In the industrial sprawl north of Indianapolis, in the heart of the American Midwest, a few miles north of the iconic oval Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a monolithic warehouse bears the giant red logo of US component manufacturing giant SRAM. Beside it is the more modest logo of its sister brand Zipp.
It’s an ironic order of importance, as inside this vast, hangar-like space is one of the few places outside Asia making carbon bike components at scale. It’s here that Zipp’s Ride Ready SW and NSW wheelsets are made.
“You can come up with the greatest ideas, but if somebody can’t make it in a reasonable time and with a reasonable skill set, it’s not a great design,” says Ruan Trouw, SRAM’s Factory Engineering Manager, as we stand on the factory floor.
“We’ll typically set a lead time depending on current demand, but we strive to get it done the same day the order is placed – as long as it comes in at a reasonable time. We’ll move those orders through as they come; like you saw on the hour-by-hour chart, we plan the whole day based on customer orders. But for Ride Ready, they essentially jump the line – we get those rims to that specific cell and start building those wheels all the way through to boxing.”
Below, we outline as much as we can of the production from start to finish, and it all begins in giant freezers…
The Zipp facility’s checkered facade is a nod to the speedway, which acts as a sporting centre of gravity for this whole region.
The Zipp 2001 is a piece of bike design history, and continues…
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