The cycling industry is full of interesting people, most of whom spend their careers working largely behind the scenes: marketing, designing, creating, optimising. In contrast, Erik Nohlin, the influential lead designer best known for his 13 years at Specialized, doesn’t naturally exist behind the scenes; he’s one of cycling’s best-known designers, in part because he helmed big projects at a prestigious bike brand, and in part because he is thoughtful and outspoken about his work and the industry that contains it.
Selected highlights from his resume: leader/founder of Specialized’s Adventure category (he designed the Sequoia steel gravel bike and the AWOL, as well as the company’s bikepacking range); heading the Tokyo Olympic and several Peter Sagan collections, covering bikes and apparel; lead designer for the forward-looking Roubaix SL6; managing the development and release of the Globe e-cargo bike, which won Bicycling’s Bike of the Year award in 2023 and quickly gained a 28% category share in the US.
I last spoke to Erik back in the CyclingTips days, where we chatted about his elaborately custom-painted S-Works Aethos that he’d built as a ‘forever bike’. It was ill-fated: he was hit by a car minutes into the maiden ride, writing the bike off and denting both Erik’s health and enthusiasm for riding. In the years since, we’ve checked in from time to time and I’ve followed his moves on social media.
He got back on the bike, and he got back to work on some big projects. And then, last year, there was what seemed from the outside to be a dramatic pivot: he moved home to Sweden, walking away after 13 years at Specialized. He now lives a radically different – and slower – life on a beautiful organic farm in the country’s rural southeast.
I wanted to understand that process: the human journey from living in San Francisco as Specialized’s principal designer, working at the cutting edge of cycling as a corporate and creative space, to forging a totally different path, on his own terms, in creative partnership with his wife Sofia at Nohlin Studios. Kind of consulting, but not.
Together, the Nohlins have a utopian vision for a new way the cycling industry could operate: finding time and space to think big things, unconstrained by the corporate hustle. From their property, "we do the long walks, we go for the rides, we go for the runs, we pick the vegetables in the garden, we cook them together, we drink wine together, we laugh .... we make the time to listen and build relationships and partnerships."
We caught up for a wide-ranging chat, about life at Specialized, life after it, and just life. I found it a thought-provoking and inspiring discussion, and wanted to share it with you.
Did we do a good job with this story?
