons, Black Powder, and Metal
Process. Any designer will tell you the process is more important than the end product. It’s within the piles of sketches, models, and mock ups where you’ll often find the inspiration that informs the final design. Brian Szykowny and Will Hudson are Hudski bikes, but first and foremost, they’re artists.
Prior to Hudski, the two were doing abstract architectural installations for various Sonoma County wineries. Their technique was a little different from what you’d expect.
“We shot a bowling ball cannon at a series of huge copper plates and hung them from the Four Seasons Resort in Napa Valley’s ceiling…” began Brian Szykowny, co-founder of Hudski Bikes. “We flash-patinaed the copper with gunpowder… Those lamps out front are what we call slug lamps. We formed the shape and then hit them with shotguns. Oh yeah, we shot a billiard ball cannon at that lamp…”
As a lifelong artist – or perhaps a metal masochist – Brian’s creative pursuits have run the gamut. From running his father’s contractor company for a year to being an industrial designer at Specialized, he’s dipped his toes in various endeavors. Talking to him at the Hudski HQ in San Rafael, California, you get the sense that through all the explosive excitement, Hudski is where he currently pours his creativity.
Models, prototypes, sketches, and Pantone chips line his office walls. A bolo tie with a scorpion in it dangles above a poster with a geometric design maze-like design. Next to these are Hudski head badge prototypes.
Swiz, as he’s called by friends, is a tinkerer by nature. His 1969 BMW 2002 restoration sits at the back of the shop. You can see his desire to finish it when you talk about it. I asked him to get in the driver’s seat, and he smiled ear to ear. His plan is to drop in a M42 engine and turbocharge it with 8 psi of boost. But right now, the company takes priority.
Hudski Bikes
Brian and Will met in high school, in their senior year. They found bikes together around the same time and took off to Europe for a four-month bike tour. Since then, they’ve remained close friends and decided to open Hudski Bikes in 2020, a relentless pursuit focused on making well-designed, thoughtful, and affordable bikes.
The two took the kinetic energy of shooting bowling and billiard ball cannons at metal objects and poured over establishing Hudski’s intent. Initially, they wanted to make city cruiser bikes with Alfine hubs, inspired by pre-war cruisers. They even had a prototype made by Frank the Welder, an expert in aluminum frame building. The bikes were heavy, and the belt drive was sloppy feeling. Brian loves the look of old cruisers, but he and Will wanted to take the brand in a different direction. It’s hard to beat a $120 pre-war cruiser bike in terms of both aesthetics and functionality.
Back to the drawing board. Redlining is one thing, but scrapping an iteration is often a vital stage in product design. Remember, process is king. Starting over, Brian and Will got to work on the Doggler. The first test mule was a steel proof-of-concept frame made by Curtis Inglis from Retrotec. Soon after they decided to move towards aluminum and started working with Frank the Welder. They hit a stride and began to sketch a rough 3D model with SolidWorks before landing on something they both liked. The Doggler was born.
Brian handed his 3D sketch over to John Burnie, who refined the model into a Fusion 360 file since he was better at surface modeling. In doing so, he designed it for manufacturing, specifying everything through FEA, or finite element analysis, along with Jeremy Thomson, a freelance engineer, down to the profiles and butting of tubes.
While this sounds like a lot of digital work, Brian and Will haven’t forgotten their artistry roots. Brian has a paint shop in the back of the shop, and many of his prized project bike components are on display. Forks and frames he painted at Specialized are gathering dust but they’re not hidden away in a dark corner; they’re on display.
Original Equipment
Hudski is an OEM, or original equipment manufacturer. They detail everything to their Taiwan-based manufacturer, who also builds bikes for the bigger brands. Sharing facilities with the big three means Hudski is often put on the back burner of production, but winning a slow race is all about patience.
After five years of Doggler sales, the brand decided to take some feedback from riders, friends, and websites like this and design the Dualist, a boost-spaced rigid MTB. This presented the opportunity for Brian to flex some of those 3D modeling muscles and create one beautiful bricolage bicycle, assembled from a series of design elements and tubing. The bottom bracket shell is a work of art!
Manufacturers in Taiwan and China form tubing to spec for their OEM clients. Hudski can make a downtube with the exact profile and butting they want, nesting perfectly in the forged aluminum bottom bracket and different for each size. When Brian changed the seat stay spec from 19 mm to 16 mm, he included an elegant bend to clear the brake caliper while avoiding heel rub across all of the sizes. These tubes were made specifically for Hudski.
The brand uses a small but janky 3D printer for in-house prototyping, and these bars are indicative of that. Using tubing ordered from McMaster-Carr at 22.2 and 31.8 diameters, Brian 3D prints these neat “sweep and rise” joints so they can experiment with bar designs in-house.
When I asked him if it was okay to share these photos, he said, “The thing about the bike world is, there’s nothing to hide.”
Fewer SKUs
One of the points I made in my Dust-Up about the bike industry’s sprawl was that brands have too many SKUs. Hudski alleviates this by getting the new Dualist bikes completely assembled in Taiwan and then having the wheels, either 700 gravel or 29er MTB, shipped separately.
So when the customer orders either the “gravel build with 700 x 50 mm Maxxis Rambler” or “MTB build with 29 by 2.4″ Rekon” build, it’s a drop-down menu item. At the San Rafael Warehouse, they will then install the appropriate wheel size and tire combination into one of the already assembled bikes.
Dualist Details
Coming full circle, Will and Brian took their history of metal manipulation and went full-on artist founder mode on the Dualist head badge, hammering the Hudski letters on the back of the brass badge. This gives the front of the headbadge a negative-punched look, similar to the shotgun slug lamps. He then dropped it off at a 3D scanner shop to scan and mirror the badge, before bringing the correctly oriented logo to the headbadge maker for production. Why not just use dies that are mirrored? Well, where’s the fun in that?
Perhaps the biggest update on the Dualist from the Doggler is the boost-spaced wheels. You can now run a MTB wheelset on this bike. Tire clearance has improved too, with 29 x 2.5″ front and rear clearance. When sizing down to 27.5″ wheels, you can run a 2.8″ on the front and a 2.6″ in the rear for monster truck plopping over roots and rocks.
The Hudski carbon forks are built to spec and feature clever detailing. They utilize a rear flat-mount to post-mount brake adapter so that the thru-bolt design commonly found on chainstays can be incorporated into the fork blade lowers. This means there are no threaded rivnuts or inserts to loosen and pull out. These rear adapter mounts tend to look better than the front adapter mounts, too.
This chonky beast of a bottom bracket shell allows for the Dualist’s seat tube to be scooted forward 15 mm from the center, maximizing every iota of tire clearance. Its drop chainstay on the drive side, does the same, while offering a peek of the bike’s rear derailleur routing. Everything about the Dualist screams “big brand” while the pricepoint and design eye are very much things only a small brand would give a shit about.
Flip chips allow the Dualist to run two geometry configurations. The front fork flip chip requires no extra parts. All the necessary components are installed. You simply turn the chip around and swap the location of the 10 mm spacer on the axle. Same with the rear; no extra hardware needed. Both chips can be installed on the trail. These adjustments offer 10 mm of difference in trail and chainstay length.
The details on this bike are next level, yet the silhouette is so simple that it’s a true sleeper. At first glance, you might not notice them, but spend some time with the bike and they unfurl like a fern.
It’s these moments of design beauty that keep me engaged with bike design. The ex-architect in me pined over the work of Neil Denari, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid, Lebbeus Woods, and others. All of these star architects were engaging in early parametric design. Their forms were obtuse and amorphic and required heavy use of 3D modeling applications. To see this level of craft in a $2400 bicycle is something special.
The Dualist is offered in two standard colors, Nevada (tan – named after the BMW 2002 color) and Eggplant (dark purple), will be available, along with a limited edition homage ombré fade paint job…
Dualist First Ride Impressions
In 2023, I reviewed the Hudski Doggler. My buddy Kyle Klain shot some banger photos that really captured the fun vibes that the bike encouraged. We rode in a monsoon and got drenched. It was cold, but the double rainbow shot still gives me goosebumps when I see it. When I think of quintessential Radavist, that review comes to mind. The Doggler is such a fun platform.
Brian and Will could have left the Doggler as is, and I’d still call it a favorite in the class of flat bar gravel bikes. But they’re perfectionists and began working on the Dualist in late 2023. Last year at Sea Otter, we got a super early look at the first prototype. It took that long to get the production batch from Taiwan. They’re due to arrive in May or June in the United States.
After I got the rundown on the updates and quit drooling over his BMW project, we kitted up and pedaled to China Camp straight from the shop. We went up the “steep side,” tractor crawling up the grades to reach the old Nike Missile site at the top. Immediately, I appreciated the increase in stack on the bike with a taller head tube. Brian left the steerer uncut for me to figure out where I wanted the stem but I dropped it down to one 10 mm spacer.
We both remarked how taller stack doesn’t equate to 4 – 5 cm of spacers under the stem. Noting how we’ve both experienced a squirreliness of handling with too many spacers. Our running theory is that the spacers are contiguous, so they move as the steerer flexes. Whereas a taller head tube eliminates this flex “feeling.”
Riding the Dualist in the “twitchy” mode with the flip chip backward in the fork and tire slammed, the bike felt like a wheelie machine. It was ready to jib and jive down the trail. It lifted up easily and eagerly engaged with the trail’s side hits and berms. I didn’t get the chance to switch it over to “sled” mode during my ride. This would move the offset forward on the fork. In doing so, it decreases 10 mm of trail. The rear chainstay would also grow 10 mm for more traction.
Every time I come to Marin, I’m on a rigid bike. Most of the trails in China Camp are perfect for honing skills on a bike sans suspension. This area is a rigid MTB or adventure gravel heaven. Bikes like the Dualist have evolved to reflect their domain.
At the end of the ride, I expressed my gratitude and desire to keep the bike for longer. One ride wasn’t enough, so I’ll be holding onto the bike for the rest of the spring and summer. Expect a deeper look later this year!
Small Brand Ethos
I want the small brands to make it.
Big time. They’re the soul of the bike industry.
They inspire and push paradigms.
They put out videos like this!
They’re flexible, quick to pivot, and open to experimentation. Hudski is a two-person operation with a few more people helping them out along the way. Regardless of the brand’s size, dammit, they’re doing some cool shit.
My time with Brian, both on and off the bike, felt like a synergistic moment that isn’t replicable. We geeked out about art, architecture, design, cars, Cruisers, and photography. We talked bikes, the industry, and overseas production. He and Will have a lot of cool things planned for the future. I wish both of them steady aim as they blast cannons at metal – just in a more figurative sense this time.
I went a little bonkers on this gallery, so enjoy!
After you click through these photos, check out the Dualist at Hudski Bikes. The pre-order is now open with a May-June delivery date.