Colnago is on a bit of a victory lap at the moment. There’s their gorgeous (and very expensive) new limited-edition steel bike, their (very polarising) new aero bike, and the fact that Tadej Pogačar has just had one of the all-time great seasons astride their creations. It’s also a Big Birthday for the company, which was founded 70 years ago in humble circumstances in Lombardy, Italy. The origin story: Ernesto Colnago, a young mechanic, building a business from a workbench his dad made him from a tree cut from the family garden. Within eight years, he was working with Eddy Merckx. Within twelve, Colnago’s frames were winning Grand Tours.
You couldn’t call much about Colnago’s circumstances humble now. In 2020, a controlling stake in the brand was sold to the Abu Dhabi-based Chimera Investments LLC – which sits within the fabulously wealthy Royal Group, helmed by Sheikh Tanoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE’s national security advisor (and deputy ruler).
Sheikh Tanoun is not always (or even often) associated with ethical investment; in 2021, Royal Group was busily buying up Russia’s Sputnik COVID vaccines and then selling them to developing nations at a huge mark-up, to choose just one particularly on-the-nose example. But say what you will about that (or the gold smuggling, or the spying, or the cosy relationship with the newly-collapsed Syrian regime) – His Highness knows his way around a business asset. Under Chimera Investment’s stewardship Colnago’s business has boomed – sales have tripled in the last three years – and Colnago has increasingly pursued a high-value clientele, opening an opulent flagship store in Abu Dhabi.
There have been signs of Colnago’s drift towards luxury, but none as clear as the new merch line commemorating the company’s 70th anniversary. It’s all made in Italy, quite nice-looking, splashed with logos in gold and black – and it is also absolutely obscene. There’s a black polo shirt made of 70% cashmere and 30% silk; it will set you back a lazy US$593 / AU$927 / €550. You want the same but with long sleeves? Sure: US$809 / AU$1,264 / €750.
Both basically look like what a polo shirt looks like; nothing particularly mindblowing here. There is a ‘drop shoulder design’, three buttons, a ‘polo neck construction’ which is useful in stopping it from being a t-shirt. Under the care instructions dropdown on the website it specifies ‘do not wash’, and it comes in a fancy box (sorry: ‘elegant storage solution’) made from luxury Plike paper with a ‘refined and timeless design’. By the time you’ve artisanally massaged silk out of worms and weaved them into the finest cashmere in the first world the fabric’s probably not a cheap starting point, but even the most casual and everyday items Colnago offers (like a black hoodie) are eyewateringly expensive – US$593 / AU$926 / €550.
If so far this all makes you feel vaguely queasy, it only gets worse. Take, for instance, the black varsity jacket with a big embroidered club logo. It’s made from Loro Piana ‘Rain System cashmere,’ and will cost you a modest US$1,940 / AU$3,033 / €1,800. You also can’t wash it; on the upside it has Colnago’s ‘manifesto’ stitched on the inside of the chest, with its final line reading “Colnago delivers the taste of exclusivity,” which – at least to my tastebuds – is fairly bitter in flavour.
Topping the range is a navy blue trench coat, which is breathlessly described as a “must-have item in your wardrobe, embodying timeless elegance.” It has a “faux English style placket,” a shiny gold zip and comes in a “classic and regular fit”. Load up the credit card: it costs US$2,371/ AU$3,707 / €2,200. Quiet luxury, with a price-tag that yells.
Sure, it looks nice. Sure, it’s probably lovely to wear. But what kind of world are we living in where people have so much money lying around that they can splash thousands of dollars on a single item of non-technical cycling merch? Is any of this morally justifiable? (I clearly wasn’t expecting to be radicalised by a Colnago trench coat, but here we are.)
And more to the point: what does it say about the brand’s evolution, and where it goes from here? What began with bike grease and tubular glue under the fingernails in Lombardy, and built over decades of earnest toil into one of the sport’s great covetable products, is now being positioned as the Louis Vuitton of the cycling industry. Is this the same brand – one of family ties and thrifty ingenuity – or is it now an entirely different thing with the same name on it?
Colnago has a long history of big swings, but until now, even at their wildest (OK, with some exceptions) they fit within the context of the sport’s demand for decisive innovation. Think of it as a spectrum, the V1Rs at one end of the scale, the 70th Anniversary merch line at the other. Here is the Veblen effect in action: products made not to be ridden or worn but to be seen to own because you can. A cracked mirror vision of the cycling industry, gaudily coated in gold leaf and packaged up in a fancy box for billionaires.
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