As you’ll already know, I love finding out about the origin stories of companies within the bike industry. I love it even more when an unexpected story emerges that I hadn’t already known about, and the story of Factor Bikes is one of those.
I’ve known Factor’s CEO, Rob Gitelis, for over a decade now and his initial business partners Baden Cooke and Kel McCulloch for even longer. I thought I knew most of their founding story, but as it turns out, the story goes much further back.
Factor might seem like a relative newcomer in the market, and that’s partially true. It’s been a mere eight years since their bikes became widely available, but they got their start almost 16 years ago when a gentleman named John Bailey came along.
Bailey owned a Formula 1 data measurement company called British Formula One, or BF-1 for short. Bailey wasn’t even a cyclist, but he wanted a project for his team of engineers to work on that showcased BF-1’s capabilities and technology to his automotive market. He did this by launching a bike into the future and breaking every rule in the book …
You can read the full (computer-generated) transcript here.
Did we do a good job with this story?