The balance

Text: Silje Strømmen
Photos: Mari Oshaug

At The Vanilla Workshop it is all about the balance, whether it being how the rider balances over the bike or how design and fabrication fit together. Join us in taking the tour of the Vanilla Workshop and discovering what a custom built bike is all about.

Entering The Vanilla Workshop is like entering a holy place. Owner, designer and bicycle frame builder Sacha White of The Vanilla Workshop has since he first started building bicycles in the winter of 1999, gained a reputation for building some of the world’s most beautiful handmade custom bikes. Getting to peek behind the curtains (or rather an apparently anonymous garage door in SE Portland) and to actually see the building process in real life can only be associated with the feeling of going on a school fieldtrip to the chocolate factory as a child.

This is where the magic happens.

The Vanilla Workshop is described as a community, a collaborating between master fabricators, expert bicycle painters and wood-, leather-, fabric- and metal workers. Together they produce both Vanilla Bicycles – “pure, classic and focused on the pursuit of craft” – and Speedvagen – “modern, rebellious and built to be ridden”. The Vanilla Bicycles are one-of-a-kind, unique hand built bikes, designed and built by Sacha to be “best friend material”. The waitlist is ”long”, with only a few built every year. The Speedvagen are limited production, designed and built by hand in the Vanilla Workshop and will be with you in three months tops, depending on the amount of orders in.

The two brands might seem different, but according to the Workshop they were “born from the same philosophy of bike building”: That each bike that rolls out of the workshop is a balanced machine: “From fit to frame design to fabrication to component selection to paint design to the way we combine our colors – each stage of the process is carefully considered so that no individual detail outweighs the others. The result is a bike that looks and rides the way it was meant to.”

Beauty
- There is plenty of great products and good bicycles out there, Billy Sinkford, the guy doing marketing and PR for The Vanilla Workshop tells us while showing us around the workspace, and continues:

- We want to make great bikes and the best possible bikes for our customers. We don’t want to put out something that’s just going to be something else on the market.

Seeing a Vanilla Bicycle for the first time it becomes quite clear that there is nothing like the real deal. For a moment, the beauty of it takes your breath away and you feel awestruck. It is perfection, as it should be. But if there is one thing The Vanilla Workshop is clear on, it is that their bikes are built to be ridden, and that function and form are equals.

- It is important for the bicycle to look beautiful, but that all starts with the perfect fit and making sure that someone is balanced correctly over the bike and that they are going to get as much as possible out of that bicycle, Billy says.

And let’s be honest – what is more beautiful than a perfectly fitted bike, with its rider being able to push harder and longer than before? The question of form and function is one that often comes up while talking about custom and hand made bikes. The Vanilla Workshop acknowledges that style is part of what they bring to the table. However, that isn’t everything, rather ”the easiest thing to recognize and talk about”.

Posture
Understanding that, one can easier pass the conversation over to the ride, the fit and the design of the bicycle. One thing The Vanilla Workshop is known for is Sacha’s unique fit program. In order to ensure that they are producing a product that they have controlled from start to finish they try to fit as many people as possible here at the workshop rather than getting their fit numbers.

- The fit process is a lot about just worrying about someone’s posture and making sure they are reaching all the right places on the bike and that the contact points are covered. You can cover all the right contact points; the handlebars, the saddle and the pedals – but you can still be in the wrong place on the bicycle. So we take it a step further and actually balance the person correctly over the bicycle and watch them ride for a long period of time under different conditions. That helps to get the person exactly where he or she need to be in order to get most power out of the bicycle and to be in the most aggressive position that is comfortable for them to ride in, Billy says.

It takes no more than a few inches wrong and it can have a dramatic impact on the way the bike handles and how fast the rider will be able to ride. Or as they puts it when describing The Vanilla Workshops’ philosophy: “Fit is about finding the right posture for the rider on the bike so that they engage all of the muscles that will keep them comfortable and efficient. A big part of that fit component is balance. Making the rider feel at home and connected to the bike inspires confidence.”

- One of our internal mottos is “take it to level 11”. We try to do that with every aspect of what we do, from customer service and fabrication, to shipping and builds. We want to make sure that the customer gets the best possible experience and that when they get their bike they will be thrilled with it and that it fits them perfectly, Billy continues.

To further offer their services of a custom fit Sacha and his team is taking the show on the road and hitting Europe in 2016.

- Because we like to do everything in-house it is sometimes a lot to ask a customer who is already purchasing a custom bicycle which is something that is not the cheapest thing in the world to do, to then fly out here for a three hour fits session with Sacha and then wait up to two months to get their bike. So we are bringing the fit to them. It is definitely the biggest thing on our agenda this year as far as efforts go. We really want to get out there and show the brand to folks and meet new people.

Pressure
The Vanilla Workshop is located in small two storage workspace. From somewhere a radio plays an unrecognizable tune that from time to time drowns in the sound of steel being cut and blazed. The workshop hosts several professionals, who all have their own space and their specific tasks. The chat goes quickly between the rooms and the vibe is vibrant and energetic.

The workday is organized around when a specific bike is being shipped to a customer, with everything being prioritized around that event. It takes a few meeting every day to co-ordinate, but after that people are left to themselves.

Being acknowledged worldwide as one of the best frame builders and the producer of some of the most beautiful bikes, does The Vanilla Workshop ever feel the pressure? Oh no. With a committed staff they keep themselves grounded and focused on delivering the best products.

- Over the last 10 years the growth of the workshop has been slow, and there is a reason for that. We don’t want tot get overwhelmed and we want to be able to ensure that we are producing great products and grow with the size that we want to. Our staff is amazing. It’s not one person, like it is with many other frame builders. We have people who are dedicated to every part of the process.

For generations
When talking about the challenges of everything in-house, Billy quickly states that the challenges of The Vanilla Workshop are all stuff they enjoy: like producing the best products they can possibly produce and doing so in the most efficient way possible. For them, the most satisfying thing is delivering a bike to a customer; when everything comes together and seeing the fruits of the work actually paying off and the bike fitting the customer perfectly. With all the passion being put into one bike, one cannot help to wonder if it ever hurts to hand it over to its new owner.

- From the moment we start the process it is all about the customer. When the bike is done we are excited to get it to them. When they see their bike for the first time we hope they are going to smile. We pride ourselves in making sure the bike looks great.

There is no denying that a Vanilla Workshop bike is an investment. In the cycling world, Billy suggests, people are adopting to the idea that rather than buying something that will get runned through in a short period of time, one can invest in something a little more expensive that you will have for the rest of your life.

- Our bikes are definitely forever-bikes that you will hopefully pass down to your children when you are unable to walk anymore, and that you would have ridden every day up to that point.