This article is about a small group of passionate people attempting to make the best cycling shoes in the world. I didn’t know that when I started though. When I started down this path, I thought I’d be working on something about how a large brand like Specialized, which often shows up on our list of the best cycling shoes, actually makes shoes. Something along the lines of a factory tour but given the factory isn’t in the USA (it’s in China), probably more of a deep dive on process. I also thought I’d be going to Morgan Hill in California, and even as I booked my tickets to Colorado, I didn’t think anything was going to change.
As I left my hotel under the kind of perfect blue sky you only see in late autumn at high altitude, I’ll be honest and say I didn’t have much of a plan. I knew I’d be meeting a few people but I had no idea where I was going or really even where I was. I was roughly 30-minutes outside Boulder in a town called Louisville but that wasn’t giving me much of a clue. It was only as I pulled into the parking of a very familiar building that I got the sense of where I was.
In a rather nondescript office park I pulled into a spot in front of an award winning building. It wasn’t the awards that I remembered though. I remembered that building because of Lael Wilcox. Back in 2019, when Wilcox had sponsorship with a different brand, she rode 650 miles from this building to the start of Unbound XL where she came in 2-hours ahead of the second place finisher. Since then, both Wilcox and the building have moved on and that morning there was a Specialized logo on the side of the building.
Given that the whole thing is a bit of a sore subject in certain circles, not least because the news of Specialized buying it came the same day it laid off 8% of its workforce, I didn’t expect I’d talk about it. I only have a picture because I was playing with the camera on my new Google Pixel 8 Pro phone, and I grabbed a snapshot for a friend. Obviously things have shifted a bit so let’s dive in.
The building isn’t really moved into yet, and soon, I’m told, it will be known as the Specialized Boulder Innovation Center, but there are always going to be some who remember the association with Pearl Izumi. It’s a fact that plays into the idea many have about Specialized as a brand.
Specialized is huge right? A faceless corporation that bowls over the little guys, though Pearl Izumi is hardly the little guy, and pushes out generic products… right? If you…
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